Crap. I was really craving a beetle secretion and egg with blood spot sandwich.
Thanks for all the replies. Sounds like she’s in for a summer of cheese sandwiches. We have a vegetarian Co-op close by, and they’re very strict about dead animal products, so I’ll have a selection of acceptable cheeses.
It’s my understanding that most of the Jewish laws may be bypassed if necessary to save a human life or soul. So if you have a deadly disease for which the only medication is made from pigs, you’re allowed to use it (though I presume that a non-pig medicine would be preferable, if available). I’m not sure how this extends to things like cough syrup, though, which are not generally essential for sustaining life.
I have always know that fish is parive. However, I have never understood why. Does it not have mussles? If you stab it, does it not blead? If you mispll it, does it not complain?
This page says
Personally, I’ve come to the opinion that kosher is like the tax-code. Trying to figure it out based on what “makes sense” to me is a futile exercise…
Well, I read it but…
Thanks anyway.
It is. This is why we have a fine tradition of Jewish accountants.
Re Eggs
I’ve always heard that you throw out the whole egg. ‘The blood is the life and you shall not eat of it’. For that reason, it’s standard practice to break an egg into a glass, check for blood spots, and then pour the egg into whatever recipe you’re making.
I ran into this issue with a vegetarian coworker. After observing that I never ate meat for lunch at work, she didn’t understand why I was eating a tuna salad sandwich. At first, I didn’t understand her question. It’s fish, not meat. After a bit of confusion, we realized that we categorized food in different ways. I had never thought of fish as meat, and she thought any tissue from a living creature was meat.
What’s the accepted practice with hard-boiled eggs?
Can you effectively check for blood-spots by candling an egg before boiling it? Or do you need to slice up a hard-boiled egg before eating? Or should you just avoid hard-boiled eggs entirely?
Chukhung
Good question. I have no idea.
Scott_Plaid
Fish is simply not classified as meat. If you want a cite from the Torah saying this, I’m sure somebody will provide one. If you want a logical explanation, you’re not going to get it.
I know, I know. I will also never find out why, if it is parive, must it be on plates that are removed before the begining of a meat meal.
Maybe the plate could have come from the dairy kitchen?
No, no, no. When I visit my folks, they serve fish before the meal on small parive plates, with plastic forks. They then remove the plates before the meal. I am certain that my family is not the only one who does this, and the only reason I have heard is
::cue song::
Your parents keep parve plates? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Jew who kept three sets of dishes. However, if the plates are parve then it would be necessary to remove them from the table before serving milshig or fleischig. Otherwise, you get a speck of meat, cheese whatever on the parve plates and they’re no longer parve.
I don’t know why you’re parents don’t just serve the fish with fleischig plates and utensils if you’re going to have a fleischig meal. But, if the plates are not fleischig, then they should be taken out before the rest of the meal is brought in.
I should have qualified it! They also sometimes use paper plates to serve the fish, when theoreticaly, they would not have to change the plates from fish to meat, in the case of disposable plates.
The Talmud recommends not mixing meat and fish, although not for reasons of kashrus. (Zev or Chaim would be better qualified to go into the reason for that one than I, in that they have vastly more Talmudic knowledge.) This means that they don’t get cooked together, or served at the same time. You can eat them on meat plates as long as they’re clean ones, without any meat grease or anything on them, and you can eat one right after the other as long as you wash your mouth out first.
On what exactly ‘meat’ is: kosher mammals are the only things officially considered meat according to the Torah. Poultry got included by Rabbinic decree to prevent people from confusing meat with it and mistakenly eating meat with milk. Fish was considered to be far enough away that there wasn’t a chance of anyone confusing it with meat, and is thus pareve. The blood issue is separate from the meat/pareve issue. Meatness is determined as above. The blood thing mentioned in the cite below is discussing why fish don’t have to be slaughtered and their flesh treated in a particular manner for them to be kosher, unlike, say, a cow. The blood of mammals and poultry isn’t kosher, even if the animal was slaughtered properly, and must be removed to the greatest extent possible via soaking and salting. (I’m told this makes for good chickens, in that they’re pre-brined. Can’t testify to it myself one way or the other, as I haven’t tried non-kosher chickens ;j )
The bloodspot-on-the-egg issue is much less of a big deal than it used to be back in the day; in a lifetime of checking my eggs before using them, I’ve seen one bloodspot. (I didn’t even find it myself - my mother called us all around to see this rare, freakish occurence.) My father, who grew up on an egg farm, commented ‘ah, poor quality control!,’ since eggs are candled before being sold commercially, and bloody eggs shouldn’t make it into the modern food supply.
Because some Jews believe fish and meat shouldn’t be eaten together. (look about 1/3 of the way down under “Fish and Meat”). This site claims that the rabbis who prohibited it did so because they thought it was unhealthy.
I’ve had both (I converted to Judaism a couple of years ago and now keep kosher). They don’t seem that different to me, but we usually cook kosher chicken differently than how my mother or a restaurant would cook regular chicken- the recipes of course contain no dairy, and differ in some other ways not connected to kashrut as well.
Somehow, I don’t think my parents will behaving chicken breast shanwiches with melted cheese anytime soon.
The entire thing reminds me of No-prizes in marvel comics, wherein you wrote in and explained why a goof-up by the writters is not a goof up after all. I won’t be converted back anytime soon, but thanks for the answers all the same.