For those of us who try to follow the Jewish kashrut rules, the prohibition of sea food is unbearable. Why do we suffer? Because they are not scaled fish. We could embark on a molecular engineering project to breed kosher scaled clam and mussels, but it would be faster to produce traslucent ceramic clam shells and fill them with permitted fishy meat. Someone should take up this worthy project.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Kosher Sea Food
For those of us who try to follow the Jewish kashrut rules, the prohibition of sea food is unbearable. Why do we suffer? Because they are not scaled fish. We could embark on a molecular engineering project to breed kosher scaled clam and mussels, but it would be faster to produce traslucent ceramic clam shells and fill them with permitted fishy meat. Someone should take up this worthy project.
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17 comments:
Does this prohibition come from the propensity of certain shellfish to propagate infectious diseases like hepatitis?
Anon.
No. Already the RAMBAM (a famous medieval doctor and Torah sage) established that non-Jews are no less healthy than pious Jews, and their food is healthy. There is no sanitary basis to Jewish religious or ritual rules.
Why would they have arisen then?
Anon.
And why ceramic shells? Would it be unlawful to use real ones? After all, you eat the soft part, not the hard one ...
I am not a mashgiach (kosher expert) but I suspect it is not kosher to put non kosher animal parts in contact with food. The shells might still have some shellfish taste left in them which would get in the food (from a non-kosher POV you might consider this good, but not from a kosher POV). You could use clam shells as ashtrays or wear a coat made of mink fur (minks are not kosher) but not cook in them.
K
As for Anon's question, it's hard to say what the origin of the rules are since they are so old. The later rabbis emphasized that these were decrees from God that had to be obeyed no matter what - a health argument undermines this because, for example, pork no longer carries trichinosis as it once did. If this were purely health based we could change the rules but they are divinely decreed and we can't. Personally I suspect that some of the rules were in fact originally based on health factors. The social factor is also important - if Jews have special dietary rules they cannot mingle with other nations as easily and intermarriage is reduced. If you see social groups as creatures operating in Darwinian mode, those social groups that have rules that promote isolation and high reproduction are most likely to survive in the long run. Groups with other rules (e.g. the Shakers who had no children) disappear or dissolve into the local population.
K
I second K's opinion. Jewish ritual rules seem to promote self-control of the individual and isolation for the group, not health nor enjoyment of life. Even the apparent reason for not mixing milk and meat is nonsense - there is not a chance to eat goat meat cooked in her mother's milk.
Well, I get your point on not using organic shells, but I feel that the big problem is that texture of molluscs ( clams, mussels, scallops, and squid ,octopus ...) is very different from fish, and I can't see how could it be reproduced only from fish, kosher or non-kosher.
Food taboos are very common in many cultures - even Christians, though not religiously restricted, don't usually eat dogs, cats, insects, etc. and in many Christian nations they don't eat horsemeat either. Then there are all the modern, post-religious diets - veganism, etc. There seems to be a human impulse to create rules. Even if the rules are completely arbitrary they create a social structure and social cohesion.
Not eating (for example) chicken cooked in milk is a typical Jewish law which is based upon reductio ad absurdum. You take a simple restriction - all the bible states is "do not cook a calf in it's mother's milk" (which is, I'm guessing, a humane doctrine rather than health based) and you then proceed to stretch it (to "build a fence around the Torah" - that is a buffer zone so that you never stray over the line of breaking a commandment) until it is unrecognizable. 1st, you posit, "how do you know which calf goes with which milk?" - you keep them separate so there is not even a chance that you accidentally boil the calf in the milk of it's own mother. How do you then explain chicken -it is literally impossible to cook a chicken in it's mother's milk. The answer is based on a doctrine of the appearance of impropriety (ma'arat ayin)- chicken LOOKS like veal from a distance so others might see you (a holy rabbi) eating chicken parmesan with cheese and get the idea that veal parmesan is OK too. Not only don't you want to do anything wrong, you don't want to APPEAR to do anything wrong. So no chicken parm.
