What I was taught was that the laws of kashrut ask us to be thoughtful about eating. We are not animals or scrabbling for survival, but we can be deliberate and thoughtful about how we choose to eat. In effect, we turn the act of eating for survival into a spiritual act. The rules maybe arbitrary, IMHO, but the net effect is to make the automatic, deliberate.
Just curious: If you’re non-religious and see no reason to keep kosher, what reason do you have to fast?
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That’s a good question. I am an atheist and yet I will fast tomorrow. Well, sort of. We will have dinner at 6 or 6:30 tonight, then nothing till we break the fast usually in mid-afternoon. Obviously a religious Jew would not consider this fasting. So why? Partly to show (myself, if no one else) that I can, partly out of long tradition. I honestly don’t know. My parents did the same and I don’t think they had any religious belief either.
Now as the OP, I grew up in household that had ham regularly. Never uncured pork, though. My mother found the idea revolting for some reason. My wife has never cooked pork either, although we have occasionally eaten it out. We freely eat all kinds of shellfish too. Oh, and bacon, yum.
It should be noted that about 50% of all American Jews identify as Reform, and the Reform movement had as one of its guiding principles from its start in the 19th century that the dietary laws were obsolete and did not have to be observed.
I grew up in a religious but Reform Jewish household, and we did not have any dietary restrictions. We did observe the fast on Yom Kippur, which is a completely separate religious observance that is part of Reform tradition.
I can get behind that concept, but the way I would choose to get behind it, if I did at all, would be to turn vegetarian. I just don’t understand why eating pork is worse than eating, say, beef. (Although I can respect the ideas of kosher animal slaughter that it should be as painless as possible for the animal, etc.)
I am also non religious to the point of atheism and I usually fast too. Part of it is cultural, I still consider myself Jewish and I like to reconnect with that heratige at the High Holiday times. But with Yom Kippur specifically, to me the point of the holiday is self improvement. It’s not about asking God for forgiveness, it’s about setting some time aside to realize that we all have done some things over the course of a year that we need to atone for and to reflect on how we can be better people going forward in the next year. You deny yourself a bit to remind yourself what it’s like to not have and to help focus your self reflection, like kombatminipig said, it puts things in perspective. I think everyone should do it if only for that reason. I think that periodic intentional self denial, real denial, is healthy.
I usually break the fast with a bacon cheeseburger.
I grew up non-Jewish, so I was not raised to keep kosher. I was, however, raised to think it’s rude to tell someone how disgusting you find something they’re eating to be. And, of course, you never ever would say something like that to your host about something s/he cooked, unless it might actually be a health hazard (undercooked poultry, bad shellfish, something you’re allergic to, something like that).
I think Eva’s aunt was being just plain rude. Judaism says that acting like that is bad, but unfortunately those rules are not as widely observed as the ones that say not to eat pork.
If she kept kosher the way we do, she might well not want pork in her fridge. However, a hissy fit is generally uncalled for.
I should probably clarify that this particular aunt has all sorts of weird ideas about food. The last trip down there was particularly nerve-wracking.
I don’t know about “white steak”.
Came in to add that while working on a contract in Saudi Arabia, some SA friends from work had me over to a family meal a couple of times and we had “swedish meat” – ham.
I was taught growing up (and I don’t know if this is Talmud or just my religious school teacher’s interpretation of things, so take this with some salt) that God would prefer that we were all vegetarian, but recognized that we have a desire to eat meat and that forcing vegetarianism on humanity was too much, so he gave us kashrut instead so we would at least think about our food.
IIRC All humans were vegetarians before the flood. After, G-d gave Noah and his descendants the right to kill for meat. Also, after the messiah comes, humanity will revert to vegetarianism.
This is true, but AFAIK Reform Jews are still strongly urged to keep kosher. Whether they actually do or not is up to them, I guess. I certainly don’t, though I probably should.
Has your aunt ever heard the term “chillul hashem?” If not, she needs to look it up.
Thanks for the thought, but trust me, there is no reasoning with her. This is the same aunt who swears that I should smoke pot because it will help my asthma. Secondhand tobacco smoke is my second-worst asthma trigger…right after secondhand pot smoke.
Among my Jewish aquaintances I know a few who don’t follow any of the kosher rules yet still don’t eat pork.
They say something close to “We never ate it when I was a kid and it just doesn’t seem like food to me. Probably the same way you feel about eating horsemeat or goat. I have no religious objections, just habit / preference objections.”
Which kinda makes sense.
Something I’ve wondered vaguely about – that no mixing meat and dairy rule, does that apply to all meats, or only mammalian ones?
Yes, I realize this is Saturday. But if I wait to post it tomorrow, I’ll forget about it again, so I’ll ask today and there’s absolutely no ‘need answer fast’ about it. 
I definitely know a Jew who loves ham and cheese on challah. I think most Reform and secular Jews eat pork, though I know a few Reform Jews who don’t.
Fish are not considered “meat”. They are “parve”, which means they can be combined with either dairy or meat. Poultry are considered meat, however.
Huh. Thanks for the answer.
Okay, the rules are what they are, obviously, but the chicken part seems illogical to me. I mean, if the intent of the ‘don’t boil the child in its mother’s milk thing’ is along the lines of not adding insult to injury, then chickens/dairy should be okay.
But then, by the same thinking, maybe you shouldn’t combine eggs and chicken flesh in the same dish…
Most Jewish laws are based on centuries of interpretation of the Torah. So the phrase about cooking a calf in it’s mother’s milk is the biblical reference, the Talmud records the collective wisdom of the Rabbi’s from about 1000 years ago, pondering how we take these ideas into guidelines for everyday life. Some of the ideas for kosher come from Noah’s ark story, in which G-d divided up animals into clean and unclean (how many Noah took on the ark depended on which it was), plus other ideas. So, the bottom line is that like many documents that take a philosophical ideal (the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, eg) and try to convert into day-to-day guidelines it gets messy and sometimes self-contradictory.
If you are apt to keep kosher, you are probably not apt to ponder whether or not it makes sense, you just kinda do it.
