Kashrut
TORAH FOR CHRISTIANS
SEASON THREE EPISODE NINE
KASHRUT
If you offer me a bacon cheeseburger, I’m going to say, “No thank you.” I’m not being rude; I’m just being Jewish.
I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
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Welcome to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr
Whenever I meet people whose contact with Jews has been limited or even non-existent, they often tell me that all they know about Jews is that we don’t eat pork or shellfish. At least that’s a start. But it shows just how pervasive Jewish dietary laws, called Kashrut, are embedded in our minds, even if we have never have met a Jew.
First, some background. Biblical Judaism is obsessed with boundaries. For example, the Torah forbids us from mixing linen and cotton in our garments. It forbids us from yoking an ox and an ass together to plow or mixing two different kinds of seed in one field. And it forbids us from boiling a kid, a baby goat, in its mother’s milk. This final restriction, the prohibition of eating baby goat boiled in her mama goat’s milk, is one of the foundational laws of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.
The word kashrut, or its root, kosher, means fit or proper. In our context, it means a food that is proper for a Jew to eat. We base our decisions on three fundamental principles found in the Torah: 1) the prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, repeated three times in the Torah; 2) a division between clean and unclean animals and 3) a prohibition against consuming blood.
The first prohibition, not to boil a kid in its mother milk, occurs three times in the Torah, Ex. 23.19, Ex. 34.26, and Deut. 14.21. The rabbis infer that since this prohibition is repeated three times, it must have special importance. They were correct.
But before we delve into this law, we must also consider a rabbinic concept that plays an outsized role in kashrut. The rabbis declared that we should construct a “fence around the Torah,” to ensure that laws found in the Torah are never violated.
Kashrut is a great example of constructing fences around the Torah. We cannot violate the Prime Directive, not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. So, Fence #1 is that we cannot mix milk and meat. If we never mix milk and meat, we will never accidently - or even deliberately - eat baby goat boiled in its mother’s milk. We can draw a direct line from this fence to the ban not to eat a cheeseburger. Not eating cheeseburgers means that we have constructed such a fence that not even mixing beef and cheese is allowed, lest we accidentally substitute ground goat for ground beef or goat cheese for cheddar. In other words, Jews who keep kosher eat either all meat or all dairy meals – but the two are never served together.
Many Jews build yet another fence around the admonition against mixing milk and meat; Jews who keep kosher own and use two separate sets of dishes, silverware, and pans, one for dairy meals and one for meat meals. Some Jews even go so far as to have two different sinks and run an empty dishwasher between loads, separating the dishes and cutlery into their respective groupings. This goes back to the time before dishwashers, when we washed all our dishes, cutlery, pots, and pans by hand; if food particles remain, they might make the next meal treif unless we had two separate sets of dishes. We are also commanded to wait at least one, three or six hours after eating a meat meal before eating dairy; the various times are determined by local custom.
There are many more fences based on this prohibition, sort of like concentric circles around not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. It gets very technical. But let’s talk next about the second Directive, to determine which animals are fit to eat and which are not. Unfit animals are called treif. Lev. 11.3 tells us that we can only eat land mammals that have both a split hoof and that chews its cud; both conditions must be satisfied, not just one or the other. Torah goes on to identify many different animals and tells us whether they are kosher.
Land mammals that graze and are often domesticated, such as cows, sheep, goats, and deer are kosher. Forbidden, treif animals include pigs, of course, but also include predatory animals such as lions and tigers – and bears. We also don’t eat rodents, such as rats and rabbits, or animals such as snakes; none of these animals chew their cud and have split hooves.
Fish must have both fins and gills. This eliminates all shellfish, such as shrimp, lobster, and oysters. Kosher fish include most species of whitefish, such as flounder, trout, perch, and tilapia. Other permitted fish are redfish, snapper, salmon, halibut, grouper, and cod. Being a bottom feeder, Jews don’t eat catfish.
