One of the most basic acts you can do as a living organism is eat. Most people take this act for granted, almost as unimportant. According to Bridget Murray of the Monitor on Psychology, our reliance on fast food is a “toxic food environment” that is responsible for “expanding America’s waistline”. Keeping Kosher is a way to make the very basic act of eating into something purposeful, sacred, or momentous. A person has to think about everything they put into their mouths and figure out if it is Kosher.
In our modern society, the most conscious thought about food comes when we decide what item we’re going to order off the McDonald’s menu. We don’t think about what is in the food. For instance, did you know that the majority of McDonald’s menu is made of corn? To paraphrase New York Times writer Michael Pollan, Americans are unconsciously eating corn because our “chicken nuggets are made from corn fed chickens, breaded using corn meal, thickened using cornstarch and then fried in corn oil, while the dipping sauce and soda is sweetened using corn syrup.” We are eating corn without any conscious thought of actually eating corn. Although corn is a Kosher item, this process of unconsciousness is the exact opposite of what it means to be Kosher.
The word Kosher comes from the Hebrew word Kashrut, which means “laws for eating”. When something is Kosher it follows a set of dietary laws. These laws are set out in the book of Leviticus, which is followed by Jews in the Torah, Christians in the Old Testament, and Muslims as a precursor to the Koran. Muslims extended these laws to create the laws of Halal.
The website: www.okkosher.com states: “We are what we eat. We know that the food we eat is absorbed into our flesh and blood. Both mind and heart is affected.”
Many people think that in order for something to be Kosher, a Rabbi must bless it. This is absolutely not true. As long as the food follows the Kosher rules, it will be Kosher. A Rabbi may be called in to certify that the preparation of package foods meets all the requirements. You may have never noticed, but on nearly every package of food, from your sugar packets and potato chip bags, to your milk cartons and coffee cans, there are little marks to let you know if it is certified as Kosher. These symbols are tiny, but once you notice them, you’ll begin to see them on nearly every kind of food. The typical symbols are the Circle K, the U or Circle U, the letter D or the word Parve. The K and U are certification laboratories whereas the D stands for dairy and the word Parve means it is neutral, neither meat nor dairy.
When my friend and I went out to dinner recently, she pulled out a Weight Watchers card and began to count points. It seemed very complicated. She used some points to get her entrée, but then subtracted points for something; added points for something else and then concluded that she would be unable to eat dessert that night. A few weeks later we went out to eat again but this time, she didn’t have the little card. I asked her if she was off her diet, and she explained that she had simply memorized the point system so she didn’t need the card. That’s how the Kosher laws are; they seem complicated at first, but after a short time they become second nature.
The Kosher laws are broken into three parts:
The first Kosher category is foods that are specifically Kosher or not Kosher. All fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etcetera are Kosher if they’re not poisonous. There are certain foods though that are strictly never Kosher; these are the forbidden foods and consist of certain animals. All animals that have fingers or toes are not Kosher, such as dogs, monkeys, bats, people. All lizards and reptiles are not Kosher. Most birds, however, are Kosher, except for birds of prey such as owls, eagles, or hawks. Animals that have split hooves are Kosher, such as cows, sheep, goats, and deer, but those with solid hooves, like horses, are not Kosher, and neither is the milk from such creatures. Fish are Kosher as long as they have fins and scales, so sharks, whales, or eels are not Kosher while salmon, tuna and bass are. Pigs are specifically called out as not Kosher, as are Ostriches (for some unknown reason) No shellfish are Kosher!
The second part is foods that are only partially Kosher. For instance, a cow is Kosher, but the meat must not come from the hindquarters where the sciatic nerve is. Most internal organs are not kosher. Wheat flour, baking powder, bread, are either leavening products or are made using leavening products. Leavening means that it causes bread to rise. They are all Kosher except during the holiday of Passover. This is why Jews eat matzah crackers during Passover; they don’t contain any leavening products. Another consideration is that the animal must be healthy. A sick animal, with abscesses in its lungs or sores on its body is not Kosher, even if it meets all the other criteria.
