I was recently at a Mediterranean restaurant with a few friends. At one point during the meal, one of them questioned whether the lamb & beef shawerma he was eating would be Kosher, since it involved two different types of meats mixed together. I had never heard of such a dietary restriction in Kosher law, but everyone else seemed to agree with my friend. Since there were only Gentiles at the table, though, we couldn’t settle the argument definitively.
So I turn to the SDMB. I know that Kosher law prohibits mixing meat and dairy products, but does it also prohibit different meats being mixed together?
I won’t swear to it, but my answer is no. You can’t mix milk and meat, can’t eat non kosher meat, but I believe those who keep kosher can mix all the kosher meats they want.
No problem whatsoever with mixing different kinds of meat or fowl.
Meat shouldn’t be mixed with fish, but that’s because of some sort of health concern attested to by Jewish tradition, the nature of which is very vague. Still, even that’s not prohibited by Jewish law; the general rule is that one should cleanse one’s palate with wine and bread between fish and meat and it’s fine. No prohibitions on cooking meat and fish in the same pot, either (as with meat and milk).
Lamb, beef, chicken, duck…throw 'em all together, no Rabbi’ll stop ya.
Now that I t hink of it, your friends might be thinking of one of two other prohibitions in Jewish law. One is against interbreeding two different species, even if they are both kosher (e.g., a sheep and a goat). The other is against harnessing animals of different species together for the sake of pulling a plow.
Neither of these prohibitions relates to the meat, though.
Another forbidden mixing, if I recall my Bible correctly, is that of linen and wool in clothing. I believe it is called “sha’atnes”.
One also is forbidden to sow a field with two different kinds of seeds.
I recall reading a book many years ago about the “Hebrew mind” and it referred to the prohibitions against mixing as the desire to place order onto a chaotic world, a projection into the physical world of a concern of the moral world – that of making clear moral boundaries.