6-5771 Mitzvah N-95-96

Torat Emet
6-5771 Mitzvah N-95-96
11/22/10

Negative Mitzvah 95– This is a negative commandment: do not eat non-kosher fish.

Hafetz Hayim – As Scripture says: “And they shall be an abomination to you; of their flesh you shall not eat” (Leviticus 11:11). Whatever does not have fins and scales is non-kosher, and if anyone eats an olive's amount from it, he should receive whiplashes.
This applies everywhere and always, for both men and women.

Negative Mitzvah 96– This is a negative commandment: do not eat winged swarming creatures.

Hafetz Hayim – As Scripture says: “And all winged swarming creatures are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten” (Deut. 14:19). These are non-kosher kinds of grasshoppers, flies, gnats, bees, wasps, and so forth. If someone eats an olive's amount of them, he should be given whiplashes. If he ate a whole creature, even if it did not comprise an olive's amount, he should receive whiplashes. Pure (kosher) kinds of grasshoppers however, are allowed to be eaten. They have three signs of purity: whatever has four legs, and four wings covering most of the length and most of the circumference of its body, and two jointed legs with which to jump.
This applies everywhere and always, for both men and women.

As far as fish is concerned, fins and scales are the universal signs of kosher fish. This leaves out most bottom dwellers that do not have fins (shrimp, lobster, crab) and most large sport fish that do not have scales (shark, marlin) as well as others that do not fit this description (catfish and certain other fish without scales). There are two fish that start out life with fins and scales but the scales fall off as the fish matures. These are sturgeon and swordfish. Since these species are in doubt, there are many who just refrain from eating them but the Conservative Law and Standards Committee has ruled that these fish are kosher and can be eaten. This rule applies only to these particular kinds of fish that shed their scales as they grow. The roe of kosher fish is also kosher. The roe of non-kosher fish is not kosher. Shellfish have neither fins nor scales and they are all forbidden (oysters, clams, scallops, mussels). Fish sold as Dolphin or Mahi Mahi is not the mammal (porpoise) and is a kosher fish. This is NOT a complete list of kosher and non-kosher fish. One should consult such a list if the species of fish is unfamiliar.

Current issues with fish involve cross breeding to create a larger stock of fish to bring to market. For example, Salmon is a very popular fish and is kosher, but there is a program taking place to find a fish that would be similar in color and taste to Salmon, but the fish being used does not have scales. For this reason, many kosher fish markets now sell fish with their scales so that one can easily see that the fish is kosher. Frozen fish is also a problem because often these fish are processed at sea, in huge blocks as they are netted in the open waters. Often non-kosher fish are also caught in the net and are not properly separated from the rest of the fish. Since there is no rabbinic authority to supervise this freezing process, there are many who do not eat frozen fish or fish sticks that are not supervised by a reliable authority.

In the case of insects, there is note in the Hafetz Hayim that the Shulchan Aruch requires a fourth sign of a kosher grasshopper. It must be called “Hagav”. I do not know of any authority who actually has identified by species which grasshoppers are kosher and which are not. As far as I know, we no longer eat insects of any kind at all. This will really only be a problem if one is traveling to China where roasted insects are popular. I am told by non-Jewish people, that scorpions and ants (fried or chocolate covered) are actually tasty, but they are treyf, so what can I do? I also believe that the worm in a Tequila bottle not only is treyf but makes the Tequila treyf as well. My best advice is to not eat any insects.
Eating a whole insect that may not be an olive's amount on purpose is to be liable for punishment. If you are riding a motorcycle, or standing outdoors and you swallow an insect accidentally, there is no punishment other than your own gag reflex. I can’t say that I have seen everything, but I have never seen grasshoppers sold under Rabbinic supervision.

5-5771 Mitzvah N-94

Torat Emet

5-5771 Mitzvah N-94

11/15/10

Negative Mitzvah 94– This is a negative commandment: do not eat non-kosher fowl.

Hafetz Hayim – As Scripture says: “And these you shall hold in abomination among the fowl; they shall not be eaten” (Leviticus 11:13); any bird that divides its feet when a string is stretched for it [to walk on, placing] two talons on one side and two talons on the other, or that takes in food from the air and eats in mid-air, is a bird of prey, and is non-kosher. Whatever dwells with non-kosher birds and resembles them is non-kosher. If someone ate an olive's amount from a non-kohser kind of bird, he should receive whiplashes. The eggs of a non-kosher species of bird are forbidden to be eaten, by the law of the Torah.

