Professional Widow

What is the idea behind kosher cooking? From what I know it has to do with how an animal is slaughtered (humanely) & the blood is drained. There's also something about meat not touching dairy products. Was there a problem with contamination back in the day?

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Ronin

The kosher diet is based on the dietary laws recorded mainly in Leviticus chapter 11, which God is said to have given the ancient Hebrews after their exodus from Egypt. The original rules were relatively simple: The only permisible land mammals were those that chewed their cud (ruminants) and had split hooves, like cows, goats, and sheep. Horses or pigs, or animals that had paws instead of hooves, were unclean. THe only permisible water creatures were those that had fins and scales - i.e., fish were okay, but not shellfish, eels, etc. Predatory and scavenger birds (as well as bats) were deemed unclean, but non-predatory birds (like chickens) were permitted. THe only permissible winged insects were locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets, and all flightless insects (i.e. "crawling things"" were unclean. All reptiles were declared unclean. Thats why observant Jews don't eat pork or shellfish (of course, as you can see, there are plenty of other things they don't eat as well, but non-Jews don't eat them either, so we don't notice.)THe only explanation God gives for these restrictions is that the Jews are God's own holy people, and so should have higher standards than the "heathen" nations around them. Some people have speculated that the restrictions had health benifits as well, since, for example, pork and shellfish are known for harboring harmful parasites which would have been difficult to destroy with the primitive cooking methods available at the time.

In addition, even clean animals should not be eaten if they are found dead (both disgusting and potentialy harmful, since humans don't have the strong stomach acids that allow scavengers to eat carrion), and in chapter 17 God forbids the Hebrews to eat blood, because "the life is in the blood." Any animal killed for food must have al the blood drained out and covered with soil. Kosher slaughter is based on these two rules, which over the millenia have been debated and elaborated upon by various rabbis to give modern kosher slaughter: the animal must be slaughtered by having its throat slit, so that the still pumping heart can force out as much blood as possible. Kosher meat is also salted in order to remove any last traces of blood. ALso, the animal must be conscious when its throat is cut (not bashed in the head first, as is done in most slaughterhouses). The idea, I think, is that if you kill or even render the animal unconscious before slitting its throat, its technicaly the same as if you had found the animal dead and simply drained the blood before eating the carrion. The whole "slitting the throat while fully conscious" thing sounds awful, but I have read that when performed by a trained kosher slaughterer with a sharp blade, on animals that are not already stressed by begin overly restrained, the animal does not even seem to notice that its throat has been cut - it just stands there calmly until it collapses from blood loss.

Lastly, in Exodus chapter 23, God instructs the Hebrews not to "seethe (i.e., boil) a kid in it's mother's milk." Its kind of thrown in their randomly with a bunch of other rules that have nothing to do with food, so I'm not sure what the rationale originaly was, except maybe that it just seems kinda macabre to boil a baby animal in the very milk its own mother produced to sustain its life. Once more, the basic command was elaborated into not cooking meat and milk together at all. Some super observent Jewish families even have entirely separate utensils for preparing and serving milk and meat.

As you can see, many modern kosher rules are stricter than the ones originaly recorded in the Torah, since whenever a question came up about whether something was clean or unclean, the rabbis usualy preferred to err on the side of being more restrictive, so as to "build a hedge around the Torah." The idea being, if you follow the stricter Talmudic rules decided upon by the rabbis, then you can be certain of never transgressing the basic rules handed down by God Himself.

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Jacob

Today, much of our food comes from corporate-type farming. Are all meats, claiming to be kosher, actually kosher?

Film footage in a documentary film entitled "Earthlings" reveals that it may not be. (www.isawearthlings.com)

I am not Jewish myself. I only mention this to raise awareness of animal cruelty brought about by the practices of corporate farming; including factories which butcher kosher meats.


Jacob

debdodd

I suppose some slip thru on technicalities but if they say Kosher it means that.

Hebrew National Brand of hot dogs have been given the title of world best hot dogs (I can't remember by who, but I heard it on the news so it must be true ) .... they have a production plant here in our city and I know that it is required that a rabbi is there all 3 shifts to ensure that everything stays kosher. It somehow the meat becomes contaminated they have to shut it all down, do a ritual cleaning and a ritual purification of the place before they can resume production. At least here they follow the rules very closely. We have lots of Jewish acquaintances and I know none that follow strict kosher. But then again, I know no one who is orthodox Jewish, hasidic or such ... oh I do know one family that is a part of the "Jews for Jesus" faith .... they follow Jewish traditions but also have belief in Jesus as the Messiah .... have never been interested enough to inquire more about it tho'

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"We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ....."

jaej

It's also what animals you eat, I think. I'm no expert on jewish customs, but I don't think they can eat pig products, and they can't eat meat with cheese, and a ton of other weird stuff.

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debdodd

LOL jaej you goofball ... it's not weird if that was how you were raised ... some religions eat their dead ... doesn't make them cannibals in my eyes. Now if they hunted down humans, killed them and ate them .... then yes.

I am sure you eat some weird stuff .... what the weirdest combination of food you like?

Mine is, or one of mine is .... I like mayonnaise on french fries.

__________________
"Ubi dubium ibi libertas."

"We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ....."

jaej

The only food I eat is macaroni and cheese, french fries, grilled cheese, chicken-noodle soup, mountain dew, and for now at least, graduation party food.

I don't eat weird things, because they're weird.

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epicureious

The animal's soul (nefesh) was thought to be in the blood of an animal. So, one wouldn't want to consume little animal souls, but put them to rest easy in the ground. The ritual around slaughtering included prayers to allow the animal to die peacefully. The other part of that law was not to eat any limb or part of an animal while it is still alive. My understanding of the law was that human beings were responsible for even the lifeblood of animals.

The prohibition about milk and meat together is to not cook a kid (baby animal) in it's mother's milk. This may have been some cruel practice by neighbors that was being shunned by the Hebrews to get some kind of magical power. Alternatively the prohibition could be a metaphor for not using what was meant to give life (milk) to kill, or it could just be just a "rules is rules" no one knows why thing.

Some anthropologists hypothesize pigs take up too much energy and resources in the desert so middle-eastern cultures frowned on pork. Others believe trichina larvae to be the reason against eating pork, still others that pigs house demons.

@ya

is'nt that as how an animal is slaughtered in islam ?

echos

You bet it is! Both religons have the same rituals about food, just worded differently.