Food Restriction Final

Running head: CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

Food Restrictions among the Jewish People

Name

Institution

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

Introduction

Culture is the way of life of individuals of a particular community or who share a

common thing. Culturally, some set rules and regulations must be followed and be passed from

one generation to the next one (Freidenreich, 2011). The paper will extensively discuss food

restriction among the Jewish culture. In the Jewish culture, there is a body of Jewish laws called

the Kashrut that deals with foods that can be eaten and the ones that cannot be eaten. Besides, the

above body of rules is also responsible for coming up with the descriptions of how the permitted

foods are to be prepared. In a simple way, the word kashrut is a Hebrew word that means fit,

correct or proper. Therefore foods that are restricted from eating by the Jewish culture are

referred to as treif , which means torn (Freidenreich, 2011).

Interestingly, kosher is not a style of preparing a food, but rather any kind of food that is

prepared according to the requirements of the Jewish culture, or rather according to the laws in

kashrut, can be referred to as kosher. Additionally, some of the Jewish traditional foods like

bagels, knishes, matzah ball soup and blintzes can also be referred to as treif if the preparation

procedure is not in line with the one set in the Jewish law (Rosenblum, 2012).

Why must Jews have these food restrictions?

Most of the modern Jews are thinking that the laws set to guide what Jews are to eat and

how they are to be prepared is much retrogressive and should thus be trashed. The self-

proclaimed progressive Jewish citizens thinks that modern methods of eating and food

preparations should be embraced. Undoubtedly, some of the Jewish dietary laws have a lot of

health benefits to those who strictly follow them. For instance, the laws that regards the kosher

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

slaughter are so sanitary that the butchers and slaughter houses of koshers are often exempted

from the regulations set by USDA. Thus, it can be concluded that though some modern people

my render the Jewish traditional dietary policies obsolete, there are a lot of health benefits

attached to it (Rosenblum, 2012).

Sparingly, health and sanitation is not the key reason for keeping the Jewish dietary laws

and in fact many of the kashrut laws have no direct connection to the health policies. To the best

of our modern scientific knowledge, there no way the meat of a cow or goat can be healthier than

the meat of a rabbit or camel. The above is because camel meat and rabbit meat, according to

Jewish dietary standards are regarded as unclean. Additionally, some of the health benefits that

could be derived from kashrut rules were not rendered obsolete by the introduction of the

modern refrigerators. For example, there are valid evidences that eating of meat and dairy

products interfere with digestive process, and no modern law of food preparation makes meat-

eating fit for the digestive system (Trepp, 2000).

The short answer why the Jews keep the above dietary reforms is because they are stated

in the Torah. Torah does not give the reasons why some kinds of foods are not supposed to be

eaten, or why some foods must just be prepared in a particular way, and for a Jew who strictly

believe in the Torah, no need to question anything. Jews show their true belief to the rules of

God, written in Torah, and even if they do not know the reason why some rules were set, they

can never question them (Trepp, 2000).

In the book “To be a Jew” written by Rabbi Hayim Donin, he suggests that the Jewish

dietary rules are set as a call for holiness. The ability to distinguish between right and wrong,

error and accurate, good and evil, defiled and pure, the profane and secret, is a very important

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

thing in Judaism. Therefore, for a Jew to be seen as holly there must be strict adherence to all the

set rules as long as they are given for the glory of the supreme God. It can be argued that

imposing rules on what can be eaten and what cannot be eaten is a way of instilling self-control

among the people. Above all, it was elevating a simple act of eating into a religious ritual as the

Jewish dinner table is always compared to the temple altar of God (Trepp, 2000).

The fundamental rules of Kashrut

Although the Kashrut rules may be intensive and extensive, the laws are all derived from a

few simple, straightforward rules (Trepp, 2000):

1. Some of the animals may not be eaten at all. The above restrictions are including organs,

flesh, eggs, and milk of forbidden animals.

2. All the blood must be removed form meat or are boiled out of meat before it is eaten.

3. Of all the animals that are permitted to be eaten by Jews as per the Jewish dietary rules,

they must be killed as per the Jewish Law.

4. Some parts of the animals are not permitted to be eaten at all.

5. The meat form birds and mammals cannot be eaten with dairy. However, fish, vegetables,

eggs and grains can be eaten with either meat or dairy. In addition, according to some

views fish may not be eaten with meat at the same time.

