I, for one, would like to compliment Dex on the column “Do Jewish and Islamic dietary laws have anything in common?” It was so brilliantly written as to be wonderfully polite to all religions concerned – no mean feat, as they say. If I were writing such a column, I know I’d throw in all kinds of asides and jokes, and I bet Cecil would, too.
Not only that, but to manage so carefully to compare the two religions side-by-side without slighting either of them – that’s amazing.
Well done!
Chris.Thanks, crywalt, for the nice words.
Next time, though, please put it in the forum called “BBQ PIT” so that it will count in my totals. 
(There seems to be an unofficial contest for the number of threads in the Pit devoted to each Mod.)
Heh. I figured, no flame, no BBQ. And the existing thread was a little too… detailed for my praise to even be noticed.
Chris.
Hey, you’re probably still ahead of me, Dex. I think I got a total of three pit threads about me while I was a mod, and of those, only one was really a complaint (the other two were a “pity pitting” and a comment on a rather… extensive… editing job I did).
Yeah, Chronos, we gotta take a course or something, gotta stop bein’ so nice.
Find me some kittens I can drown, OK?
To hijack back to the OP I also particularly enjoyed this report - very informative and interesting. One note though (which may be addressed in one of the other threads, but I haven’t read them yet) - Yom Kippur goes for 25 hours, not 24 (from sunset to dusk). It might sound a small difference, but after a day without food or drink, it’s that hour that’s always the hardest ;j
Yes, it’s been mentioned in the other threads. The Staff Report was trying to compare Yom Kippur (sunset to sunset) with Ramadan (sunrise to sunset), not to provide the details of exactly what an “all-day fast” means in the two religions.
As a Muslim, I too must throw in my comments of appreciation for a very well-written report. The objectivity with respect to all three religions mentioned was wonderful.
One nit: khalal and kharam should have been transliterated as halal and haraam as the initial letter for the respective words has a strong H sound, not KH (as in Scottish loch).
Raza, I ran the report past several Muslims who profess to be knowledgable in this area (one of whom runs a restaurant that caters to Islamic-pure foods), and no one said anything about h vs kh. You sure? I’ll be glad to change it, if that’s what it should be.
All the Muslim meat stores around here (and there are plenty) use halal, not khalal. For what it’s worth.
Dex still rocks, by the way.
OK, I’ll change it. I’ve seen both in print, but I then the same thing happens to the Jewish holiday Chanukah, which would be better spelled Khanukah but no one does it that way.
Raza is absolutely correct here, the sound is the emphatic Ha, which is simply a Ha coming from a constricted throat, whereas the Kha has that Scottish Loch gargle in it. None Arabs mix them up all the time, however (e.g. Indian sub-Continentals who spell their names Achmed).
It is, as a trivial item, a typical Ashkenazi mistake in Arabic to mix the Ha and Kha according to Arab amigos of mine who deal with as Israelis. They claim to be able to differentiate btw Ashkenazi and Sephardim on this basis, in re Arabic speakers.
I scanned this from a food package.
For me at least the link does not work.
It’s a food label showing “Halal” in English and Arabic.
There’s always a problem with spelling non-Romance words in English. The holiday Hanukah, Chanukah, Hannukah, etc for instance … none of the spellings get it right, since the initial sound is the hard Kh, so Khanukah would be the most linguistically appropriate. As I said, I ran the report (with kh-spelling) past two Muslim food experts, neither of whom changed it (although they did make other changes.)
The very large Jewish population of northern New Jersey prefers Chinese takeout. On the menus are many pork items, which they order without hesitation. This deeply concerned a teenage friend of mine, who was trying to do what was right, so he asked his Rabbi.
The Rabbi’s reply was, “It’s probably okay to eat pork as long as it’s in Chinese food, because you’re never really sure what it actually is.”
This is a true story, and my friend is still looking for the answer. At first, he took the Rabbi’s answer for a joke, but the Rabbi was serious.
Question: How many flavors of Judaism are there? I mean, really?
There are three major groups within Judaism. Two of the three hold the laws of kashrus to be binding today, and would not eat pork. The third (Reform, which is the largest group) does not. It’s very possible that the rabbi was a Reform rabbi.
Welcome to the boards Senior Chief!
Zev Steinhardt
Zev Steinhardt
But if that’s the case, then why the distinction for Chinese food? The rabbi didn’t just say “don’t worry about pork”, he said “don’t worry about pork in Chinese food”. Is there any variant of Judaism which considers kashrus “sort of binding”?
Good point. This leads me to believe that the Rabbis statement (Senior Chief’s assertions aside) was a joke. There is no one who seriously believes that kashrus rules are binding except in the case of Chinese food.
In answer to your question, no. Orthodox Judaism considers kashrus to be absolutely binding on Jews. Conservative Judaism (as a movement) holds the kashrus rules to be binding too. However, many Conservative Jews (speaking having grown up in a nominally Conservative household) will eat non-kosher out of the house (while keeping kosher at home [a position I never fully understood – even when my parents did it]) and others simply downplay thier importance and “pick and choose” which ones to keep. And others, of course, faithfully observe them.
Zev Steinhardt
Zev Steinhardt
