Kosher Food Laws Quotes

Only two questions, however, need concern the civilized creature. Why is traditional kosher wine so second-rate (it is often boiled); and, if Muslims and Jews are the only people whose laws make them (almost) each other’s ideal dinner guests, why can’t they get along?

A powerful example of this is seen in the first war of Indian independence, also known as the Sepoy Mutiny, of 1857. Indian soldiers—sepoys—serving in the British East India Company’s army rebelled when it became known that the bullets they were issued were greased in either tallow, derived from cows, or lard, from pigs—major offenses to the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, respectively. Mind you, this was not the British colonial overlords doing something offensive to the core cultural values of either group—for example, declaring Allah a false prophet or banning polytheistic worship. Virtually every culture on earth has food prohibitions, often pretty arbitrary ones meant to merely signal core values (kosher laws for Orthodox Jews, for example, revolve around zoological arcana about whether a species has a cloven hoof) but that eventually gain a huge power. Before it was over, the Sepoy Mutiny killed more than 100,000 Indians.

Families would name their children religious names such as Jesus, Mary Magdalene, etc. to keep the authorities off their backs, much the same way the Crypto-Jews of Spain and Portugal put swine in their food when it was against their kosher laws.

Our hair is as much as 14 percent L-cysteine, an amino acid commonly used to make meat flavorings and to elasticize dough in commercial baking. How commonly? Enough to merit debate among scholars of Jewish dietary law, or kashrut. “Human hair, while not particularly appetizing, is Kosher,” states Rabbi Zushe Blech, the author of Kosher Food Production, on Kashrut.com “There is no ‘guck’ factor,” Blech maintained, in an e-mail. Dissolving hair in hydrochloric acid, which creates the L-cysteine, renders it unrecognizable and sterile.

We usually define members of religions by using a kind of checklist. For instance, one could say that if someone believes in the Trinity and incarnation, she is a member of the religion Christianity, but if she doesn’t, she isn’t a proper member of that religion. One could say, conversely, that if someone does not believe in the Trinity and incarnation, then he is a member of the religion Judaism, but if he does believe in those things, he isn’t. One could also say that if someone keeps the Sabbath on Saturday, eats only kosher food, and circumcises her sons, she is a member of the Jewish religion, but if she doesn’t, she is not a member of the Jewish religion. Or, conversely again, if some group believes that everyone should keep the Sabbath, eat only kosher food, and circumcise sons, they are not Christians, but if they believe that these practices have been superseded, then they are Christians. This is, as I have said, our usual way of looking at such matters. However, this manner of categorizing people’s religions runs into difficulties. First, someone has to be making the checklists. Who decides what specific beliefs disqualify a person from being a Jew? Throughout history these decisions have been made by certain groups of people or individuals and are then imposed on other people (who may, however, refuse—unless the deciders have an army). It’s a little bit like those “race” checklists on the census forms. Some of us simply refuse to check a box that defines us as Caucasian or Hispanic or African American because we don’t identify that way, and only laws, and courts, or an army could force us to if they chose to. Of course, it will be asserted that the decisions about Jews and Christians (not Americans) were made by God and revealed in this Scripture or that, by this prophet or that, but this is a matter of faith, not of scholarship. Neither faith nor theology should play a role in the attempt to describe what was, as opposed to what ought to have been (according to this religious authority or another).

The exhortation in Galatians 5:1 to “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” concerns liberty of conscience, and not merely liberty to eat non-kosher foods or wear clothing woven from mixed fibers. Jesus did not shed his blood just to make it acceptable for a Christian to eat shrimp and bacon—to be freed from laws that we have labeled ceremonial. Paul is writing about true liberty of conscience that enables Christians to come boldly to the throne of grace—a privilege an Old Covenant believer did not have as long as the veil stood in place. It is a liberty that we must protect against all infringements.