Predatory birds are also banned. This means that Jews don’t eat eagles, egrets, herons, and other birds. Also banned are birds that feed on carrion, such as vultures and buzzards, since we are also prohibited from eating animals that die of their own accord or are killed by another animal. However, we do eat poultry, such as chicken, turkey, duck, and goose.
Finally, the Third Prime Directive bans the eating of blood. We can go all the way back to the story of Cain and Abel to learn that God’s Life Force, God’s Spirit, flows through the blood. We are commanded to remove the blood of the animal, both in the slaughtering process and then leeching the blood after the animal is killed so that we return God’s Life Force to its original owner.
Kosher mammals and poultry are killed by a trained professional, called in Hebrew a Shochet, a ritual slaughterer. Often also a rabbi, the Shochet takes his knife, which he must inspect both for sharpness and for nicks prior to slaughtering the animal, recites a prayer of thanks to God for the animal, and then takes the knife across the animal’s trachea and esophagus, killing the animal in one smooth stroke. If he does not kill the animal in one stroke, the animal is treif, unfit for Jewish use; the animal is then sold to a non-kosher slaughterhouse.
But wait, there’s more! Once the meat packers flay the animal, cutting it into pieces, the meat is washed and then salted with, you guessed it, kosher salt. The salt removes additional blood from the meat so that this meat is finally fit for consumption.
In addition, the Shochet inspects the lungs of the animal for blemishes. If the lungs are damaged, the animal is treif. This is yet another fence around the Torah’s basic law concerning meat that is fit to consume.
As if this was not confusing enough, there is a third category of foods, called parve, neutral. These are foods that can be served with either a milk or a meat meal. Parve foods include all fruits and vegetables, eggs, bread made without any milk or milk products and get this, fish. We can dip kosher chicken in a breading made of ground kosher corn flakes and bake it, for example, and then serve it with French fries, followed by fresh fruit. Or we can pour milk on those same corn flakes and add some berries and honey for a healthy breakfast.
But why is fish parve? The rabbis determined that fish has no blood. Therefore, it can be eaten with either a milk or a meat meal. With a meat meal, we might serve salmon to those who do not eat beef – or make gefilte fish for Shabbat. With a dairy meal, we might have a bagel with cream cheese and lox, a delicious, brined salmon, a highlight of the Jewish delicatessen.
Before we break, let’s talk briefly about vegetarianism. Rabbinic teachings infer that Adam and Eve were vegetarians; it was not until Noah offered a sacrifice after the Flood that people began to eat meat. To many, vegetarianism – or even veganism – is the truest form of Kashrut. Were we to serve a vegetarian meal, we would of course use dairy plates since some vegetarians do eat dairy products. We would also use dairy plates if we were to make a vegan meal since there are many more restrictions when it comes to eating meat than there are for dairy. But if you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you are keeping kosher, whether you intended to or not.
After the break, we will talk about how to find and identify kosher products in a grocery store and then conclude with a dive into the question of why Jews keep kosher at all. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
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Welcome back to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr. Before we return to our discussion of Kashrut, I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. Please remember to review and rate this episode on Apple, Spotify, Facebook, or whatever service you are using. Also, please go back and listen to previous episodes if you have not done so already. A transcript is also available on our Buzzsprout feed. And now, this and many previous episodes are available on our brand-new YouTube channel. And if you would like to read my weekly Torah Study, please go to Bible Stories They (Never) Taught You in Religious School, available for free on www.Substack.com. I have also started another Substack page called Wednesday Torah, where I share random thoughts on the Jewish experience. Please subscribe to both.
So, how can we tell if a product in the supermarket is kosher? When it comes to meat and poultry, it’s best to purchase kosher meats from a reputable kosher butcher at a specialty grocery store. They can confirm that the meat has been slaughtered and prepared according to Jewish law, even tracing the meat back to the slaughterhouse and perhaps even the farm where it was raised. Many Jews today are concerned, not just with the kashrut status of an animal, but also that the animal was raised in humane conditions, slaughtered humanely – and that the people who raised the animal and work in the slaughterhouse are also treated humanely, with fair wages and safe working conditions. This movement is called eco-kashrut and is growing amongst all segments of the Jewish community.
