as well as the straight dope post linked above about the non-kosher ingredients in cigarettes, i found this.
i found another article that says cigarettes are not trief, but remain un-kosher due to health reasons.
i would like to reiterate what i said in my last post for clarification:
is there doctrine forbidding trief to simply be in a kashered home?
what is the process of kashering?
Have you ever met someone who was first-generation, or even recently naturalized, and who ranted to Heaven and Hell about how “immigrants are destroying [insert country here]”? Both conversion and migration involve cultural shifts: some people spend their life pining for “the old country”, some try to be “more Roman than the Romans”. Your friend sounds like she’s the second kind in anything she takes her hand to. She doesn’t know the rules well and doesn’t understand their whys and wherefores, so she applies them with a heavier hand than someone who’s really familiar with them.
No.
The process for kashering depends on the material being kashered. A metal sink would have to be cleaned and then have boiling water poured on it. Metal cutlery is also immersed in boiling water. A granite countertop would also have boiling water poured on it. Wooden or corian might have to be sanded down. The self-cleaning cycle on most ovens is usually hot enough to kasher them after they’ve been thoroughly cleaned. Ceramic or plastic dishes generally can’t be kashered. Etc, etc.
I cleaned for a handful of very observant Jewish families and brought my own lunch to go in the fridge. No one ever peeped so long as I only stored the contained food in the fridge, never ate it in the house (to their knowledge).
If your friends have a basement kitchen it’s got to be kashered on its own. Two of my families kept the basement kitchen strictly ‘kosher for Passover’ and simply didn’t use their upstairs kitchen during Passover (rather than kashering it for Passover’.
I’ve never seen the exact same kosher rules from house to house. Same goes for placement of mezuzot - front door only, only exterior doors, all rooms w/ a door, all doorways except bathrooms or basements or closets, etc.
No, not really. But it does sound like the kind of thing that a religious tourist might think up, especially if he or she were looking for ways to be really conspicuous about there latest sectarian enthusiasm. See, e.g., Walter Sobchak.
dontbesojumpy:
It’s not Jewish law to not let non-kosher food in the house, but non-kosher food on ones table, dishes and the remnants of it in the sink or dishwasher - mainly if it’s hot (unlikely for diet soda, of course) - can render the item in question unfit for use for kashrut-observers. Certainly the easiest way to prevent that possibility is to stop it at the door rather than control the spread of it once it’s inside.
Regarding the families that lives there before, assuming she didn’t buy it from other kashrut-observant Jews, the appliances would need to be rendered kosher (“kashered” in the common parlance). This involves (amongst other things) pouring boiling water over metal that isn’t directly exposed to fire (e.g., a stainless steel sink) and running a blowtorch over an oven (using the self-clean cycle in a self-cleaning oven is also acceptable). Ceramic (e.g., porcelain or enamel-covered sink basins) cannot be made kosher, and ditto for surfaces that are plastic or rubber (such as the interior of dishwashers, and the racks in them).
Not true that it would prevent the souls from reaching heaven, but it is certainly considered disrespectful of the sanctity of the human body.
Off topic but…???
Yes. Some Orthodox Jews believe that the requirement to bury all body parts together extends to blood and tissues that might otherwise be lost. Michael Baden, who was the New York City medical examiner for quite a while, wrote about a special autopsy protocol for Orthodox Jews that basically came down to placing the decedent on a sheet that had been laid out on the table to catch any extra blood or whatever, and to put that sheet, gloves, and any other material that had blood on it into the body cavity for subsequent burial. Furthermore, some Orthodox Jews consider autopsy to be mutilation, so Dr. Baden had to be very diplomatic about approaching families.
Autopsies aside, I assume there is a protocol in place to handle body parts that are removed from a living patient.
So what happens if some poor guy gets his arm sliced off in an accident? And lives another 50 years.
The severed limb needs to be buried respectfully and according to tradition. It doesn’t need to be buried with the rest of the body 50 years later.
It’s not “work” activity per se. It’s creative activity. You’re creating fire when you light a cigarette. Not sure if you can light one off an already existing fire though.
In any case, quite a few rabbis have stated their opinions that cigarette smoking is anti-Halakhic due to the Halakha’s prohibition on self-harm.
Re Treif Foods
When my friends come over, we often order Chinese food. I generally ask that they use plastic utensils (generally provided by the restaurant) and paper plates (which I provide) so I don’t have to worry about kashering dishes. OTTOMH I can’t think of a treif soda- and definitely know of none that’s widely available in the US. I would be worried about the gum and candy in your pocket. Some gums and some candies are made with confectioners’ glaze. As confectioners’ glaze is a secretion of the lac beetle, it’s not kosher.
Re Amputation
A moment’s thought should make it clear that amputated body parts don’t need to be buried with the rest of the person. If that were true, every Jewish man would have to have his foreskin stored somewhere so it could be buried with him.
Some do. Some don’t. We don’t insist that every food item that comes into our house be certified kosher, though we do read ingredient lists to make sure there’s no non-kosher meat in anything, and no dairy in anything we would use with meat.
There is a process for making your appliances, counters, etc kosher if they have been used with non-kosher foods before. We go through this process every year when we clean our kitchen for Passover. It’s a pain in the butt to do. Different Jews are going to have different opinions on exactly what is required for it, and the details may vary depending on the materials used in the kitchen.
Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi are kosher. They make kosher-for-Passover versions of both.
Apologize for the smell and have awesome Hallowe’en costumes.
We are observant Jews and our home is kosher. I seem to remember some time ago that I bought some food item without looking at the label to see if it was kosher; turns out it wasn’t It wasn’t that big a deal; I brought it back to the store the next day.
That being said, we do have a dog and we do use canned dog food. We don’t use the entire can at once, so we keep it in the fridge, properly sealed. I don’t know if there even is kosher canned dog food.
Ask and ye shall receive.
If I recall my letter to Doctor Laura trivia, should she also be checking out any less-than-middle-age females coming into the house before allowing the menfolk near them certain times of the month? Is she young enough that you should be asking her when she is unclean?
Or is that one of those Old Testament laws that has been ignored during the cherry-picking (sorry?) of what to obey?
That has to do only with married women and their husbands.
md2000 That letter was debunked in this thread
Well, not really. It explains which bits of Leviticus should be followed and which shouldn’t, but it doesn’t explain why, which is all anyone really cares about.