The Meaning Behind our Kashrut Laws or Keeping Kosher

Nadene Goldfoot                                

FALAFEL- WITH PITA AND BEANS

  We all need to eat, but we are given certain regulations about what we can eat.

First of all, Abraham left the city of Ur of the Chaldees located at the southern end of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia with his family and headed out West to the less populated countryside of Canaan. The reason he did this was to leave the bustling city-life and temptations of this culture of polytheism and human sacrifice and follow his aha-moment of belief in one G-d only and where that would lead to a far different life of  a different way of looking at morality.                                                              

It took Moses; from Moses back to Amram, Kohath, Levi, Jacob--Israel, Isaac, Abraham;  about 6 generations later;  to come up with food laws that would keep the children of Abraham together and not mix in with other people's fancy of foods;  thus assimilation into their environment.  It would be like separating them from others and keeping them apart, in order to remember who they were and what they were responsible for.

Kashrut was developed.  These were regulations determining the Dietary Laws that Jews Israelites followed.  The basic laws  in the Torah (Pentateuch)  are developed in the Oral Law and by rabbinic regulation.  

According to these laws, only a small proportion of living creatures are permitted to be eaten, and every precaution is taken to avoid the consumption of blood or the partaking of meat with milk products.  Other prohibited foods include bread from which the dough-offering has not been separated, 1st-year fruit produced off of trees, and milk derived from a prohibited animal like a camel.  There are extra rules to follow for the period of Passover, laws prohibiting the eating throughout the festival of leaven and leaven products (foods made with yeast or causing wheat to rise).  

Vegetarians are following Kashrut laws  and should get 5 stars for doing so.  It makes cooking so much easier.  Otherwise, they would need 2 sets of dishes and pots and pans; one to use while using milk and its products of ice cream or cheese or a glass of milk,  and one for meat.                            

Speaking of meat, beef and chicken are most popular.  If beef, only certain parts of the animal are okay to eat, the parts that do not produce those yummy  T-bone or sirloin steaks.  We get the tough parts because of where the aorta vein is that carries blood.  We do not eat blood in any way, shape or form, despite what all the blood libel accusations throughout the Ages have thought of us.  Blood has always been verboten !  Forbidden!!  No blood sausage for us.  No rare steaks.  I always get furious when I read about the many blood libels against Jews.  Ignorance about people the accusers have feared or hated is no excuse.  They've gone ahead and killed Jews for something so false by just believing hear-say.  Disgusting!

                       New York City's oldest kosher butcher

Why?  Blood is regarded in the Bible as the seat of life or even as life itself.  This is one of the 7 laws given to Noah and is repeated several times.  The punishment for violating this prohibition is to be "cut off" from the people.  So the butcher has to drain the blood from a slaughtered animal and cooks follow the cooking rules before it is eaten.  The allowed parts to eat are soaked in salt water to remove any blood. It is served well-done.  

This goes way back to the high priests in the Temple to sacrificial rites symbolic of atonement;  this is based on the passage, "I have given the blood to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the life of all flesh." (Lev 17:11, 14).  Lev 19 is especially important.   “Kosher” is an adjective (“Kashrut” is the noun) used to describe food that is “fit” or “clean” or, in other words, prepared and served according to Judaism’s 3,000-year-old dietary laws. The complete list of kosher foods is found in the book of Leviticus.                       

Animals we can eat, but not the deer as to kill it, the law cannot be followed.  We don't hunt, though the phylum is okay.  

So other animals are not eaten, like camels, dogs, cats, or pigs or any shellfish or any fish without fins and scales. That means No to lobsters, oysters, shrimp, clams and crabs.  Swordfish is a no no and so is sturgeon which has disputable scale characteristics.   Pigs are a big no-no- no.  It just happens that pigs are eaten by most of all other religious people except the Muslims, who share this with us Jews, or Hindus who are vegans or other vegans of the 21st century. The reason why so many eat of pigs, is because it is a cheaper meat to buy.  In Texas, where they raise a lot of cattle, people on ranches are eating pigs, especially workers on ranches or even students.  We know today that pigs happen to have high IQ's for animals.  Small ones have made great pets for people.   

We're told which animals are not okay by the scientific knowledge developed 4,000 years ago of anatomy of the animals.  It's awe-inspiring to see. It goes into phylums and all, something that has always impressed me.   

Then there is the manner in which the allowed animal dies.  It must be killed by a special man trained to do so.  His method is to cut the throat of the animal with a very sharp knife, quickly and carefully so as not to cause any pain to the animal.  He's the shochet, a man of piety, trained in this field.   He is to handle the poultry as well.  The meat then should be bought from a kosher butcher.  

Animals killed in huge slaughter plants are not killed this way; they are shot in the head as they walk along a walkway. This has been going on at least since the 1960's, maybe earlier in huge slaughterhouses in the USA.  

Milk and it's products are eaten on separate dishes from the meat dishes.  We do not use recipes where milk and meat are mixed together.  We separate the time between eating a milk product and a meat product.                             

This goes back to Exodus 23:19, 34:26; Deut. 14: 21, "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk."  This includes fowl meat as well as animals such as cows and sheep and goats.  

 Depending, some people separate the time by one hour, others by 6 hours.  Try a science test and mix the two together on a petri dish or just in a dish and watch what happens.  That's what happens in your stomach if eaten together.  We don't do that.  The reason behind it is beautiful.  The science of it, though not the reason, is to allow time for the deterioration of the fatty residue which clings to the palate and does not easily rinse out, and of the meat particles lodged in the crevices of the teeth.  So a reverse is allowed.  If you drink milk first, you don't have to wait so long to eat beef.  You can rinse your mouth out, eat a piece of bread, then the meat meal, unless you ate a hard cheese first;  then wait longer.  

The laws against eating blood and not mixing meat and milk are to develop not just health benefits, but to develop a higher moral reasoning emphasizing that the purpose of holiness was also involved in the specifics.  They were to wean the Israelite away from bloodshed and from insensitivity to the feelings of any living creature.                                

We do not even slaughter an animal and its offspring on the same day.  We do not drink milk and think of the cow giving milk to her calf and then turn around and eat the calf .  How Yucky!   The idea is that the "unclean foods)-not kosher to eat, beset the soul, preventing, its moral and spiritual virtues.  It may be that in the long run, the food people eat-or abstain from eating perhaps even more--does have an influence over the character of a people, some of their values, and moral-ethical sensitivity.  Some foods cause us to become very ill when it doesn't affect others.  What we ingest is important to us.                     

We do not use a morality police such as is practiced in Iran today. We never have and never will do such things as that.  It's up to each person to follow our ethical laws.  One's peer group, the people one associates with, is enough to provide checks and balances in one's life.  Following the laws of kashrut becomes a habit and conditioning, especially if you understand it. Our people did not catch diseases that swept through areas like others did.  Combined with our kashrut laws were the laws of cleanliness, handwashing, checking veggies for insects and washing them off, etc.    

Resource:

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/10/moses-put-jews-on-diet.html

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Book:  To Be a Jew, by Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin

https://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Projects/Reln91/Blood/Judaism/kashrut/kashrut.htm  

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2011/02/campbell-soups-and-islams-halal.html

https://www.wikihow.com/Buy-Kosher-Food

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/05/hold-meat-its-dairy-time.html

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2016/03/vegan-diet-in-judaism.html

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/01/differences-between-kosher-and-halal.html