This applies everywhere and always, for both men and women.

There are many different ways that Kosher and non-kosher birds are identified. I am not an expert on kosher birds so I will quote here from Rabbi Isaac Klein [Guide to Religious Jewish Practice: JTS Press; p. 304-5] “The Torah does not prescribe any identifying marks for birds; instead, it enumerates the species that are forbidden – a total of twenty-four according to the reckoning in the Talmud (Hulin 63b). The implication is that those not listed are permitted. The rabbis of the Talmud, however, deduced four distinguishing marks of birds that are permitted. A permitted bird has a crop; the sac in the gizzard can be peeled off; it has an extra toe – i.e. in addition to the three front toes, it has another toe in the back; it is not a bird of prey. According to one opinion, a bird that divides its toes when it rests, i.e. two toes in front and two in the back, is not permitted (Mishna Hulin 3:6) Despite these identifying marks, it has become the accepted practice that only those birds that have been traditionally accepted as permitted may be eaten (Shulchan Aruch: Yorah Deah 82: in Rema). They are: chicken, turkeys, ducks, geese, and pigeons. Pheasants have been considered permitted in may places.”

The problem with all of this is that the Torah does not list any way to determine a kosher bird from a non-kosher bird. The rabbis try to find some distinguishing marks on the non-kosher birds but as you can see from Klein, they pretty much have given up on this. Today we only eat birds that have a tradition of being eaten. This is particularly interesting in the case of turkey and pheasant. Turkey is not in the Torah and was not discovered by Europeans until they came to the “new” world. I am not sure why turkey was eventually put on the list but it definitely is on the list of permitted birds today. Pheasant was a bird that was not domesticated and was only hunted. Since a hunted bird is not killed properly, according to the laws of shechitah, it could not be eaten. Because it was so tied to the hunt, Jews never ate it and so there is not a strong tradition of eating pheasant. In some places, where pheasant are raised on farms and slaughtered according to the laws of shechitah, they are permitted to be eaten. In places that did not have a tradition of eating pheasant, they still do not permit it.

If you are unsure that the bird you want to eat is a kosher bird, you have no recourse but to show it to a rabbi for a ruling on if that bird is permitted. Or you can just shop at a kosher butcher where only accepted kosher birds are sold.

The Talmud also notes that since birds do not produce milk for their young, they should not be considered meat but in fact they are meat and NOT parve. The sages were concerned about people eating fowl and thinking they were eating meat and get confused. Fowl is considered to be Meat today.

4-5771 Mitzvah N-93

Torat Emet

4-5771 Mitzvah N-93
11/07/10

Negative Mitzvah 93– This is a negative commandment: do not eat meat from a non-kosher domestic or untamed animal.

Hafetz Hayim – As Scripture says: “But these you shall not eat, etc....” (Leviticus 11:4); and whatever does not chew its cud or does not have a parted hoof is non-kosher. If anyone eats an olive's amount from a non-kosher animal, whether domestic or untamed, he should receive whiplashes. Human flesh is under a prohibition derived from a positive commandment since it not within the scope of the instruction, “These are the living things which you may eat …” (Lev. 11:2) [The Torah did not include it among the permitted kinds]. Whatever comes out of the forbidden kinds, such as milk from non-kosher domestic or untamed animals is forbidden to be eaten by the law of the Torah. However, honey from bees or wasps is permissible since they do not emit it from their bodies. Human milk is permissible: but a grown person is forbidden to suckle at the breast. If there is milk in a heathen's possession and no Jew saw him doing the milking, it is forbidden, since he may have mixed into it milk from a non-kosher kind of animal. The cheese of a heathen is permitted by the law of the Torah, because we are not apprehensive that perhaps it came from a non-kosher animal, since the milk of a non-kosher animal cannot be made into cheese. Only the Sages of blessed memory forbade the cheese of a heathen for many reasons.
This applies everywhere and always, for both men and women.

The Hafetz Hayim is all over the place in this lesson and there is a lot to cover. Non-kosher animals are different from kosher ones for a number of reasons. In the category of large four legged mammals, kosher animals must have both a fully split hoof and must chew its cud. In the category of fish, the kosher fish must have fins and scales. Kosher birds have no sign if they are kosher or not. We don't eat birds of prey and the kosher birds appear on a list in Leviticus chapter eleven. Reptiles cannot be eaten and only kosher locusts can be eaten but since we don't know which locusts are permitted, we just don't eat them anymore. (Most people are happy about this!) These rules apply to both domesticated animals and wild animals. [There are also rules as to how the animals are slaughtered but that is not part of this Mitzvah]

If the animal is not kosher, then the products of the animal are not kosher. You can't use the milk from non-kosher animals and you can't eat the eggs from non-kosher birds. Bees are not kosher but you can use the honey since the sages did not consider honey to be in the same category as eggs and milk. I am not sure if they are correct in this assessment of bee anatomy but I am not going to be the Rabbi who declares honey treif.

