Conference taveng::bagels

The fundamental principles of "kosher" are in the Torah. In Genesis, Noah
is told he may eat of any variety of plants and animals. But elsewhere
in the Five Books of Moses, Gd tells the Israelites that only certain foods
may be eaten. We don't know why these rules exist, only that Gd commanded
them. We interpret this to mean that non-kosher food is perfectly good
and nourishing, but that Jews should not eat it.

Dave

Interestingly, many non-Jews prefer kosher food because they think it's
better in some way.  When certain manufacturers have started putting kosher
symbols on their products, they've found that the increase in sales is
out of proportion to the number of kosher consumers.  Dannon yogurt
and Coors beer are examples of this phenomenon.

    
    Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this (or share additional detail),
    but I understand that there are certain rules of preparation and
    cleanliness that must be observed for foods to be Kosher.  I have heard
    that very few Jews fell victim to the Bubonic Plague (middle ages?)
    because the Kosher laws helped them to avoid contaminated food (and as
    a sidelight, many thought the Jews had found a clever way to cause
    everyone but themselves to get sick, and blamed the Jews for the
    plague!).
    
    -Steve
    

I think bubonic plague is spread exclusively by what bites you rather than
what you bite.  I think that the difference was one of personal cleanliness --
Judaism requires a certain amount of washing, unlike most religions.

Animals that are sick or wounded aren't kosher, so that would make a difference
with some other diseases.

    I myself eat Kosher meats, and I found that it has a totally differant
    taste, than the meats we normally eat.
    
    Lorenzo
    

    Re: .-1
    
    Kosher meat has (possibly) 3 differences from "just" meat.
    
    a) It's source;i.e. only certain animals like cows, sheep, chicken,
    goats, but no camels, pork. (Not an exhastive list by any stroke of the
    imagination)
    b) The method of slaughter. The Jewish entails using a VERY sharp
    knife cutting in a certain method by a person well trained.
    c) Removing the blood from the meat. This is done by salting and
    soaking the meat in a certain way.
    
    The change in taste is almost certainly due to the third part.
    
    Re. a few back:
    A possible hypothesis for the enlarged sale of Kosher products is the
    Moslem population. The Islamic religion sprung out of Jewish tribes in
    Arabia, and Mohamed did many things to try and entice Jews to join his
    religon. Only after he failed did he change the direction of prayer to
    Mecca (Instead of Jerusalem), and change the day of rest to Friday
    (Instead of Saturday). (There are many more similarities, but this
    isn't the topic). Anyways one of the restrictions in the Islam pertain
    to banning pork, and to a certain method of slaughter. I don't remember
    a lot about there method, but I do know that they have no problem
    eating meat from Jewish slaughter, and they know that Kosher food will
    not have any pork based additives (like lard) in them.

    The bubonic plague in the Middle Ages was caused by flea bites.  The
    fleas were carried by rats.  One prevalant theory is that the plague
    was brought into Europe by rats on ships coming from the Middle East.
    
    Anyhoo, I haven't read that the Jewish population was any less affected
    by the plague than the rest of the population.  Rats were prevalent in
    everyone's residences.  Hygiene might reduce the presence of fleas, but
    couldn't elminate them from the environment.
    
    At the time, no one know what caused the plague.  After nearly a
    millenia of rabid anti-Semitism and absurd libelous charges against the
    Jews, it wasn't surprising that anti-Semites thought the Jews caused
    the plague.
    
    Now, back to our regularly-scheduled topic!
    
    Laura
    

I believe that while Moslems will eat kosher meat instead of halal meat
when halal meat is unavailable, kosher meat doesn't meet all the standards
of halal meat.  The animal must be facing Mecca when it's slaughtered
in order for the meat to be halal.

    From the education of Esther Hirshberg Gilder my grandmother and
    daughter of a Rabbi.
    
    Testament edicts that one must not eat meat from an animal that does
    not chew its cud or have a cloven hoof.  Kosher is started by the way
    the animal is fed (not fed 'garbage') and is slaughtered by cutting of
    the juggler vein supervised by a specially trained Rabbi.  Blood from
    the animal is 'drained' by a special way of hanging the animal during
    slaughter.  Grandma said that this was done in order to be humane to
    the animal....now that's a translation...she didn't speak English with
    the most efficient grammar.  Above all else, she emphasized the human
    treatment as being the highest of priority.
    
    Meat takes more time to digest than other foods.  Therefore, if you eat
    meat no other dairy product is to be consumed for I think it's either 4
    or 6 hours.  I was told by a friend who studied cultures that it's a
    good explanation why so many Jewish people are lactose intollerant
    similar to Asians because of the de-emphasis on lots of dairy.  Martin
    Yan in one of his cooking shows said something very similar.  He is
    also lactose intollerant.  He couldn't eat what was being cooked by a
    French chef he had as a guest cook one day.  That chef was doing a meat
    dish topped with butter and cheese.  My stomach hurt just watching all
    that cheese burying the meet and topped with butter before going into
    the oven.
    
