Alright-I know that cheeseburgers, and basically beef and cheese are forbidden. But what about poultry and cheese, or milk? Since milk does not come from chickens or turkeys, would a turkey sandwich with a slice of cheese be all right? Or what about steak and eggs?
(And I made sure it’s not Saturday! ;))
Okay, here’s an overveiw:
MEAT
Anything that walks on four legs is biblically considered meat.
Birds are rabinically considered meat. This does not make much of a difference in real life- turkey + cheese is just as bad as beef + cheese.
Fish are considered parve (neutral). You can eat anything with fish (good thing for bagels and lox afficianados).
DAIRY
If it in any way is made of milk, it’s dairy. This includes milk, cheese, yogurts, ice cream, and anything cooked on dairy equipment.
Eggs are parve. Eat 'em with anything. Mind you, they have their own set of laws (fertilized eggs aren’t kosher).
Hope this helps.
I thought mostly it was about eating something in “its mother’s milk.” So I would imagine that wouldn’t be a problem with poultry and dairy.
My unerstanding (perhaps flawed) is that sephardim don’t consider poultry as meat and therefore a turkey and cheese sandwich is fine. One point for careful observers is tha cheese must not be made with rennet from a cow’s (or other animal’s) stomach. There are things called vegetable rennet and, for all I know, synthesized rennet, and that should be fine.
Okay, birds in a nutshell:
In Biblical times poultry was considered parve. But the rabbis of the Talmud were worried that people would get confused and think you could eat all dead animals with milk. So they imposed a ban on birds+dairy. But some places were quicker to adopt the new rules than others. I remember that one particular rabbi said that everyone in his city was very learned, so they could eat chicken and milk without fear. He was one of the last holdouts.
Today, everyone considers poultry to be meat (including Sephardim).
Oft-told Jewish joke:
G-d: And remember Moses, in the laws of keeping Kosher, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk. It is cruel.
Moses: Ohhhhhh! So you are saying we should never eat milk and meat together.
G-d: No, what I’m saying is, never cook a calf in its mother’s milk.
Moses: Oh, Lord forgive my ignorance! What you are really saying is we should wait six hours after eating meat to eat milk so the two are not in our stomachs.
G-d: No, Moses, what I’m saying is, never cook a calf in it’s mother’s milk!!!
Moses: Oh, Lord! Please don’t strike me down for my stupidity! What you mean is we should have a separate set of dishes for milk and a separate set for meat and if we make a mistake we have to bury that dish outside…
G-d: Moses, do whatever you want…
Guinastasia:
And you’re correct, from the standpoint of pure Biblical law. However, the Rabbis have, over the centuries, added “fences” to keep people from violating the Biblical aw by mistake. One of these “fences” is to not eat fowl meat with dairy either, as a piece of fowl meat could be mistaken for a piece of mammal meat and vice versa. Fish, on the other hand, have flesh that is sufficiently different that the Rabbis did not feel that allowing fish with milk would lead one to mistakenly eat meat with milk.
Eggs are fine with either meat or dairy. The only restrictions is that they must come from a Kosher bird, and that there must not be blood in it.
Actually, it’s “don’t seethe [boil] a kid [baby goat] in the milk of its mother.” Exodus 34:26. But, otherwise, yeah, the joke works.
As an aside, how strictly is this usually kept to?
A few weeks ago on Hell’s Kitchen the winning dish for a boys Bar Mitzvah was a cheeseburger the kid really liked. That seemed odd but his mother and father were fine with it.
A cheeseburger at a Bar Mitzvah? That seems really bizarre to me and I’m not even Jewish. I know 100% nonobservant atheist Jews who don’t keep kosher, but prefer not to eat something quite so obvious as a cheeseburger or ham. For them its just a cultural thing, a gesture of respect for or pride in their heritage.
How can anything from Hell’s Kitchen be kosher? 
Ask 3 Jews and you’ll get 4 answers. It varies wildly. I would guess that the majority of Jews in the US don’t keep kosher, except possibly some Passover restrictions.
Even for folks who don’t keep kosher that seems a bit odd to me. But if you aren’t keeping kosher it shouldn’t matter.
There are a number of soy cheeses that were developed specifically for the kosher market.
Of course, a lot of people who celebrate special occasions don’t keep kosher. Or keep partially kosher, or kosher at some times, or kosher when it’s convenient. There is no such thing as “usually” as applied to American Jews.