Food is my favorite subject. I should be 400 pounds. So when I heard Rabbi Maurice was teaching a Kashrut class at Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, I naturally enrolled. Rabbi also teaches children, so I suppose my comments and questions aren't too unusual; at least he is very patient with me.
In the previous Biblical Kosher article I mentioned the best known permitted and prohibited foods. I couldn't go into great detail because the space I'm allotted for my weekly column is rather small, and besides, the foods I didn't discuss are not really that popular in the United States today. I mean, when was the last time you ate weasels, rats, vultures, owls, bats, beetles and earthworms?
Ok, I have to admit I've eaten two of the above. And so have you, I'll bet, though not knowingly. Several bottled sauces (especially those that contain tomatoes) in grocery stores and restaurants contain earthworms and beetle wings. A number of food colorings are also derived from insects. But I actually researched using insects as an inexpensive protein source some years back, and you truly can hide earthworms just about anywhere, just like tofu!
The Dutch are already incorporating insects in foods. I've heard of an environmental group that promotes grasshoppers as an alternative to shrimp. They call them land shrimp, and apparently they taste pretty good. Rabbi Maurice's mother was in the class today, and said that they ate locusts in Morocco - and they were delicious.
I wonder what the Jews in Denmark do? Because according to Talmudic rabbis, insects and earthworms are definitely taboo.
Although I've done a lot of reading on permitted and forbidden foods, I have not spent much time on the separation of plates, utensils, etc. I actually did keep mostly rabbinically kosher for the month of January - until my refrigerator died and suddenly I was cooking room temperature perishable food in every pot I owned. Shortly thereafter, I moved out of my 2,500 square foot house into a motorhome to save money while I go back to school. Have you ever tried having two sets of dishes in a motorhome?
But I digress. Instead of interpreting the prohibition against boiling a kid in his mother's milk literally, the Talmudic rabbis built up a mountain of rules separating dairy and meat products.
The rabbis said in addition to not eating dairy products and meat in the same meal, people had to completely separate them in their houses. This means separate sets of dishes, pots and pans, utensils, even separate dish pans and sponges for washing (because the meat essence that lingers on dishes can contaminate the sink even for items washed later) . People sometimes go so far as to have separate refrigerators and ovens.
On the website bubbygram.com, I found the following joke about how far people can carry prohibitions against mixing milk and meat. A handy explanation of Jewish terms and additional rules for Passover are included.
Yaakov was emigrating to Israel by boat. He is bringing with him seven refrigerators. Arriving in Haifa, he is stopped at the port by a customs official. "Sir, you are allowed to bring in only household appliances for your own personal use."
"These are for my own personal use," Yaakov explains. "I'm Orthodox, so I need one for milchig, one for fleischig, and one for parve.*"
"Fine," says the official. "But that's only three. It still doesn't explain seven."
"You're forgetting Passover," says Yaakov. "I also need milchig, fleischig, and parve for Pesach."
"OK. So now we're up to six. It still doesn't add up to seven," said the customs officer.
Yaakov says, "And, nu, what if once in a while I want to eat a little treyf*?"
milchig: milk and dairy
fleishig: meat
parve: neither milk nor meat
treyf: that which is not kosher at all
During Passover, religious Jews use a completely different set of dishes. Kitchens must be thoroughly cleaned before Passover, lest any leftover "chomitz" (that which is not kosher for Passover) contaminate their Passover food. Some religious Jews actually have an extra kitchen for use only on Passover just to be extra sure their Passover foods are not mixed with everyday food.
In Rabbi Maurice's class today, we discussed kashering (making kosher) items used for storing, preparing or cooking food. Whenever dishes get "treyfed" (made impure) by puposeful or accidental contact with something that isn't kosher, you are supposed to make it kosher again. Also when you first buy a set of dishes you need to make them kosher. Rabbi handed out xeroxed sheets explaining how to do this and as I'm wont to do, I read ahead and started smirking.
Depending on exactly what made the items unkosher in the first place, the fix could be heating the items, immersing them in boiling water, washing them, leaving them untouched for 24 hours or a year... OR sticking an item (like a knife) in the earth 10 times.
"What happens if the knife touches an earthworm or earthworm castings?" I said. The other women in the class started giggling. I continued, "You have to find really, really water logged clay soil - so water logged it's anerobic and not one earthworm can survive..." Rabbi apparently hadn't heard that before, but he said that modern rabbis had recently ruled that if you lived in an apartment, you could use the soil in flower pots - and there probably weren't any earthworms in there.
Shew... another potential kashrut emergency avoided.
My classmates were a little concerned about my comments earlier about sauces containing earthworms. Yes, most ketchup contains worms and Heinz 57 contains beetle wings. Rabbi Maurice saved the day again: if you buy kosher-certified sauces, you needed worry about a single insect masquerading in the ingredient list as "natural flavors" ever again, because the rabbis who inspect factories also oversee how products are made.
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