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Friday 5 April 2019

JEWISH RITUAL — 7 (Kashrut)

Kosher Sign
KEEPING KOSHER: THE JEWISH DIETARY LAWS
Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
                                       —EXODUS 23:19, EXODUS 34:26
                                               AND DEUTERONOMY 14:21
THE BASICS: IS IT KOSHER?

The spiritual dietary discipline that guides what Jews eat is known by the general term kosher (/ˈkoʊʃər/). The word kashrut (כַּשְׁרוּת, Hebrew for "kosher") means "appropriate" or "fit". Kosher food, therefore, means food that is proper or fit for consumption. The dietary laws are spread throughout the first five books of the Bible; readers are unable to find them in one place or even one section. They include the prohibition against the eating of trefah (treyf/treɪf/; Yiddish: טרײף‎, derived from Hebrew: טְרֵפָה‎ trāfáh, meaning "torn," a term used to refer to all food that is not kosher), flesh torn by beasts in the field (Exodus 22:30), and the prohibition against slaughtering an animal and its young on the same day (Leviticus 22:28). Moses Maimonides, a twelfth-century rabbi who fled Spain for Egypt and is considered the most important Jewish philosopher of all time, saw this prohibition as a precautionary measure in order to avoid slaughtering the young animal in front of its mother. He thought that animals felt grave pain and argued that there is no difference between pain experienced by people and that of animals.1

As part of the dietary laws, there is also an injunction to chase a mother bird away before taking her eggs (Deuteronomy 22:6). Regarding this requirement, Maimonides wrote, "If the Law takes into consideration these pains of the soul in the case of beast and birds, what will be the case with regard to the individuals of the human species as a whole?"2 By maintaining our sensitivity to the feelings of other creatures, these laws, in the words of Rabbi Samuel Dresner, have as their purpose "the teaching of reverence for life."3

But there is more: a prohibition against eating anything that has died a natural death (Deuteronomy 14:21), a prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother's milk (which appears three times in the first five books of the Bible—Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21), a prohibition against eating blood, and a direction to eat only animals that both chew their cud and have cloven hoofs (hence, the well-known prohibition against eating pigs and pork). Certain animal fats must be removed, as must the sciatic nerve. Only fish that have both fins and scales are permitted; shellfish are not considered kosher, nor are some birds. With the exception of four locusts, insects and swarming things are also forbidden.
A 15th-century depiction of shechita and bedikah.
Over time, the Rabbis extended the terse dietary laws to further ensure humane slaughter (which is called shechitah), to prohibit the consumption of milk and meat at the same meal, to prohibit the eating of fowl and milk at the same meal, and to make practical the requirement to keep separate dishes and utensils for dairy meals and for meat meals. They also determined that foods such as fruits, vegetables, grains, nonprohibited fish, and eggs, which are neither dairy nor meat, are neutral (called pareve) and may be eaten with either meat or dairy products.

Hekhsher
Today, individual rabbis (and groups of rabbis) certify kosher meat and fowl. Processed foods, too, are often certified as kosher, meaning all the ingredients used in their production are also kosher. Foods that carry a stamp of approval, or hekhsher, on the package – a symbol such as a K, o K or a U inside a circle, or a K inside the Hebrew letter kaf – are all certified kosher by individual rabbis or local community boards of rabbis who supervise the observance of proper dietary practices for the community.

THE BIBLICAL IDEAL

While the Bible does not require people to maintain a vegetarian diet, it does consider vegetarianism ideal. In the Garden of Eden, God tells the first humans, "Here, I give you all plants that bear seeds that are upon the face of the earth, and all trees in which there is tree fruit that bears seeds; they shall be yours for food" (Genesis 1:29). According to the Bible, not only were humans intended to be herbivores, but so were animals. "And also for all the living things of the earth, for all the fowl of the heavens, for all that crawls upon the earth in which there is living being—all green plants for eating; it was so" (Genesis 1:30). Permission to eat meat would not come until ten generations later. After the Flood, when only Noah and his family are left of the generation that had "gone to ruin" (Genesis 6:12), a concession is made. "Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these." (Genesis 9:3). But the concession is not unconditional permission. There is one important proviso: "However, you are not to eat flesh with its life, its blood"! (Genesis 9:4).

