have been watching http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/believeitornot/jewishlaw.html It seems a bit of a money spinner to me..?? or a compulsive disorder ??. If any one can explain the point then i would appreciate it. It may have had a place in the world a long time ago , but it just seems odd ..
It is a way of making the mundane transcend itself, sanctifying it and making it holy. For instance, rather than just thinking about preparing food simply for consumption, the laws direct the mind back to God. Certain laws have other clear reasons for existing. For instance, when an animal is slaughtered, the blood is let to spill into a pile of earth or something like earth. This is a matter of respect for the animal. The blood is symbolic for the life of the animal and in the same way that we bury our own, we bury the blood of the animal, that was also a living thing. The author of that piece seems to have purposefully put a negative spin on the behaviors of the ultra-orthodox -- not that I necessarily agree with their views, but just that he didn't seem to be very objective. For a better representation of the laws, from someone who keeps them, see: http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm
Thats intresting .. thanks i will read the link . Th programe was not as negative as the text implies (possibly). It was just i got that it was more of a routine thing than anything else 9mundane like you say).. Respect for the animal well call me new fangled and a bit of veggie militant (in my spare time).. i think it shows no respect at all. Also some of the practises seemed odd soaking meat to get rid of whole animals from the partial portions of meat seemed odd because we all kill millions of microscopic animals daily with out even realising it .. Eating partial portions of animals not it all mmmm thats a strange and hypocritical as well.. ok ok i will read the link now... just wanted to rant a bit about my pre concieved ideas for a while.. i hope to be more tolerant after i have read the link
The meat is soaked as part of the process of salting and drawing out the blood, which is not eaten, because it is symbolic of the life of the animal. I don't quite understand the rest of your post, but if you retype it I will gladly respond.
Re reading i did not quite get it myself hahahha . I had already read that link as it happens.. Well from the programe whole animals in their intirety can not be eaten...so if you were too eat a whole cow from tail tip too nose end .. that would not be kosher. Eating part of the animal is kosher. Eating a whole animal is not good supposedly , it does not say anything about killing whole animals , but not eating them ??. wich is what confuses me.. because if it is ok to kill animals .. this is why i said Because we all kill millions of microscopic animals daily with out even realising it .. In the film someone soaks strawberries to show the little creatures that are not immediatly evident with the naked eye ... being soaked i asume would kill all the little bugs i guess??. So this is the paradox i can't figure out. Its ok to kill the creatures but not eat them whole ??.. but killing creatures seems contradictory , when your making a big deal out of not eating them . for the devout respect supposedly kosher practices give animals ?? .. another soul can't eat another whole soul i think i heard said ?? it all seems a bizare act . Confused ... sorry.
I'm not sure I get what it was the show said about whole animal vs part of an animal. The drawing out of the blood has to be done before the animal is eaten, and the organs are checked for blemishes. An animal can only be killed in a specific way. It cannot have a slow death, or it is not kosher. It cannot be beaten, or it is not kosher. It can't be cut or anything that would hurt it. So -- this part is graphic -- its throat is slit, severing all of the major nerves and arteries as well as the breathing passage. It must be done in one swift motion. If the blade gets caught the animal is not kosher. If the blade had a nick on it, the animal is not kosher. If the animal takes more than a few seconds to die, it is not kosher. As graphic as that might sound, especially to a professed militant vegeterian, it's actually just as humane as any other method out there. Because any delay in the cut would mean a loss of profit, there is further insurance that the animal will be killed appropriately. The blood from the cut goes into earth or something like earth, maybe sawdust. Only after the animal has been killed in this fashion can it be cut up for eating. What I said about the blood, it is symbolic of the animal's life. We recognize that the animal was a living creature, just like we are, and because of that we return its blood to the earth, just like we return a human body to the earth. Jews don't typically hunt. A hunted animal would not be kosher because it would die a slow death and it would not die in the proper manner. Some Jews are vegeterians. But here, let me make a parallel. It's like in another culture, where they would thank the animal for allowing it to be captured, and in this way honor the animal. We honor the animal by returning its blood, a symbol for its life, to the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all of that. In a modern society, where we are not faced with the mortality of the food on our plates, we don't have to deal so much with the fact we are taking lives. In ancient societies people knew the steak was a cow. And they had to make peace with that. This is the way Judaism did it.