K
I regularly eat artificial crab meat (what the Japanese call surimi) which is made from kosher fish (pollack) and while it is not a 100% convincing substitute for real seafood, it is somewhat in the ballpark (and much cheaper). Feinschmeckers may scoff at it but I actually enjoy the stuff - it is low in fat and healthful. Mollusks are probably harder to reproduce but food science continues to improve.
K
The "ma'arit ha'ayin" thing can be extended to absurd extrapolations. If we dont eat chicken parmesan because "others" can be confused and think we are eating calf cooked in its mother's milk, then why we cannot do it in private or when I am in the Chinese countryside? Truth is that everybody has its own little gescheftn with God and negotiates kashrut to what is bearable. In may case, mussels with chorizo is a borderline case.
Mussels with pork chorizo is no borderline case - it's so far over the border that you are in the very capital of treyf. It's one thing to say "I'll wait 3 hours after eating fleishig" before I eat dairy instead of 6 - that's a little gescheft. Eating shellfish and chorizo is no little gesheft, it is clearly forbidden in the very words of the torah itself and can't be rationalized away.
Shellfish, BTW, is an interesting case - in my experience many non-Orthodox American Jews continue to avoid pork (especially in recognizable form - e.g. a pork chop- ground up into sausage or as the filling for a chinese dumpling it's less recognizable but have absolutely NO qualms whatsoever about eating shrimp, lobster etc - they regard pork with disgust still but will gobble up shrimp as if it was the most tasty thing on earth and feel no qualms. My parents who were not frum but kept more or less kosher (with the little compromises here and there that J refers to) regarded eating shellfish to be just as disgusting as eating insects, which is not far from the truth since shrimp and lobsters and insects are both arthropods.
K
Insects are a very good source of protein and calories.
In Central Africa, the flying ants used to emerge at a certain time of the year, and to our morbid fascination, the Africans used to pluck them out of the air and eat them with obvious relish.
I don't doubt many a person through the ages has been kept alive by eating insects when times were rough.
It beats cannibalism.
Anon.
The Torah says that there are 4 kosher species of locust which are named (vaguely) - red locusts, yellow locusts, etc.. However the modern rabbis say that we are not sure anymore which species were meant by these names, so today we avoid eating all locusts, just to be safe (in typical Rabbinic logic). The rabbis also say that eating locusts was a hunger food after the locusts had eaten all the crops and not a delicacy.
K
The rebbe of an Eastern European schtettl enters into the Christian butcher's shop and asks for fish sausage. The butcher says: "Rebbe, the sausage is not kosher!" "Then give me from that other kind." "But his excellency, everything here is treffl!"
The rebbe shouts indignant: "What! Have you suddently turned into a sage of the Talmud that you dare to tell me which fish is kosher and which treffl?"
Ancient Syrians boiled kids (baby goats) in their mothers milk as some sort of religious ritual, and this is definitely the origin of the Jewish prohibition on it. Other prohibitions had to be because of what was believed to be healthy and unhealthy at the time--why else would kosher food be called "kosher"? Rabbis' explanations are not very reliable at all 1) because they don't have access to archaeology 2) because their method of explaining is basically creative interpretation, and any interpretation is from Sinai, so there are no realistic bounds on what makes a good explanation and what doesn't
In J's honor I had mussels and chorizo for dinner tonight. Normally I wouldn't eat such treyf items but J convinced me that it's just a little gescheft, a borderline case. :-)
Actually they were delicious - the mussels were plump and tender and not like little dried out rubber bands as they sometimes area. No sand, no closed ones. I'm not sure chorizo is absolutely necessary for this dish - some white wine and garlic is all that the mussels really need but it didn't hurt either. Oddly enough I had never seen (or perhaps noticed) mussels with chorizo on any menu until J mentioned them, and tonite - there they were in all their borderline glory.
K
K
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