From the biblical laws of kashrut, Judaism derives two important ethical principles: the prohibition against causing needless suffering (in Hebrew, tzaar ba'alei chaim) and the prohibition against wanton destruction (in Hebrew, bal tashchit). The prohibition against causing needless suffering to any living creature derives from teachings in Hebrew scriptures, including the following: the injunction not to plow with a weak animal yoked to a strong one, as the weaker one will wear itself out trying to keep up (Deuteronomy 22:10);  the prohibition against muzzling an ox while it is threshing grain, but rather allowing it to eat at will (Deuteronomy 25:4); the requirement to rest your animals on the Sabbath (Exodus 23:10); the requirement to chase a mother bird from the nest before gathering her eggs or her chicks (Deuteronomy 22:6-7); and the prohibition against slaughtering an animal and its young on the same day (Leviticus 22:28).

The prohibition against wanton destruction or wastefulness derives from Deuteronomy 20:19, which reads:
When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city?

From this, the Rabbis deduced many teachings against wanton destruction and in favor of conservation. "A palm tree," they wrote, "producing even one piece of fruit may not be cut down" (Bava Kamma 91b). Regarding the consumption of meat, we are cautioned in the Talmud, "You should not eat meat unless you have a special craving for it." It is stated on the same page that a parent should not "accustom a child to flesh" (Chullin 84a).

RABBINIC KASHRUT
A kosher symbol and stamp
When people use the term kosher, they usually mean the dietary laws as shaped by the Rabbis—a system that begins with the Bible, but then is amplified and/or expanded upon by later commentators. For example, the Bible says that in slaughtering an animal one must "pour out its blood, and cover it with the dust" (Leviticus 17:13), but is not explicit about how that should be done. So the Rabbis who wrote the Talmud specify how to slaughter humanely, laying out precise rules on the topic.

Another example of the difference between the Bible's dietary laws and how they have been amplified by the Rabbis is the separation of milk and meat. The Bible says simply that you should not boil a kid in its mother's milk. But the Rabbis expanded this verse in the Bible to mean that you should not mix any milk products with any meat products. This is why people who keep kosher (not all Jews keep kosher) have two sets of dishes, so that plates on which meat has been served are not used for serving dairy foods. These plates are even stored separately so that they do not touch each other. It is quite a leap to go from not boiling a kid in its mother's milk to not eating cheeseburgers and having two different sets of dishes, but the Rabbis of the Talmud were concerned about individuals accidentally trespassing on biblical laws. Their response to this fear was to expand the laws (in the language of the Talmud, "to make a fence around the law") to avoid the possibility that someone might accidentally break a biblical commandment.

An entire tractate of Talmud (approximately 280 book pages) focuses on dietary questions that the Bible leaves open. Who may act as a slaughterer? What are proper and improper acts of slaughter? What should you do if you find a live foetus in the uterus of a slaughtered animal? Which animals may not be cooked in milk? Because the curdling agent used to make cheese (rennet) comes from the stomach of a calf, is rennet considered a meat product? All these questions are addressed by the Rabbis in the Talmud, in the tractate called Chullin (a categorical term that refers to all things of a nonsacred nature).

SOME MYTHS ABOUT DIETARY LAWS

Misconceptions about keeping kosher abound. Kashrut is not, as some people think, a style of food involving bagels or blintzes (crepes). Nevertheless, nonkosher restaurants and caterers sometimes advertise their food as "kosher-style," adding to the confusion.

Food advertised as kosher-style often means dishes that were popular among Eastern European Jews: bagels, blintzes, cholent (a stew of slow-cooked potatoes and meat), and kasha varanishkas (groats and bowtie noodles). But there are many Jews around the world who have never even tasted these foods. To Jews in Morocco, Jewish food is pita and hummus (ground chickpeas) and felafel (fried ground chickpeas). To Jews in India, it would be inconceivable to prepare a holiday dish without curry: ""Kosher-style," then, means many things to many people.

Kashrut refers to a dietary system, not a culinary style: the meat has been humanely slaughtered, there is no lard in the baked goods, and the preparation of the food has been properly supervised (as explained previously). Hence, it is increasingly common to find kosher Chinese, Mexican, and Italian restaurants, especially in the major Jewish centers of the world. There is no reason this cannot be. As a result, just as a challah (braided egg loaf used for the Sabbath and holidays) may or may not be kosher, the same can be said of a quesadilla.

Some people cite health benefits as the prime reason for the evolution of kashrut. Hygiene is sometimes still offered as a reason to keep kosher, or as a reason it is no longer necessary to keep kosher. In fact, Maimonides offered hygiene as one of the reasons for the dietary laws. Health benefits may figure in a matrix of reasons to adhere to a kosher diet, but it is a myth to think that hygiene was or could be the principal reason behind the vast system of Jewish dietary laws.

