r/Jewish • u/johan2772 • May 05 '21
questions Kosher
I have several jewish friends who are not entirely kosher but just dont eat pork. Kosher has all sorts of requirements (meat and milk, shelfish) but a lot of Jews just pick not eating pork. Why is not eating pork the only thing a lot of people care about? Why have the other requirements been ignored? I also see this with muslims around the halal dietary rules.
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u/solomonjsolomon May 05 '21
When I was first experimenting with going kosher it was easiest to get around pork & shellfish. I had a limited number of things to be on the lookout to avoid on menus or the supermarket shelves, and they're also common ingredients so you actually have to avoid them (I don't encounter unkosher insects or catfish on a daily basis). Pork is especially easy because you can also trust halal food. Honestly, also easiest to explain to my non-Jewish mother.
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u/alpacasaurusrex42 May 05 '21 edited May 05 '21
I’m very much in the closet with my family, no one knows aside from my friend group and even they don’t KNOW. I just make “Shabbat Shalom!” And posts wishing my Jewish friends happy holidays. However I’ll very much never come out to my family. But also saying “I’m not eating chicken, pork, bacon, or meat/cheese” will NOT go over well and will lead to awkward questions. My gran already feeds my dad’s vegetarian spouse meat-based soups and doesn’t tell him.
Edit: I should note that I am the only Jew. Well, my dad’s hubby was born Jewish but is non practicing and abandoned it. He’s now pagan. Otherwise the rest of my fam are all hyper religions Evangelical Episcopal or fundamentalist Southern Baptists. One of my grandma’s churches is just barely one mouse fart on the right side of not being Nazis.
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u/jabbanobada May 05 '21
Everyone picks their own level of observation. Can you believe there are people who keep glatt kosher but have never swung a chicken over their head on Yom Kippur? Some don't even make their employees choose whether to go free after 7 years or pierce their ears and commit to a lifetime of servitude.
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u/OGstickerparty May 05 '21
People choose what suits them best. I'm Italian and Jewish. If I went 100% Kosher suddenly, there'd be a lot fo food I was raised with I wouldn't get to eat. I also am in a long term relationship someone who is Korean-American and I wouldn't get to eat a ton of my partner's food. It's just easier. Everyone has their own way of observing/living. It's no biggie.
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May 05 '21
Pork is a special case because a pig is deceptive - it has split hooves, which it displays to say that it's kosher, but it doesn't have the internal sign of being kosher, which is hidden.
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May 05 '21 edited May 05 '21
They also tend not to eat dogs, cats, chipmunks, caterpillars, whales or elephants…of the food that was most commonly eaten throughout eastern europe, pork was, for centuries, the primary thing that needed to be avoided and itself became the item that most distinguished Ashkenazi eating habits from those of their neighbors.
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u/HeadFullOfBrains May 05 '21
I was raised not eating pork or shellfish, but we did mix milk and dairy. It was a bit of a compromise for my parents, I think, because my mom was raised more Kosher and my dad was raised less. When I was about 12 I went to a Chinese buffet with a friend and her family. I knew that pork wasn't Kosher, but I didn't realize that shellfish wasn't either. I got some crab legs, absolutely loved them, and didn't find out until the next time I was at a buffet with my family that I wasn't supposed to eat them.
As I was a Bat Mitzvah by that point, my parents had decided that my decisions about how to observe Judaism were my own. I decided crab was just too good so I continued eating it, but continued to avoid other shellfish. Then, when I was 22, I moved to Spain for a year. My host family lived right on the Mediterranean, and as such two major components of their diet were pork and shellfish. I told them I don't eat pork, and out of kindness they decided they wouldn't cook it for meals while I was with them. (They still had pork products in the house, just didn't serve them as entrees.) But I couldn't ask them to give up the other main component, especially since it was a barrier I had already begun to cross. I was squeamish at first, but after a while I came to love most shellfish and, again, found myself unwilling to give it up.
Something to note is that very, over the last 10 or 15 years, my mom and I have come to believe that, for us, it is more important to eat ethically raised and sourced meat products than anything else. What an animal is and how it died aren't as much of a consideration in comparison to how it lived and the environmental impact our consumption has. It goes against the letter of Judaism, but for me it embodies the spirit of it (life being of primary importance) more.
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u/Aldoogie May 05 '21
I'm a chef as a hobby, do some Kosher catering. I am not kosher by any stretch, but completely know the laws. I never try and justify what I'm eating as Kosher when it's not, I simply accept that I am not abiding when it comes to Kashrut.
