Original-From: hlwpk!ktw (Kenneth T Wolman +1 201 564 2866)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Wed, 29 Jul 1992 08:02:00 EDT
From:         ktw@HLWPK.ATT.COM
Subject: Re: Kosher ( was Sea World )
Comments: To: English Language Discussion Group <WORDS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu>

Shock of recognition here, courtesy of Judith:

>>Ha! Nancy is not Jewish. We drank milk with fish, but not with
>>*meat*! We drank soda pop with meat. To this day, I can't drink
>>milk with meat. I *can* eat meat and cheese together (e.g.,
>>lasagna), and I can drink milk with a ham sandwich, but not
>>with a roast beef sandwich. (Ham isn't "meat", of course; it's
>>just Chazerei.)

And Tony continues....
>Kosher rules are full of surprises and quirks.  How about fish with
>meat ?  Turns out it's legal, but - well no one does it.  Chicken
>with milk ?  Why isn't chicken parve (i.e. goes with milk or meat) ?
>Birds don't give milk.
"Correct" fish--i.e., with scales--is considered parve: neither meat
nor milk.  There's been a debate about some kinds of fish, esp.
swordfish, because I think they're born with scales, but lose them.
Very Orthodox Jews will not eat swordfish, most others will at least
think about it :-).

>I find this fascinating.
So do most Jews.  Often appalling but fascinating....

>I have Jewish friends who vary all the way
>from strictly kosher (if the appropriate rabbi didn't pronounce on
>it, no go), to one who will eat from the same dish in a Chinese
>restaurant that contains shrimp, as long as he doesn't actually
>eat any of the shrimp, to "beef and cheese at the same meal are OK
>as long as they're not mixed in a cheeseburger", to anything goes
>(but doesn't like the *taste* of butter on a roast beef sandwich).

People who claim to eat kosher indeed mean different things by it.  I
happen to have a problem with ham, and won't eat it or most (note
MOST) pork products.  This makes me "aware" to some people, and a
raging hypocrite to others: probably I'm both, and it depends who's
doing the judging.  But I don't eat only salads in seafood
restaurants, and I won't be just waving at lobsters when we go to
Maine in 2 weeks.  At the other extreme, I worked with a guy who was a
Lubavitch Hassid, who would not buy stuff like Hebrew National
products or meat from most "mainstream" kosher butchers.  Kashrut is
very odd and psychological: it is based almost entirely on trust and
often on knowing the person who sells you the meat, who in his turn
trusts the shochet (ritual slaughterer) who killed and examined the
animal for defects.  If that trust is betrayed, reputations fall...and
businesses can fail.  We had an episode around here a few years back
where some kosher butcher was found to be selling Perdue chickens as
kosher.  He practically did public penance, paid a stiff fine to the
State of New Jersey which, until recently, had a strict kosher food
supervision agency, but within a year he was out of business.  God is
probably more forgiving than some of the kashrut inspectors....

>Much as I like to poke gentle fun at my friends for these quirks,
>I think all this is a microcosm of religion in general.

IMHO...religion isn't rational: it's inherently a series of
compromises with reality, or (better?) accommodations of reality to an
internal structure.  My "beef" (ha-ha...) with the Reform branch of my
religion has been its insistence on rationalizing everything and
considering itself a "religion of reason."  It's not.  You do what you
do, and if you don't do it, then you don't: but you learn not to make
excuses for yourself.

Ken
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