On the Main Line has posted some very interesting sources about the way in which some Jewish travelers ate kosher food on their journeys. I would add the following from this exhibit (see under “Jews and the Liquor Trade”), By the end of the eighteenth century about 80 percent of rural Jews in Poland-Lithuania were [...]
If you thought that Rabbi Natan Slifkin was at the cutting edge of the intersection of Torah and the human and animal worlds, take a look at The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals: The Evil Monkey Dialogues. (hat tip) Below is one selection from here. Mermaid Long the bane of sailors, the mermaid is half-human, [...]
The O-U won’t give peanut oil a hecksher for Passover anymore although at one point they did, (see here) but these advertisements from Panim el Panim tell a different story.
The following video on kashrut is in Hebrew and worth a look.
In Haaretz there is a review of Haym Soloveitchik’s new book Ha-Yayin Bimei Ha-Beinayim, Soloveitchik’s book is a study of the subject of yayin nesekh (or “idolatrous wine,” that is, wine that has been touched by gentiles and is therefore forbidden to Jews) as it affected the day-to-day lives of medieval German Jewry. In the [...]
The fantastic website Hebrewbooks.org has recently started a blog. They have a post linking to many responsa and sources which discuss the kashrut of turkey. I also remember seeing a book in Yiddish years back about the kashrut of Turkey. Not knowing Yiddish, I didn’t buy it nor remember its title.
From across the pond, (hat tip) England – Kellogg’s has apologised to a Jewish man who ate a cereal bar containing pork gelatine because its wrapper incorrectly stated it was suitable for vegetarians. Oberon Gardner and his family bought the Rice Krispies Squares bars at a supermarket in Colchester, Essex. Labels on 5,000 multipacks carried [...]
For one of the classic treatments of the Jewish dietary laws, see Mary Douglas’s The Abominations of Leviticus. (hat tip)
Some may remember my post about a person complaining that there was no menorah at McDonald’s. Not surprisingly, most of the letters-to-the-editor, which can be found here, thought that it was quite a ridiculous complaint. While not McDonald’s, one thing that my wife and I found interesting in Costa Rica was that there is a [...]
Regarding Prof. Ariel Toaff’s recent book, he is quoted as saying, Although the use of blood is prohibited by Jewish law, Toaff says he found proof of rabbinic permission to use blood, even human blood. “The rabbis permitted it both because the blood was already dried,” and because in Ashkenazi communities it was an accepted [...]
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