On H-Judaic there is a discussion about Kosher and Halal meat. The following comment by Yona Sabar was interesting. The word kasher/kosher is not “universal”. Among the Neo-Aramaic speaking Jews of northern Iraq, the Arabic word, Halal with an Aramaic suffix, Halala, was used for “kasher”;and Harama for “unkasher”. Very “Kasher” meat was Halala ‘ikh [...]
My wife recently saw an episode of the HGTV program Property Brothers that featured a couple and their kosher kitchen. The religious couple was having their kitchen remodeled, and the show explained all of the ins and outs of a kosher kitchen. She said that it was a very well done program, and that they [...]
I just came across this interesting responsum from Sefer She’eilat Ḥacham Kanah Avraham from Abraham ben Daniel of Aptashni (18th c. Poland). (here) Question: A ritual slaughterer bought a sword from an executioner who had used it to execute people, and he gave it to a blacksmith to make it into a knife for ritual [...]
Do you remember the copepods, those 1-2 mm long crustaceans that are treifing up NYC water? The above picture is an award-winning picture by Dr. Jan Michels of a copepod. Read all about the photo here. If you were wondering, it is usually transluscent and this is not its natural color.
The kashrut of gelatin from animal sources has been a very talked about issue for over a hundred years. Summaries of these discussions can be found , here, and here. Not to make an already controversial issue (for some) more complicated, what do you think about gelatin derived from human DNA. Green Prophet writes the [...]
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 [...]
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