Alright… 2 questions, one has probably been asked before, and one I couldn’t find.
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Don’t know. I never thought about it.
I’m not sure I understand your second question. Could you please elaborate?
Zev Steinhardt
Let’s say I give you a cheese burger zev… i cover it in fish oil, so it tastes fishy, but it’s meat.
You eat it… what’s wrong with that? What do you have to do?
What if halfway through you realise it’s meat and continue eating, what’s wrong with that? What’s the punishment.
Well, If you didn’t know - and made a reasonable attempt to find out before hand - then you can’t really be blamed, so long as you stop the moment you realize what you’re eating. If you fail to desist, then you’re in the wrong.
As for punishment, Judaism doesn’t really work that way. You keep kosher because God said so, not because there are consequences. You’re supposed to act out of love, not fear.
(BTW - the Orthodox view may be different; I’m not totally familiar with the issue).
OK someone just asked about is it kosher for a baby to drink mother’s milk; a replied that the question was facetious, and I went on to tell a joke.
So I think that question 1 is again facetious.
Question 2 seems like a legitimate inquiry into the mysteries of Kosherness. I am 1/2 Jewish, but per Rabbinical law I am not really a Jew since my mother is not Jewish. I do not practice the Jewish Religion.
Would it surprise you that far and away most Jews are NOT orthodox?
In fact, many Jews are quite secular. Some are even atheists. It is my own view that the Holocaust is inconsistent with a Supreme Being.
If you really are interested, there are many, many websites dealing with Jews, Jewishness, Rabbinical Law, The Torah, etc. But question 1 is like asking a Catholic if they can kiss someone during lent who’s just eaten meat. It’s sort of ridiculous.
I wouldn’t ask a facetious question here, I’d do it in MPSIMS.
I’m completely serious about the first question. you’re not supposed to mix meat and dairy. If you eat, you’re supposed to wait or rinse the mouth before taking something else. What about kissing someone? It seems that the same rules would be in place. I’m suprised that they haven’t been implemented.
OK alessan, so you do it cause you love god. Is it like doing the dishes cause you love god? Or not cheating on god cause you love god. Or somewhere inbetween?
I’ve read that you also have to wait a certain period of tiem after eating dairy before you can eat meat, and another, longer period of time after eating meat before you can eat dairy. They aren’t supposed to mix in your stomach, I guess.
The way I understand it (from much reading and observation, I must add), the general idea is that the spirit of the law is the law. I.e., if you do your best to uphold the laws of kashrut (kosherness) then everything is just fine.
To answer question 1 more specifically, Orthodox Jews (the ones who really care about this) don’t tend to give big wet kisses to people who don’t share their meal plans. If however for some reason they don’t eat similarly (e.g. husband – less likely wife in this case – had too much meat at work, etc.), then the time between food and kiss would probably be enough to make it all kosher again. But if all else fails, I think the spirit of the law would not necessarily be violated, in this case.
I don’t know about the law of kissing someone who ate meat, but I’m pretty sure the law deals with the issue of preparing food for a child by chewing it in your mouth, and then passing it over to him (which is how they used to make baby food).
Also, I’m sure there is a discussion about the status of mother’s milk (if I remember correctly it has neither milk nor meat status).
oldscratch asks:
They probably have been; I’ll ask a rabbi. (One of the strengths of Judaism is that any question that can be asked probably has been in the last 3,000 years. One of the weaknesses is that someone may not even know where to start looking).
Alessan basically has it; if you did not and reasonably could not have known that a particular item was tamei (or tref in colloquial terms), you’re morally OK (if the Temple is standing, you bring a sacrifice). If halfway through, you say, “Hey, this isn’t a fish sandwich, it’s a cheeseburger; oh well, I’ve eaten half of it, may as well finish it”, you’re in the wrong.
Notice that in following chukim (commandants for which there is no convincing, humanly-comprehensible reason), you don’t have to like them, only to do them (so to speak). Indeed, the man who says, “I’d like a lobster, but it’s not kosher, so I won’t have one” is generally considered to be on a higher moral plane than one who says, “I wouldn’t eat a lobster even if it were kosher”.
<< Is it like doing the dishes cause you love god? Or not cheating on god cause you love god. Or somewhere inbetween? >>
Yes. Keeping kosher (kashrut), like most other Jewish ritual law, is an obligation, part of the covenant of being a holy people. Some Jews therefore keep kosher as a duty, a responsibility, like doing the dishes. Some do it as a joy, a privilege, like being in love. Most (Conservative and Reform) don’t do it at all.
Under traditional Jewish interpretation (Orthodox and Conservative), an inadvertent violation of the obligation of kashrut is a “sin” between the individual and God. [aside] There’s a modern interpretation that it’s not a “sin” unless someone is harmed, and no one is harmed in an accidental dietary error. However, traditional Judaism does not accept that view of “sin” and considers even an inadvertent violation as a failure. [/aside]
We are all human, we all have failures, and the Jewish religion provides for ways of atoning for sins (whether intentional or inadvertent or even unbeknownst). Since the act we’re talking about (accidentally eating milk and meat together) doesn’t involve another individual, but only involves the sinner and God, the way to seek forgiveness is through contrition, and turning (Hebrew: t’shuvah) away from the past bad behaviours towards a better path. In the Temple days, as someone mentioned, seeking forgiveness would have involved bringing an offering to the Temple (basically, a charitable contribution to the Temple priests.) For the last 1930 years, prayer and charitable contributions replace Temple sacrifice.