Often, people think that "eating kosher" is required of Orthodox Jews exclusively. But the Conservative movement affirms the importance of a kosher diet as well. Reconstructionist Jews also place a high value on observing kashrut. As advocates of vegetarianism, many who embrace the Jewish Renewal movement (a movement founded by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and defined by the nexus of traditional Judaism and the philosophy of Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism) are likely to follow a kosher diet. And Reform Jews, who in previous generations had spurned kashrut as being irrational and therefore unnecessary, are once again discussing the importance of kashrut, and many are "eating kosher" again. That would make the founder of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, quite happy. He was passionate about the observance of kashrut.

One of the greatest misconceptions that people have about a kosher diet is that all aspects of it are relevant only for Jews. Actually, the first dietary law in the Bible (the prohibition against eating blood) applies to all humankind, not just to Jews. Eating the limb of a living animal is outlawed for all humanity, and is counted as one of the universal Noahide laws, seven universal laws derived from the Bible and considered to be incumbent on all humans, regardless of their faith. Likewise, Adam and Eve, the parents of all peoples, were encouraged to sustain themselves with nothing more than fruits and vegetables.

The first dietary restriction intended specifically for the Israelites is described in the story of Jacob. An angel wrestles with Jacob all night – dislocating his thigh at the hip socket – changes Jacob's name to Israel, and blesses him before departing. "Therefore the Israelites do not eat the sinew that is on the socket of the thigh until this day, for the angel had touched the socket of Jacob's thigh at the sinew" (Genesis 32:33). This particular aspect of the dietary laws is so odd that it attracts attention. It is how the Jews of China came to be known to their fellow citizens as followers of the Tiao Jin Jao, the "Sinew-Plucking Religion."

EATING AS A SPIRITUAL METAPHOR
Seder meal
The Jewish dietary practices, then, are not ends in themselves. They are part of a pattern of living in which following one commandment leads to following another—a system whose ultimate goal is to infuse life with a sense of holiness, a reverence for all living things. With kashrut, Rabbi Samuel Dresner writes, "Judaism takes something which is common and ordinary, which is everyday and prosaic, and ennobles it, raising it to unexpected heights, informing it with profound significance by laws of what to eat and how to eat, by teaching that every act of life can be hallowed, even the act of eating. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel gave classic expression to this thought when he wrote that 'perhaps the essential message of Judaism is that in doing the finite, we can perceive the infinite.'"4

CHRISTIAN PARALLELS TO KASHRUT

Much has been written about the Christian view of the kosher dietary laws. The Gospel of Mark includes a famous statement by Jesus that what defiles a person is not what goes in the mouth but what comes out: "evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness" (Mark 7:14-23). In this statement Jesus is not necessarily overturning the dietary laws. Rather, he is establishing the primacy of moral deeds over religious purity alone. In a side comment, the Gospel writer tells us, "Thus he declared all foods clean" (Mark 7:19). Many New Testament scholars contend that this statement is more reflective of Mark's agenda to distance the church from Judaism than it is of Jesus's own attitudes. Presumably, as an observant Jew, Jesus maintained a kosher diet.5

In refraining from eating pork, Seventh-Day Adventists practice dietary laws bearing some relevance to kashrut. Some Orthodox Christian practices resemble other aspects of kashrut. For example, certain Orthodox Christians are prohibited from eating meats that come from animals that were strangled, as opposed to ritually slaughtered. This means that, instead of slitting the throat and letting the blood drain out, the butcher strangled the animal, keeping the blood in the system of the animal while it is prepared to be sold. The canons of the church say that a hunter must slit the throat of his kill and let the meat hang upside down for the blood to drain. Similarly, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church instructs its adherents to follow the dietary restrictions set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures.

When the Catholic Church no longer forbid meateating on Fridays (this prohibition was lifted in 1966), some Christians embraced the daily spiritual discipline implied by kashrut as a substitute for the weekly practice of forgoing meat. Christain writer Garret Keizer advocates this discipline: "Two or three dietary restrictions prayerfully chosen, freely embraced and widely observed, two or three refusals as simple and quiet as a child's table grace, and the world would stand amazed. Behold, the kingdom of God remains in that place where Jesus put it on the night in which he was betrayed – in fact, where most of the other things we lose sight of are bound to turn up – right on the kitchen table."6
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  1. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago Press, 1963), 2:599.
  2. Ibid., 2:600.
  3. Quoted in Isaac Klein, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice (Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1979), 303.
  4. Samuel Dresner, The Jewish Dietary Laws, rev. and exp. ed. (Rabbinical Assembly of America, 1982), 41.
  5. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (Vintage Books, 1999), 108.
  6. Garret Keizer, "A Time to Keep Kosher—Christians Should Adopt Dietary Laws," Christian Century April 19-26, 2000, 448.
Star of David Sign for "Kosher"