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Kashruth – Some words about kosherness...

 

Yaakov, Béla Orbán

What does the word kosher mean? What makes a food being kosher? What can we eat and not?  

The wise of the Torah (and even of the Tanakh) pushed by a good will, have multiplied and expended the Revealed Laws of the Torah with their own plus-laws.  
So the explanation of laws became a bit wider than before…  
I must warn at the beginning that this teaching will not take in consideration the Talmudic explanations. I will only take the Torah into consideration while treating this subject.

The word kosher coming from Yiddish simply means that a food is fit for consumption according to the ritual code. The word means: allowed, ritually correct, impeccable.  
According to the Torah, man originally ate exclusively vegetables: " And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.." (Genesis 1,29)
Later, after the flood, the descendants of Noah were allowed to eat the meat of the animals: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things."(Genesis 9, 3)
After the Revelation in Sinai, the Lord declared clearly what are the comestible animals and what are the forbidden ones. (Leviticus 11)
Among these laws the most precise are those concerning the animal’s meat:

It is forbidden to eat:
- unclean animals
- clean but death animals
- clean but ill animals

According to the laws of Kashruth, wildlife can be divided in three groups:

- land animals (domestic, wild, little or big). We can eat all cloven-footed ruminants. If one of these two characteristic is missing, the animal is unclean.  

- aquatic animals: only fish are comestibles and among them exclusively those having fins and scales. Fish isn’t considered as being flesh since it is cold-blooded.   

- winged animals: among them we can just eat those listed in the Torah (Leviticus 13,20 and Deuteronomy 14,12-18).

It is also forbidden to drink the milk of animals suffering from any illness. 

(A very interesting thing among men: the child has to be breast-fed until the age of four. In cases when the mother suffers from any illness this limit is postponed to the age of five. In case when the child stops sucking for three days at the age of two, it is forbidden to continue nursing it afterwards…)

In case of danger during famines, anything that helps to survive is eatable. The reason of that is very simple: for God, Life is more important than anything else…   
In other cases, of course all laws of interdiction can be kept and have to be kept. But in case of peril, the law is suspended for a time…  
Although it is true that God protect us in a miraculous way from that kind of critical situation…   

Consumption of meat with milk:
"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk." The reason of this law is much deeper than we think.  
Such as we have laws ordering the relationship between men, we also have laws that are "saving the animals".
The mother-animal does not only have eyes to see, but also has a heart to feel.   
When seeing her kid being cut down, she also feels sadness, gap and the loss of the beloved being. Moreover, she also sees the man who is doing it.
We must then also pay attention to the animals too.


What makes a food being kosher?

Basically all natural things that have not been mixed with artificial substances are considered as kosher. (For example: wines or other drinks containing no coloring matter or any other chemicals).
While baking, we throw the size of an olive of paste in the oven (chala) which reminds of the offering made before to the Lord as described in Leviticus 15:18-22.
Concerning meats, let us remember how our grand-mothers prepared them!
We first soak it in water for half an hour, then we salt each side of it and leave the blood draining out for an hour before rinsing it three times in order to make it ready to be cooked.  
Liver for itself has to be roasted in open fire after having salted it profusely.  

In fact, all these customs do generally have a deep spiritual meaning. Since the Jewish People is a prophetic people. In all its habits and behaviors Jews are even unconsciously pointing beyond themselves through all their actions.   
The question of cleanliness appears at all levels of our life and is valid in spirit as much as in our kitchens. Kosherisation has to start in our hearths before going on in our dishes…

  

 

Translated from hungarian by Richard (Zeev Shlomo)

 

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