Kashrut and the dietary laws

Overview

Recall questions on the classification of the commandments, the scriptural origins of the dietary laws and the reasons for keeping them, meat and milk, parve, the kosher kitchen, shehitah and the shohet, trefah and nevelah, preparing meat, and why shehitah is controversial.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How many commandments does Jewish tradition count, and how are they classified?

   Model answer

   The traditional count is 613, made up of 248 positive commands and 365 prohibitions, a figure fixed in rabbinic literature and worked out in detail by medieval codifiers. They are commonly sorted into three kinds: mishpatim, laws whose reasons are evident to reason, such as the prohibitions of theft and murder; edot, observances that testify to something, such as the festivals; and chukkim, statutes for which no reason is given and which are kept as divine decrees. The dietary laws are usually placed in the third category, which is why obedience rather than explanation is the primary rationale offered for them.

2. 2

   What are the scriptural origins of the dietary laws, and what criteria do they set?

   Model answer

   Two passages in the Torah, one in Leviticus and one in Deuteronomy, supply the framework. Land animals are permitted only if they both chew the cud and have fully split hooves, which excludes the pig, the camel, the hare and others named. Creatures that live in water are permitted only if they have both fins and scales, which excludes shellfish, eels and other seafood. Birds are handled by a list of forbidden species rather than by a rule, so in practice only birds with an established tradition of being eaten are used. Winged swarming creatures are almost entirely forbidden, with a few locust species excepted in some communities. Separately, blood and certain fats are prohibited, and the sciatic nerve is forbidden on the basis of the account of Jacob wrestling at the river.

3. 3

   What rationales do Jews give for keeping kashrut?

   Model answer

   Holiness is the reason the Torah itself attaches: the dietary section closes by linking the code to the command that Israel be holy because G-d is holy, so eating becomes an arena of separation and consecration rather than mere appetite. Self-discipline is a second rationale, since the laws train a person to govern desire and to make an ordinary daily act deliberate. A third is obedience for its own sake, appropriate to statutes with no stated reason. Maimonides offered a further explanation in terms of health and the coarsening effect of forbidden foods, which later writers criticised because it implies the laws could be discarded if the medical claim failed. Some modern interpreters read the criteria as marking out creatures that fit their category cleanly and excluding anomalies, making the table a model of an ordered creation. Jews also point to the practical effect of binding a community together and keeping it distinct.

4. 4

   Where does the separation of meat and milk come from, and how far does it extend?

   Model answer

   It rests on a prohibition that appears three times in the Torah, forbidding the cooking of a young goat in its mother's milk. The rabbis read the threefold repetition as three separate prohibitions, on cooking the two together, on eating them together and on deriving any benefit from the mixture, and extended it from goats to all meat and all milk, and from cooking to any combination. The extension is a clear case of the oral law going well beyond the written text, which is why Karaites and later critics singled it out. In practice it produces the most visible feature of a kosher household.

5. 5

   What does parve mean, and why is the category necessary?

   Model answer

   Parve, sometimes written pareve, means neutral: foods that are neither meat nor dairy and may therefore be eaten with either. Fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables and grains are parve, as are the utensils used only for them. The category is necessary because without it a household separating meat from milk would be unable to serve most of its food at all. It also generates its own rules, since a parve food cooked in a meat pot takes on that status, and some communities avoid serving fish and meat on the same plate on the basis of a talmudic health concern.

6. 6

   What does a kosher kitchen actually involve?

   Model answer

   Two complete sets of equipment: separate pots, plates, cutlery, chopping boards, dishcloths and washing-up bowls for meat and for dairy, usually colour-coded, with a third parve set. Where space allows there are separate sinks and sometimes separate ovens or a second dishwasher; where it does not, there are rules about sequence and about covering surfaces. A waiting period is observed after eating meat before dairy, most commonly six hours, though communities keep three hours or, in the Dutch custom, one; going the other way requires only rinsing the mouth and eating something neutral, except after hard cheese. New crockery and metal utensils are immersed in a mikveh before use. Packaged food is checked for a supervision mark, since ingredients and processing may involve non-kosher material. Passover adds a further set of requirements and, in many homes, a further set of dishes.

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