The Third part is foods that need to be eaten a certain way in order to make them Kosher. You cannot eat dairy immediately after, or at the same time, as meat. This rules out cheeseburgers, tacos, chicken Parmesan. If you’re planning on eating a dairy dessert, such as pudding, you have to wait at least three hours after eating a meat dish, although Orthodox Jews may wait until the next day. Orthodox Jews are very strict about the laws and will even have separate stoves so that meat and dairy are never prepared together. A commercial Kosher kitchen is usually divided into two completely separate kitchens for this same reason. Orthodox Muslims follow many of these same strict rules.
As I mentioned earlier, there are definite religious reasons why someone would want to keep Kosher. Observant Jews keep Kosher because it is a commandment in the Torah. Muslims keep Kosher or Halal because it is both a commandment in the Torah, and a commandment in the Koran. Many Christians nowadays are keeping at least partially Kosher because they are trying to connect with Jesus the man. Jesus was an observant Jew and would have kept Kosher at all times. The famous last supper could have been a Passover meal where he and his disciples would have eaten Matzah. He would have refrained from eating dairy and meat together, and he would certainly never have eaten a pork chop or a shrimp cocktail.
There are other reasons why someone who is not very religious at all would want to keep Kosher. One of the most fundamental parts to the Kosher laws, which I have not told you about yet, is that in order for a “Kosher” animal to truly be considered Kosher, it has to have lived a normal, healthy life for that animal, and then killed in the most humane way possible. For this reason many people keeping Kosher refuse to eat Veal. Many will only eat free-range chickens and beef that are free from steroids. Many animal farms are cruel to their animals, keeping them in tiny, filthy cages, or injecting them with chemicals and then sending them to a vicious slaughterhouse. The laws of Kosher forbids cruelty to animals such as removing limbs while it is alive, or by killing a mother’s young in front her. Having meat that is certified Kosher ensures that the animals lived a full, healthy life, free of chemicals or inhumane treatment, and especially a painful death.
An animal’s life on one of our modern day food-farms can be horrible. According to the Sierra Club on their official website, “[chickens] are bred to have such heavy breasts that many are unable to stand, and die of thirst because they are unable to reach water…To artificially boost milk production, cows are often injected with hormones that cause crippling loss of bone mass and produce painful infections… The Humane Slaughter Act, passed in 1960 by the US Congress, has no provisions for awarding fines or penalties, is generally not enforced by the US Department of Agriculture, and is routinely ignored…Industrial animal production for food represents a systematic violation of nature.” None of these methods are Kosher.
One may ask, can you pick and choose which rules you are going to follow? An Othodox Jew or Muslim may answer “no”; but there are many difficulties in trying to keep Kosher in these modern times. According to the website, Jewfaq.org, only 17% of Jews keep their meat kosher. First of all, there are many rules that at first glance seem hard to follow; they outlaw many foods that you may have been raised on or have grown accustomed to, such as tacos or cheeseburgers. Secondly, when you go out to a restaurant, how do you know if they are serving Kosher meat? Does McDonald’s certify that its cows lived a good life and were killed humanely? Does it make sure the meat doesn’t come from the hindquarters?
What if a friend asks you over for dinner? Should you tell them you keep Kosher and then try to explain all the rules to them? Are they ever going to ask you back?
Personally, I find eating Kosher to be simple. The rules are really not that long or difficult to follow once you’ve gotten used to them. And as far as restaurants go, I try to only order things that fit in with the majority of rules, like vegetarian plates. However, there are times when I order meat from a restaurant and you just have to assume that it will simply not be Kosher; that it will be cooked on the same grill as someone else’s order of shrimp. The world won’t end if you eat something non-Kosher, and your friends can make you dinner without worrying it will offend you.
According to a recent blog post I read, the Kosher McDonald's in Buenos Aires is the only one found outside of Israel. This blogger had tried out the meal and found that the beef was far superior to any other McDonald's she or he had ever eaten at.
In conclusion, keeping Kosher is a discipline, like counting points in a Weight Watchers diet plan. It’s a method of changing the act of eating from something that you don’t think about to one that has a lot of meaning. It’s about not eating things unconsciously. Every single time I put any food in my mouth, I think about whether or not it’s Kosher. I look for the little marks on the packages. With every piece of meat I wonder if the animal had a good life or if it was miserable or suffered a brutal death just to feed me. By following rules for eating, you can do what your ancestors did; or you can do what Jesus would have done; or you can do what is humane and ethical. It’s an interesting way to think about food, all the time. That’s what Kosher means.
Very informative, Bud - Thank you!
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