If you live in a community without a kosher butcher shop, there may be some kosher chickens in the frozen food section. Sometimes, a grocery will carry a line of frozen kosher products, such as meat, gefilte fish and frozen soups. There is also online ordering available today. And often, you can find kosher salami and hot dogs amongst the sausages and deli products in the refrigerator section of the grocery.
As for other products, there are a lot of packaged foods that are certified kosher. Kosher foods, from pickles to crackers to frozen beans, must be packaged under strict supervision in a facility where non-kosher ingredients do not touch kosher ingredients and where milk and meat are not mixed. For example, marshmallows must be certified kosher; the gelatin used to make run of the mill marshmallows comes from pigs or sometimes from cows. Kosher marshmallows use gelatin made from plant collagen and are marked as kosher on the package.
A specially trained rabbi, called a Mashgiach, a supervisor, oversees the production of kosher foods and supervises the preparation of kosher food in restaurants, bakeries, and butcher shops. He determines whether a product is kosher and then affixes his seal, signifying that Jews who observe kashrut can eat it. Every ingredient that goes into a product must be approved, including the container. The Mashgiach is not an employee of the company where he works; rather, he works for a kosher certifying agency and so is not beholden to any food company, be that a slaughterhouse, a kosher restaurant or even a caterer.
The next time that you go to the grocery, look at a random canned, jarred, or frozen product. On the label, you might see a U inside an O, or a K, perhaps inside a triangle. These symbols, and several others, signify different agencies that certify products as kosher. A Jew looks for those symbols as proof that the product is kosher. To make it easy on the producer, if a product is certified kosher, all cans, jars, or boxes of that product display a kosher certification, even if they are shipped to a place where there are few if any Jews. So, if you live in Pecos, Texas, for example, , you will find kosher products at the grocery store; that bottle of ketchup might just have the O-U seal on it.
Fresh fruits and vegetables do not need to be certified. And of course, when Passover comes around, the rules tighten dramatically, even around produce. We’ll discuss Passover foods in an upcoming episode.
We must ask, after this long and complicated discussion about kashrut, why do Jews keep kosher at all? First, these rules are found in the Torah. For many Jews, that’s reason enough. But I think it’s more than that. Certainly, there are some health reasons, such as avoiding diseases that pigs used to carry and some research saying that eating milk and meat together impedes digestion.
But I think the real reason that Jews keep kosher is because it makes us mindful eaters. When we take certain rules upon ourselves, such as not mixing milk and meat, not eating pork or shellfish, or not eating blood, as well as blessing our food before and after we eat, we become more aware and respectful of what we are consuming. When we eat with proper sanctity and limit ourselves in the types of food we eat and restrict ourselves in how we prepare those foods, we remember that our food ultimately comes from God and that we must not take our food for granted. To me, mindful eating is the essence of Kashrut. And while Jews observe kashrut to varying degrees, from strict observance to completely ignoring the rules, most Jews at least are mindful of what they are eating, which is an archetype ingrained within us after centuries of living with kashrut.
I want to thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. Please remember to rate and review this, and previous episodes on Apple, Spotify, or other streaming services. You can also like and hear us on Facebook and now, you can subscribe to the podcast on Youtube and read a transcript on Buzzfeed.
Next week, we will talk about the Book of Esther and the Jewish holiday of Purim, which for us is a combination of Halloween, Mardi Gras, and a Greek Bacchanalia. We turn everything upside down, but I’ll try to flip it back for you.
Finally, I have begun to publish a weekly Torah Study, called Bible Stories They Never Taught You in Religious School. It’s available for free on www.substack.com. You can also sign up on Substack for the newsletter to appear every Friday in your Inbox. You can also find my new column, Wednesday Torah there, where I offer weekly musings about life, the universe and everything.
Have a wonderful week and remember; Hinei Mah Tov … L’hitra’ot, till we meet again. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.