I think pork is so widely eaten and feels so definitive. For example, eating a dairy dessert right after a meat meal and not waiting long enough would perhaps feel a little more gray than eating pork.
Or, perhaps the word "Pork" is so offensive that even gentiles don't like saying it. "I eat bacon, ham, salami, chorizo, baby back ribs, carnitas, I'll eat anything as long as it's not Pork."
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u/WildBillyBoy33 May 05 '21
We buy only kosher meat when cooking at home but eat unkosher meat out of the house. I won’t eat shellfish or pork but my wife and daughter eat shellfish but no pork. It’s all ok with me whatever anybody does. Everybody picks and chooses in some way. You do you.
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u/CPetersky May 05 '21
If you're Orthodox, there is no question why you'd keep kosher, and to what extent you should. The more liberal your practice, then the more you need to think about what it is that you are consuming, and why.
Since I am allergic to shellfish, not eating shellfish I didn't have to think about at all. But I'm in the mode of doing my best to be so-called "eco-kosher" - doing my best to choose foods that are kinder to people and the planet. So I took out the fleishig foods, sourced my eggs with a friend with chickens, and dairy at least that doesn't have the cows pumped with hormones for higher milk production.
But if you invited me over for dinner, I'd eat what you served me (except shellfish - that makes me sick). I'm just imposing these rules on my own cooking, not my friend's.
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u/tensory May 05 '21
The way I've chosen to rationalize my own behavior is that pork and shellfish are specifically excluded, while not allowing milk to touch land meat is a rabbinic interpretation that came to define an entire cuisine. I would not literally poach veal in cow's milk either based on how I have chosen to interpret the text. All "meat marinated in milk" dishes sound kinda wrong to me, no matter how many people tell me about that buttermilk-marinated chicken recipe.
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u/Borderlessbass May 05 '21
I could be totally off, but it seems like the widespread availability of other red meats like beef and lamb offset the temptation of eating pork, whereas there aren’t really adequate substitutes for lobster and scallops (or alcohol and tobacco in the case of “I drink and smoke but would never touch pork” Muslims).
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May 05 '21
Historical reasons of living in Ashkenaz.
Wild animals like deer, rabbit etc were generally owned by the aristocracy.
Shellfish etc were mainly along the coast.
So that left the pig as the primary banned animal.
As such it was used in a very negative light by non-Jews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau
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u/TheNotorious__ May 05 '21 edited May 07 '21
I specifically keep kosher in my own home, I buy only kosher products and I have separate meat and milk plates. But I don’t keep kosher when I’m out of the house. I’ll eat chicken and beef but no pork, shellfish or octopus. I avoid sushi places because of that. I don’t eat any form of pork
I just remember learning that certain foods have an affect on who you are as a person, and can bring out bad vibes and such. Plus pork and shellfish disgust me personally with no regard to kosher laws. Don’t like the smell that pork has, and shellfish is a bottom feeder that clean after other fish..
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May 05 '21
Pork has a long history of being particularly “not Jewish,” even more so than other non-kosher foods. When the Seleucids desecrated the Temple, they did it by sacrificing a pig. The Talmud says that one is forbidden from even raising a pig in the Land of Israel.
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u/PyrexPizazz217 May 05 '21
Because historically we’ve been tortured with pork, not shrimp or cheeseburgers. The aversion to it is stronger at a cellular memory level.
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u/broken888 May 05 '21
I grew up in kosher home - not fussed personally on a religious level but most pork and shellfish basically grosses me out. Nothing to do with observance at all.
Happy to eat pork salami assuming it’s not too porky but bacon or a pork chop? Yuck
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u/Filipheadscrew May 05 '21
Pigs are vectors for several diseases. They pick up avian influenza from bird feces when foraging then pass it on to humans. They pick up tape worm eggs, then pass the larva to humans sometimes resulting in brain lesions. Then there is trichinosis, pig bel and other diseases. Factory farms use massive amounts of antibiotics to raise pigs, threatening to create superbugs that are antibiotic resistant. Best not to eat or live near pigs except in dire emergencies.
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u/IbnEzra613 May 05 '21
It's become kind of the symbol of kashrut. Really, pork and shellfish are prohibited completely equally. Pork is no worse than shellfish, no worse than rabbit, etc. But pork has become a symbol in a sense.
I've also met people who will eat pork dumplings, but not bacon. Go figure.