There is some correct and incorrect information in this thread. Yes, blood is non kosher. No, blood is not put into the ground or a hole in the ground. This is because in older times, there were certain idol worshipers to whom this was necessary, ie, offering part of their kill (the blood) to spirits in exchange for the right to kill the animal. Because of this Jews do not put blood into the ground because such an act was connected to idol worship.
yeah but the real question is does anyone here keep kosher? i do, but for the most part cause i just cant stand pork
You don't like pork or cheeseburgers or clam chowder or lobster or veal parmiagiana? I'm returning to Judaism after a long time away, so I'm gradually taking on more of the laws of kashrut. At this point I don't mix milk and meat, I do the waiting after meat, and don't eat any forbidden animals. Until I have moved out, I probably won't take on anything more, unless I stop eating unkosher meat. I also see my Shabbos observance as a far greater imperative, although at this time I do not know quite what it will eventually look like.
Hey, it's cool. I was just wondering, if you were keeping all of those other laws in addition to not eating pork, if there might be another reason you weren't addressing. I spent a long time wrestling with what was right for me and I'm still not totally sure.
The animals who are killed in a kosher way are not stunned or drugged before they are killed. They are killed by having their throat cut across one of their major veins and the blood is allowed to drain out (to drain where exactly, I dont know). A lot of people ahve a problem with kosher butchering nowadays because they see it as inhumane because the animal feels all the pain of the slicing of the throat but the thing about the kashrut laws, they come from a time thousands of years ago when they DIDN'T have the same drugs and facilities that they do now and if you try to put your mind into the mindset of someone from that time, the laws do make a lot of sense. For instance, the pork thing... If pig meat wasn't looked after properly or cooked properly, there was a terrible disease you could get (which begins with T but I can't remember the name). Also, sea food - it goes off like that *clicks fingers*. How many times have you heard of food poisoning from sea food? And the kashrut laws did not only serve to keep jew seperate. They also kept jews alive (to a certain extent). Because of the jewish tradition of cleanliness (washing hand before meals, mikveh, cleaning the house for shabbat), fewer jews died of illnesses, especially the plague. Once fewer jews were seen to die from the plague, a lot of people assumed they had sent it though... so there were pogroms... But kashrut did help keep people alive.
trichonosis, however there is no confirmation that this is the reason pig is not allowed. While many people like to claim that the laws were for strictly health reasons, there are other theories and there's no final word. For instance, it may be that it is because of the qualities these animals represented. We cannot eat carrion feeders, who feed on the dead. We cannot eat carnivorous mammals or birds of prey. We can eat the grazers. We can eat the type of birds that are raised by people. We cannot eat the type of fish that scavenge and the bottom feeders, but we can eat the other kinds. It may also be an economic thing. It would be wrong to say "this is the original reason why" because scholars still debate. I'd challenge this. Washing hands simply requires pouring some water on each hand. There's no scrubbing or anything. While people may clean their house for Shabbat, for people living in such small, dirty homes I'd imagine they were keeping their houses fairly clean anyway, at the very least because there wasn't much room. A profesor I had suggested that the reason for a higher birthrate has to do with the fact that a new couple who were Jewish would live with the bride's parents for the first few years, which would allow them to live in adequate shelter until they were able to afford to live on their own. This would mean their children would be more likely to survive and be healthier. To me that's a better explanation of why Jews fared better. Dauer
I can't keep kosher we have NO jewish community here, and I have minor health issues which can get major if I don't keep up my iron/protein intake. Im slowly going vegetarian anyway, just because I'm such a wuss and can't stand the human treatment of animals..partly because of kosher laws as well..I try hard, I don't eat pork, seafood, types of birds etc, and I don't mix meat with dairy but I have noone to explain things to me (my family are non observant), and no community or place which will help me with eating requirements
Disarm, I know how difficult it can be as a Jew without a community. I was that way once. If you need resources, there are many on the internet. And if you are looking for books I might be able to recommend some depending on what you need. One of the big things in Judaism is community which makes things much more difficult, but my own mistakes make me realize that focusing too much on kashrut is not a good idea. I don't know if you are doing it, but I did it. I ignored Shabbat observances and the rest of the holidays, and I failed to see them as part of a spiritual path. Instead I used them as a wedge against my parents. I don't know anything else about your situation but if you'd like more info or sources for info feel free to ask me. Here are some websites: http://myjewishlearning.com/index.htm That one is good for giving voice to all of the different movements and offering many approaches to the different parts of Judaism. http://jewfaq.org/ Awesome site, but with a more exclusively orthodox POV. It's good to try not to get so caught up in learning ritual that you forget why the ritual's there in the first place. If you take that advice things will also be easier for you. Good luck. Dauer
thanks that was really nice of you I've been to http://jewfaq.org/ quite a bit, holidays and shabbat seem impossible to keep here. I followed as much as I could with things like pesach, but its just too much at the moment. Kashrut I'm not so concerned with, I try really hard to stick to what I can but at the moment I'm really concerned with rules of speech, and things I know I can do in the situation I'm in. Next year I'm at the capital city and hopefully I can find a community there.