6. Utensils that have been used in serving meat may not be used in serving dairy and the

reverse is true. Additionally, the utensils that have gone in contact with none kosher

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

foods cannot be used in serving kosher foods. The above applies only when the contact

occurred when the food was still hot.

7. The grape products that are made by non-Jews are not to be eaten.

Details of the food restrictions

The Animals that cannot be eaten as per the Jewish laws

The Torah explains that beast of the earth that has cloven hooves and chews cuds can be

eaten. Thus, any land animal that lacks the above qualities are forbidden and should not be eaten.

The same Torah explains that the rock badger, camel, the hare and pigs are not kosher as they

lack cloven hooves and do not chew cud. The foods that are regarded as kosher are cattle, sheep,

goats and deer.

For the animals that live in water, Torah permits eating of the only the ones that have fins

and scales. Therefore, the shellfish such as oysters, lobsters, shrimp, crabs and clams are all

forbidden as they lack scales or fins. The fish that are permitted includes carp, tuna, herring and

salmon. However, for birds there are no clear reasons, in Torah, why the scavenger and prey

birds are not permitted to be eaten by the Jews. The other birds are permitted to be eaten such

birds include turkeys, geese, ducks and chicken. Sparingly, of the winged insects some of them

are permitted to be eaten, however the teachers of the law have not known the actual winged

insects that are permitted to be eaten and thus all the winged insects are forbidden. In the last part

of the list, all the rodents, amphibians, reptiles and insects are hence forbidden by the Jewish

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

dietary policies and hence not anything derived from the above unclean animals can be eaten

(Rosenblum, 2012).

There is also restriction on the mammals and birds that are to be eaten by the Jews. The

above permitted meat products must only be slaughtered in accordance to the Jewish law. The

Torah rules bars eating of any animal that dies naturally or killed by other animals. Additionally,

the animal to be slaughtered must not be sick, or have any flaw at the point of slaughter.

However, the above restrictions only applies to flocks and herd but not fish (Rosenblum, 2012).

The ritual of slaughtering the animal is referred to as shechitah , and the person the

performs the slaughtering of the animals is called a schochet, which means to kill or destroy. The

method is less painful, causes the unconsciousness within the two seconds, and is mostly referred

to as the most human method of slaughtering an animal. The advantage of the above rapid

slaughtering is that it drains the blood of the animal and easily render it kashrut (Rosenblum,

2012).

Is keeping the Jewish dietary Laws Difficult?

Keeping the kosher laws is not difficult, but the difficult part is that the rest of the word

do not keep the above rules. The basic Torah rules are very simple and understandable. If you

buy meat from kosher slaughter houses, and use the kosher certified utensils the only thing that

remains is separating the dairy and meat (Rosenblum, 2012). Very simple rules!

The only instant where kosher rules may be very difficult to keep is when you eat from

non-kosher restaurant or eat in a home that do not keep the kosher rules. In the above two cases,

your oblivion of the ingredients used in the food preparations and lack of knowledge on the

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

procedure followed in the preparation of food makes it so difficult to keep kosher rules.

Interestingly, some of the commentators argue that this is one way through which the Jewish

culture makes its so difficult for them to interact with people of other cultures, that is the non

belivers (Rosenblum, 2012).

Conclusion

The Jews culture has many food restrictions and the above may be so difficult to be kept

by the non-Jews. However, to all the Jews the rules are made simple by coming up with the

Kashrut certification. Approximately about three quarters of the foods packed in the Canada and

the United States of America have some kinds of kosher certification, and a good number of

main brands have Orthodox certification. The certification makes it so easy to eat and work

within the maxims of the rules set in the Torah (Rosenblum, 2012).

CULTURAL FOOD RESTRICTIONS

References

Freidenreich, D. M. (2011). “How Nice is This Bread!”Intersections of Talmudic

Scholasticism and Foreign Food Restrictions. Foreigners and Their

FoodConstructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law, 65-84.

Grumett, D. (n.d.). Christian Food Restrictions. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Food Issues.

Rosenblum, J. D. (2012). Dietary restrictions, Jewish and Christian. The Encyclopedia of

Ancient History.

Trepp, L. (2000). Judaism: Development and life. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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