Human flesh is not listed in these categories and so we are reminded that human flesh cannot be eaten because of a different Mitzvah. Just because it is not listed here should not tempt you to give human flesh a try. Human milk is permitted for everyone to drink but simple morality tells us that grown human beings have no business suckling at the breast. This should be obvious but I guess it has to be stated somewhere and here, in the laws of Kashrut, it can be found.

As usual, Kosher laws prohibit us from buying milk from a non-Jew if we don't know where he got his milk. It is possible that he may have milked a non-kosher animal and mixed it in with the other milk. Since milk today is regulated and must state where it is from, we don't usually have to worry about this prohibition. I am not an expert in cheese production so I can't vouch for the fact that cheese cannot be made from the milk of non-kosher animals. I have never heard of horse cheese or pig cheese, only cheese from cows and sheep and goats. If any of my readers know of cheese from non-kosher animals, please let me know.

Cheese today is or is not Kosher because of the use of rennet as a catalyst for cheese making. Rennet comes from the stomachs of animals and if those animals are not kosher or slaughtered in a kosher manner, the rennet is not kosher and in any event it can't be used in milk to make cheese. There are other ways to make cheese that does not involve rennet that are used in kosher and vegetarian cheeses. There are some authorities in Conservative Judaism who see rennet not as a meat byproduct but as a refined chemical and therefore can be permitted in all cheeses. There is not a lot of uniformity in our movement about this so one should check with your Rabbi as to whether or not non-hekshered (unsupervised) cheeses are permitted. In any event, the problem with cheese is not the source of the milk but the process of making the cheese.

3-5771 Mitzvah N-92

Torat Emet

3-5771 Mitzvah N-92
11/01/10

Negative Mitzvah 92– This is a negative commandment: do not eat meat that was cooked in milk.

Hafetz Hayim – As Scripture says: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.” (Exodus. 34:26); For eating an olive's amount of the both, one should receive whiplashes. He is punishable even if he has no enjoyment in eating it: for example, if it was so unduly hot that it burned his throat when he ate it, or he put something bitter into it with the result that he had no enjoyment whatever in eating it. Nevertheless, he should be given whiplashes. If meat and milk were prepared not by cooking but by steeping (soaking), or they were salted together, it is forbidden to be eaten by the law of the Sages, but benefit from it is permitted. If the meat of an untamed animal or a fowl was cooked with the milk of either a domestic or an untamed animal, the ban on eating it is only by the law of the Sages. It is permissible to cook fish or locusts with milk, and permissible to eat them.
This applies everywhere and always, for both men and women.

There is not much different here than in last week's lesson. In fact, the only real difference is that the quote is from a different chapter of Exodus. This tells us that there is another law being taught, one that is different enough from last week that it needs to be taught separately.

Here, the difference seems to be in the way the food is cooked. The law applies even if there are good reasons not to eat it. If the food is too hot to be eaten or has been prepared so that it tastes terrible, the fact that it is being eaten still warrants flogging. If the mixture was not “cooked” but mixed in another way, then one is still in violation of the law but not by Torah law, but by the extension of the Sages. Since the law refers to “its mother's milk”, untamed animals that one cannot milk or poultry that has no milk might be understood to be exempt from the law. The Sages have ruled that these too are prohibited and the mixture must not be eaten. The reason for this prohibition by the Sages is because both of these are “meat like” and if they permitted it, it would be too easy to make an error and think that other meats could also be eaten with milk. This kind of an extension of Torah law is common in rabbinic literature where it is considered a “fence” protecting us from getting too close to violate a Torah law. Fish and locusts clearly are not meat and therefore there is no prohibition of eating these if they are cooked in milk.

I should note here that not all locusts are permitted to be eaten and we are not very sure today which locusts the Torah permits and which it prohibits. For this reason we don't eat locusts anymore. (I know that will make you feel better!)

The rules of the Sages prohibit eating these kinds of meat with milk but it does not extend to deriving benefit from them. One can sell these food, cooked improperl,y to those who are not bound by Torah Law.