    I remember have a guy work for the office as handiman as an intern for
    someone I worked for.  It put a happy $ or $$ in this guy's pocket.  He
    was out for several days once.  He had come from upper New England
    where his mother served steak, mashed potato smothered in butter, corn,
    and milk with things like apple pie w/ice cream for dessert. 
    Breakfasts often were eggs w/cheese.  Skim milk was never heard of.
    
    This poor guy spent some several days in the hospital with something
    wrong and ended up with his doctor telling him to eat Kosher Sytle. I 
    gave him some pointers on how to change his eating habits along with a
    good cookbook.  His body chemistry changed after a while and he felt
    better.
    
    On Kosher style, if anyone wants to try it, it's simple.....I think we
    lived Kosher until 1972 when my grandmother died.  Just simply avoid
    mixing meat with any dairy product.  Avoid mixing dairies...like lots
    of cheese with lots of butter...like anything else moderation is the
    key and move slowly into it so that your body adjusts unless you're
    informed medically to cold turkey!
    
    On fish, Kosher means no scavenger fishes....i.e. lobster, shrimp,
    scallops, crabmeat...
    
    hope this helps.
    
    me  

You can't characterize kosher cuisine as being healthy or unhealthy.
Traditional Eastern European Jewish cuisine includes liberal doses of
chicken fat.  Some people who keep kosher eat lots of high-fat, high-salt,
high-cholesterol foods; others eat health food.

 > You can't characterize kosher cuisine as being healthy or unhealthy.

  It *looks like* at least some of the rules of "Kashroot" (or should I
  say "Kosherness"?) had originally to do with health. Considering ancient
  times environment, it makes much sense to treat your meat "Kosherly"
  or to avoid certain types of meat (and to wash your hands before eating).

  Changes in that environment caused some of these rules to generate *less*
  healthy food than the average (e.g., more salt). Modern Kosher rules
  should probably promote organic or cholestrol-free food...

-- Nitsan

>Modern Kosher rules should probably promote organic or cholestrol-free food...

Actually, Nitsan, among the reasons advanced for kashrut, is the idea
of keeping us separate from the non-Jews (it's hard to marry someone
you can't share a kitchen with, or date someone you can't go to a
restaurant with). 

So since nowadays *everyone* is into low-cholestrol diets, maybe 
"Modern Kosher rules" should consist of deep-fried and fatty foods. :-)

Sid

This is actually a part of much broader subject: Which religious rules
(what's the English for "Mitsvot?") are based on certain logic (whether
ancient or not), and which rules are meant to separate us from the non-
-Jews. It's tempting to find a logic explanation for anything (for me,
at least).

-- Nitsan

    Anthropologist Marvin Harris has tried to come up with explanations
    of various taboos.  You might find his popular work fun to read:
    _Pigs,_Cows,_Witches_and_Wars_ (possibly _Cows,_Pigs...), also _The_
    Sacred_Cow_and_the_Abominable_Pig_, plus others on similiar subjects.
    
    He doesn't think much of the health aspect, but leans to ecological
    concepts (e.g., in the Middle East pigs consume resources that people
    use and thus displace people; thus a village could have either 100
    people and no pigs or 90 people and 20 pigs on the same resources;
    villages that take the former choice tend to win when fighting those
    that take the latter, so any belief system that causes villages not
    to have pigs will spread...).
    
    		-John Bishop

    RE:  .14
    
    Yes, thanks for bringing up Harris' thinking, John.  He has an
    ecological/anthropological bent.  Most fascinating books, by the way.
    
    As I recall, in The_Sacred_Cow_and_the_Abominable_Pig he stated that
    pigs live best in damp, cool environments, such as shady woods. 
    Therefore, most parts of the Middle East are inhospitable to them. 
    However, portions of the Mediterranean coast (e.g. Israel and Lebanon)
    have at times been wooded, and so the indigeneous peoples would most
    likely have kept pigs.  They may well have eaten pig meat during ritual
    meals celebrating fertility.  
    
    To maintain their desert orientation and to stress their unique
    identity (still the primary reason for kashrut), the Jews had the
    prohibition AND strong aversion to pigs.
    
