Dietary Restrictions

Why such a constant focus on food? Muslims aren’t supposed to eat swine, Christians can’t eat fish on Fridays during Lent, and Jews are famous for having a strict and exhaustive set of rules defining dietary restrictions.

Jews, like any other ethnic group, have always had a vested interest in maintaining the health of individuals and the community at large. In more primitive times with less scientific knowledge on the subject of pathogens, nutrients, health standards, and chemistry in general, it was probably natural to frame guidelines that now appear to be common sense in a religious paradigm.

Although trichinosis is now reportedly extinct and there doesn’t seem to be any real drawback to eating a cheeseburger (other than cholesterol and saturated fat intake) there are still a great many people today who follow long-established traditions of religious observance related to diet and food preparation

Kosher: What does it mean?

The word “kosher” is a bit of a slang word itself, derived from the Hebrew “Kashrut”, which refers to the set of laws to which we previously alluded. There is some controversy over the modern meaning of this word. In popular culture, kosher foods are blessed by a rabbi, giving them some natural immunity from disease or other impurity. This notion may have more to do with the semantic drift of the word “blessing”. In reality, a rabbi does indeed inspect the production of kosher food, but his blessing isn’t a religious invocation. You can think of a rabbi’s role more like a food inspector, except instead of reporting to the FDA the rabbi answers to his or her constituent Jews, as well as more powerful members of the religious hierarchy.

Essentially, religious Jews who eat kosher do so because it is sinful to do otherwise, not to mention the peace of mind they gain in knowing that their health will not be undermined by the foods they eat. Non-practicing Jews often choose to retain the practice, probably not because the Torah says so but because religious practices often have benefits in the secular world as well. If you are in a community who eats kosher, it would probably be difficult to do otherwise. On the flipside, if you are trying to be a pioneer and prepare a kosher dinner in a non-Jewish household or spread the word on the health benefits of eating kosher in a non-Jewish community, you will most likely run into as much adversity and difficulty as a vegan in Texas.

For an exhaustive explanation of the Kashrut, you may want to refer to the Torah and make your own decisions. But for a quick look at the principles of the diet, check out the following list of restrictions and guidelines:

  • The flesh and other products of certain animals may not be eaten. You can eat an animal and its products if it has a cloven hoof and it chews its cud.
  • If you are going to butcher an animal, you must do so according to Kashrut law. This includes the method of butchery (by slitting of the throat) and some preparation mandates, such as bleeding the animal thoroughly.

    • The Kashrut takes a hard stance against carnivorous or scavenging animals. Additionally, eating an animal that has died of natural causes (scavenging) is prohibited.

  • Certain parts of the animal aren’t permitted to be eaten. Specifically, some fatty tissues that encase the internal organs are routinely discarded by kosher butchers.
  • Interestingly, vegetables and fruits are always kosher unless they have become infested with bugs. There is no notable mention of cultivation practices, but when the Kashrut was written there were no pesticides either.
  • Meat and dairy must not be mixed. This law can be either loosely observed or it can be taken to an extreme, where if a certain utensil has made contact with both meat and dairy products it is no longer a “kosher utensil”.

Most of these rules have historical bases which are now either long forgotten or irrelevant. As such, it may seem to an outsider that the Kashrut relies on very arbitrary, restrictive, and unnecessary principles. Probably that is why there is such a wide variety of observance when it comes to Kosher eating. Not half of Jewish families eat kosher meals exclusively, and who knows if it was very different in the past?

The important thing to remember is that the Kashrut is probably the most important and primary source that explains and interprets the cultural differences between Jews and Gentiles when it comes to dietary restriction.