BTW, if the person who disguised the cheeseburger as a fish sandwich was Jewish, that’s a whole different kind of sin – fraud and deception, with another person involved – and the atonement process would involve seeking forgiveness of the person you had deceived and making restitution for any loss that person suffered by your action.
The JewFAQ has an excellent section on Kashrut. Check it out. Look for the second section, “Why Do We Observe the Laws of Kashrut.”
The main reason for waiting a period of time (gererally 6 hours) after eating meat is because of the chance that some meat may have gotten stuck between the teeth; the time delay will insure that wven if some meat did get stuck, the saliva will have digested it to a point where you don’t have to worry about it any more.
One who eats dairy is advised to clean his mouth out if he plans to eat meat soon, but the requirement is much less strong. Cheese doesn’t get stuck between the teeth the way meat does.
I’ve never seen the specific question of the OP in any of the rabbinic literature, but from what I have written above, it seems reasonable to conclude that Jewish tradition is more concerned about what is inside the mouth, and is willing to presume that lips are generally clean and not worth worrying about.
Not a facetious question at all, in my view.
The thread asking whether mother’s milk is kosher got closed, so I hope people won’t mind if I respond here:
The kosher laws concern animal products. Judaism does not consider people to be animals. Therefore, the laws of kosher do not apply to mother’s milk, and babies may drink it.
Other laws might apply however.
For an adult to drink human milk might fall under the prohibition against doing disgusting things, which is based on Leviticus 11:53, and might apply to adults but not babies.
The question of cannibalism arises occasionally, such as when the Andes plane crash survivors ate the dead passengers. When this question is discussed, the prohibition involved is that of disrespect to the dead, which is then overridden by the command to keep the living alive. But kosher violations never enter the picture.
Actually, if I remember correctly, there are two reasons for the waiting period. One is, as you mentioned, the concern that meat remains in the teeth. The other concern is that meat takes longer to digest, and will be later mixed with meat in the digestive process.
What is the nafka mina (consequence of the disagreement)? Two cases:
a) A person eats meat broth. There is no chance of it getting stuck in his teeth, but it will be digested.
b) A person chews up meat (for a baby, as I posted earlier). It won’t be digested, but it can get stuck in his teeth.
But Shirley the real reason for the rule against mixing milk and meat dishes is not because God sez so but because of the risk of contamination. If you use a utensil on meat and then use it on cheese, bacteria from the meat will contaminate the cheese. Cooking the meat will kill the bacteria in it, but you usually don’t cook milk dishes to the point of sterilization.
The ancients didn’t know about bacteria, and even if they did they had little in the way of food preservation technology. All they knew was that if they mixed meat and milk, they got sick. They may have they concluded that God was trying to tell them not to mix it. Or they may have simply concluded, “Safety tip. Don’t do that.” Then, later generations started believing that this and other rules of common sense developed by the culture were “God’s laws”, having long since forgotten the true reasons for them.
It’s the same deal with sex.
This question may rate its own thread, but here goes…
The whole basis for this being an issue in the first place.
The Bible says, Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
That’s pretty specific. I can understand generalizing from there that you can’t cook milk & meat together in the same pot. But how on earth the rabbis got from that simple Biblical rule to the Wall of Separation of “No milk and meat existing anywhere near each other within hours of each other” and further elaborations like two completely separate sets of pots, pans, & dishes – I just can’t see that. This is way more restrictive than what the Bible says.
The Karaim only follow the Torah and reject the Talmudic elaborations of the Law. Perhaps they don’t have this strict separation of Planet Milk from Planet Meat, and just avoid cooking them together in the same pot. In fact, if you read the Biblical command totally literally, it would be acceptable to seethe a kid in milk from another nanny goat not its mother, not to speak of meat & milk from non-goat animals.
So you may believe. However, that’s not what Orthodox Jews believe. Since the OP was (presumably) addressing Orthodox Jews (who primarily are the only ones who keep kosher anyway), your answer is not really appropriate.
Zev Steinhardt
Without getting into too much detail…
The command you mentioned is stated in the Torah three different times. Since Jews believe that no part of the Torah is superflous or extra, the extra occurences of this command come to teach us something extra. The “extra” in this case is the commandments against having meat and milk together at all.
You must also understand, that Orthodox Jews believe that the oral traditions were given to us together with the written Torah. In fact (and I’ve covered this extensively several times in other threads) by a simple reading of the written Torah, it is obvoius that not all the details are contained therein and the oral tradition is necessary. The oral tradition (which later became codified as the Talmud) carries just as much weight as the written text.
Zev Steinhardt
The Karaim will eat chicken with milk, and some will eat beef in the same meal they eat milk, but not in the same dish. They also don’t use different sets of dishes. They also have stricter rules as for what makes meat Kashrut.
And, Sqweels, like Zev said, if you’re Orthodox, then the real reason for keeping kosher IS because G-d said so, and that’s true, probably, for most Jews who keep kosher. The fact that there are other reasons (I know the Rambam talks about them), doesn’t change that fact.