    Laura

    Hi, as someone relatively new to keeping kosher (my husband and I
    decided to keep a kosher home when we got married 4 1/2 years ago), I
    still have LOTS of questions and occasionally, okay, more than
    occasionally, make mistakes.  So, please excuse my ignorance, but,
    
    re:  .9, that's a new one on me, what exactly is the rule about mixing
    different types of dairy, lots of milk and lots of cheese not allowed? 
    I KNOW I have been violating that one, bad enough I was clogging my
    arteries, now I find I was breaking the rules also.  Please clarify to
    allow me to minimize the damage...
    
    re:  .11, I think the explanation in the earlier notes is more
    accurate.  While dietary and religious laws DID separate us, I don't
    think that was their purpose ad abinitio (sp?).  Nor was the promotion
    of a healthy lifestyle the motivation for kasher laws, it was merely a
    sometimes byproduct.  We keep kosher because the Torah lays out
    specific dietary rules which we are told to follow.  No logical or
    anthropological rationale is provided there and thus, I can only humbly
    conclude that the "reasons" superimposed onto the rules made them
    easier to understand and more acceptable to large groups of people. 
    They are not, however, germane, since those who think it proper to keep
    kosher would need no more rationale or reason than that the Bible says
    to do so.
    
    Sylvia

re: .16

>    re:  .11, I think the explanation in the earlier notes is more
>    accurate.  While dietary and religious laws DID separate us, I don't
>    think that was their purpose ad abinitio (sp?).  Nor was the promotion
>    of a healthy lifestyle the motivation for kasher laws, it was merely a
>    sometimes byproduct.  We keep kosher because the Torah lays out
>    specific dietary rules which we are told to follow.  No logical or
>    anthropological rationale is provided there and thus, I can only humbly
>    conclude that the "reasons" superimposed onto the rules made them
>    easier to understand and more acceptable to large groups of people. 

     I agree in general but I don't think that the intention of providing 
     rationales for the mitzvot was in order to make them more acceptable. 
     IMHO, the rationales are the result of our constant attempt to 
     understand the ways of G-d in general. (The RAMBAM sees this as an 
     essential part of Judaism.) 

     The Israelites first accepted the Torah and then sought to understand 
     it. (Na'aseh Ve'Nishma)

>    They are not, however, germane, since those who think it proper to keep
>    kosher would need no more rationale or reason than that the Bible says
>    to do so.

     This is certainly true, but even if we keep kosher because the Bible 
     says to do so, we are still encouraged to try to understand the reasons 
     behind the mitzvah.
	

re: .16

>    re:  .9, that's a new one on me, what exactly is the rule about mixing
>    different types of dairy, lots of milk and lots of cheese not allowed? 
>    I KNOW I have been violating that one, bad enough I was clogging my
>    arteries, now I find I was breaking the rules also.  Please clarify to
>    allow me to minimize the damage...

    Relax. I don't think there is any rule about mixing dairies. 

Re: .16 

> re:  .9, that's a new one on me, what exactly is the rule about mixing 
> different types of dairy, lots of milk and lots of cheese not allowed?

This is not part of the dietary laws.  The context in .9 is ambiguous, but it
seems to be advice on how to deal with lactose intolerance (rather than on how 
to keep Kosher).  So there's no new mysterious restriction here.

    Thanks, all, I think I'll order my pizza and milkshakes to be delivered
    at the first sign of sundown...garlic bread, anyone???

    I'm going out for Chinese!!!!
    
    /Charlotte

    re: .17
    
    As I recall, there were some violent debates over the rationalist
    approach taken by the Sefardim (RaMbaM, RaMbaN, Ibn Ezra) toward
    explaining the hukkim (the `irrational' commandments).  RaSHI, after
    all, had argued against providing explanations for this category of
    mitzvot, lest it undermine faith.  (I don't have my references in front
    of me, so I may have some of the details wrong.)  If I am not mistaken,
    the Ashkenazim went so far as to burn Maimonedes' works.
    
    Aaron
    
    [Glossary:
    
    Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon = RaMbaM = Maimonides
    Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman = RaMbaN = Nachmanides
    Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra = Ibn Ezra
    Rabbi SHlomo (=Solomon) ben Yitzhak (= Isaac) = RaSHI
    hukkim = commandments about kashrut, sacrifices, etc., for which there
             is no obviously discernable reason
    mishpatim = commandments prohibiting thievery, murder, etc., the
             purpose of which is easily understood.
    ]

re: .16

 >   re:  .11, I think the explanation in the earlier notes is more
 >   accurate.  While dietary and religious laws DID separate us, I don't
 >   think that was their purpose ad abinitio (sp?).  Nor was the promotion
 >   of a healthy lifestyle the motivation for kasher laws, it was merely a
 >   sometimes byproduct.

Perhaps not directly relevant, but the same argument may apply to the
origin/reason for Jewish holidays. Many say they are originally based
on ancient agricultural(sp?) events of the year.