page_title: Kosher locust
section_title: Yemenite tradition
hierarchical_section_title: Kosher locust / Yemenite tradition
caption_attribution_description: English: Copulating desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, photographed near Aiterba on the Sudanese Red Sea coast.
context_page_description: Kosher locusts are varieties of locust deemed permissible for consumption under the laws of kashrut. While the consumption of most insects is forbidden under the laws of kashrut, the rabbis of the Talmud identified eight kosher species of locust. However, the identity of those species is in dispute.
context_section_description: According to Yemenite tradition, the edible locust referred to in the Torah is identified by the figure resembling the Hebrew letter chet (ח) on the underside of the thorax. The most common of these in Yemen was the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), whose color ranges from yellowish-green to grey, to reddish in colour when it reaches maturity (Hebrew: ארבה‎, romanized: arbeh, Aramaic: גובאי‎, romanized: gobai, or Arabic: الجراد‎, romanized: al-jaraad). In Yemen, the locust and the grasshopper share the same Arabic name, although Jews in Yemen recognize the differences between the two.
  In spite of the reference of other edible locusts in the Pentateuch, such as the Chargol (Aramaic: ניפול‎, Nippul; Arabic: الحرجوان‎, Al-Harjawaan), and the Sal'am (Aramaic: רשון‎, Rashona; Arabic: الدبا‎, romanized: Al-Daba), the tradition of recognizing and eating these specific kinds had been lost in Yemen, prior to their emigration from Yemen in the mid-20th century CE. Only certain species of the Chagav (grasshopper) were still eaten in Yemen, such as the species now known as the greyish or brownish Egyptian locust (Anacridium aegyptium), thought by some to be an edible grasshopper, even though it was known in Arabic by its generic name al-Jaraad (Arabic: الجراد‎).
  In 1911, Abraham Isaac Kook, the chief rabbi of Ottoman Palestine, addressed a question to the rabbinic Court at Sana'a concerning their custom of eating grasshoppers, and whether this custom was observed by observing their outward features, or by simply relying upon an oral tradition. The reply given to him by the court was as follows: "The grasshoppers which are eaten by way of a tradition from our forefathers, which happen to be clean, are well-known unto us. But there are yet other species which have all the recognizable features of being clean, yet do we practice abstaining from them. [Appendage]: The clean grasshoppers (Hebrew: חגבים) about which we have a tradition are actually three species having each one different coloration [from the other], and each of them are called by us in the Arabian tongue, ğarād (locusts). But there are yet other species, about which we have no tradition, and we will not eat them. One of which is a little larger in size than the grasshoppers, having the name of `awsham. There is yet another variety, smaller in size than the grasshopper, and it is called ḥanājir (katydids)."
  The Jews of Yemen did not follow the halakhic ruling of Maimonides, where it was made sufficient to merely recognise their features before eating them. Instead, they ate only those locusts that they acknowledged in their own tradition as being edible, namely, the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria), and which they called in Yemenite Jewish parlance, ğarād.
caption: Pair of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria)
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