What’s Kosher?
Although the word kosher can actually refer to things besides food, when someone refers to “keeping Kosher” they are referencing a way of eating. It means abiding by dietary laws derived from the Torah. The Torah includes a bunch of these laws, and then like virtually everything in Judaism, rabbis expanded on it, giving us the system that people hold by today. I always get asked if something being kosher mean it’s been “blessed by a rabbi.” That is not what it means. There are different parameters of “kashrut” (what’s kosher) depending on the type of food it is. Here’s just a taste of them, no pun intended…
Meat: Keeping kosher does not mean being a vegetarian. It does mean, though, only eating animals with cloven hooves and that chew their cud. This comes straight from the Torah. That’s why we can’t have bacon- pigs don’t meet this requirement. Cows and lamb do, though. Once an animal has the potential to be kosher, it has to be killed in a very specific manner, which was designed to be the most moral and painless way for the animal.
Birds and Fish: In order for a bird to be kosher, it has to be domesticated and can’t be a scavenger or hunter. Domesticated ducks and chickens are kosher for example. For fish, the requirement is that it have fins and scales. Many fish do, like salmon and tuna, but catfish doesn’t. This is also why Jews can’t eat seafood like lobster and crab. They don’t have fins and scales.
Mixing Meat and Milk: The Torah says not to cook a kid in its mother’s milk. This gets expanded on by the rabbis to mean that we cannot eat any meat and milk together (not even if it’s chicken). No cheeseburgers for us! It doesn’t just mean eating dairy and meat in the same sitting, though. After you’ve eaten meat, people wait hours before eating anything with dairy in it. The length of time that you wait depends on your family’s custom, but it ranges from 1 to 6 hours. Because of this, we’re used to baking delicious non-dairy desserts! Margarine is key in our houses.
How do you know if something is kosher?: Beyond these guidelines, there are actually institutions that mark on the wrapper whether something is kosher or not. See this symbol below, with a U inside of an O? It stands for Orthodox Union, and if you see this on a package, it means that something is kosher. We call it a “hechshur.” There are other hechshurs besides the OU, but that’s one of the most common ones. You would find it on any kind of food from ice cream to chips to juice, you name it.
