It’s my understanding that although, strictly speaking, the sciatic nerve is the only non-kosher part of a kosher animal, but that the religiously-accepted butchering techniques for removing that nerve are mostly lost to history, with the result that the entire hindquarters of the animal are generally considered forbidden by Jews. This would presumably include the testicles, even if the animal were properly slaughtered.
Not true - the fats around the kidneys and other organs are forbidden as well. (at least in cattle, goats and sheep - though not in deer and other wild ruminants)
In the Ashkenazic world. I believe the Sephardim consider themselves to have a reliable tradition on how to do it.
While this part is true, I think that if anyone wanted to specifically save and eat the testicles, they would not find anyone who would dispute their kashrus based on the sciatic nerve. The main issue that leads to the disregarding (by kosher butchers) of the back half of the animal is the removal of the nerve from muscle tissue, not from that isolated organ. I suppose it’s a moot point unless kosher slaughterhouses discover a major market for Kosher Rocky Mountain Oysters.
Ah, that’s what I thought. Good to know, if I’m ever in that situation, I can just claim to keep kosher.
Properly, things are kosher or not as determined by the rules set down, as interpreted by whichever body you trust for interpreting them. The ultimate decision comes from The Big Guy, the Authority for the Rules – They’re becvause He said so.
As I’ve noted before, anthropologist Marvin Harris (who didn’t believe in this himself) sought to explain dietary laws on the basis of his “Cultural Materialism” theories, and claimed that the non-kosher animals were determined first, by other criteria (which werer probably not consciously chosen – they were practical choices), and the reasoning behind the “kosher” laws came afterwards, withy results not entirely satisfactory to modern classifiers. See his books, especially Good to Eat/The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig for details.
In terms of practicality, what I find most remarkable about the laws is that a desert tribe, in a region where food must often have been in short supply, would exclude so many of the available food animals, both domestic and wild.
For mammals, the only ones really permitted are domestic cattle, goats, and sheep. Many perfectly edible domestic animals are excluded, including not just pigs but also camels, horses, donkeys, and rabbits. And although deer and antelope are technically included, as a practical matter they would not be available as food. Since they could usually only be obtained by hunting, this would make them non-kosher since they would not have been slaughtered in the prescribed way.
Not true- there is a process called porging that removes the sciatic nerve from the hindquarter cuts of meat. It’s difficult and expensive to do, so it’s usually more economical in a country with a large market for non-kosher meat to sell the hindquarter meat as non-kosher meat.
It’s been done, though. Turkeys are native to the New World, so obviously they wouldn’t be mentioned in the Torah. But the rabbis did rule that turkeys can be kosher.
As a matter of fact, that ruling was extremely controversial, and to this day, there are groups of Jews who won’t eat turkey.
But it is true that most Rabbis ruled that it was similar enough to known kosher fowl that it can be permitted on that basis. Nonetheless, if a species of bird so divergent from traditionally known species were to be discovered, there’s no Rabbi that would permit it (kiwi, maybe. penguin? hornbill? toucan? I wonder what other birds are out there that no reasonable analog could have been known to the Jews of Biblical or Talmudic times).
What’s the ruling on Ostrich, which I can buy in my local supermarket?
Ostrich is not Kosher. I believe that the bird referred to in Hebrew as “Bas Yaanah” (one of those listed in Leviticus as non-Kosher) is an ostrich.
No doubt other ratites would fall into the same category.
Except, don’t the rules on bird eating just talk about the birds you’re not allowed to eat (owls, storks, ravens, hawks, etc.)? So wouldn’t any bird not listed be ok?
Here’s probably more than you want to know on this subject. The bottom line is that we’re no longer sure what species the birds the Torah refers to are. The later Rabbis came up with identifying features of kosher birds.
Captain Amazing:
In theory, yes. In practice, it’s a lot harder, not just because of translation questions as Anne Neville mentions (example: “Nesher” is popularly translated as “eagle”, but there’s some evidence that in Biblical/Talmudic Hebrew it really refers to the gryphon vulture) but also because the Torah tends to think of animals in categories/families rather than species in the modern taxonomic sense, and whether or not a bird belongs to the category of one of the forbidden species could be difficult to determine.
The Talmud does list some general features of kosher vs non-kosher birds that can be useful for travelers in isolated situations (where there are no familiar birds to eat, how to determine whether some of the unfamiliar choices are better than others), but given the above-mentioned issues, a kosher-observant Jew is well-advised to not experiment with non-traditional bird meat.
There are 4 species called peccary. The Texas & Arizona variety, the Collared peccary (D. tajacu), commonly known as a Javelina, DOES chew a cud, has multiple stomachs (3) and has completely split hoof.
So though peccary in Texas, Arizona and Mexico are Kosher, but the other 3 species which occur only in Central and South America are not. Now the Kosher Peccary does share range into Central and South America, so you have to know how to differentiate them if you live there.
So we’re not allowed to eat meat cut off from an animal while leaving the animal alive, even if the animal is kosher. But can we eat meat from zombie animals??
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Ah, so that’s what the “javelinas” in my Age of Empire games are.
Which also resolves the question of turkeys, since, according to the game, they’re a kind of sheep.
I am definitely using “kosher peccary” to refer to javelinas from now on. Although is sounds like the result of a bris…
Along the same lines, we can’t cut off someone’s testicles and feed it to them . . . because that just wouldn’t be kosher!
Most of the dietary rules seem to me like ancient OCD. “The mashed potatoes shalt not touch the peas, it is an abomination to me.”
“a sheep this good, you don’t eat all at once.”