Kosher Laws and Identity

Adam Mintz [00:01:23]: Well, that’s a big question. And we spent part of the holiday in Israel, and in Israel, of course, since the country is split between Ashkenazim, Mizrachi Jews, so a majority of the country is eating rice. And a lot of the restaurants have kitniyot, and a lot of the ice cream stores are kitniyot. So therefore, it’s everywhere. This question is everywhere in Israel. So we also dealt with this question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:01:48]: I’m glad you brought that up because I wanted to work into this segment a story that occurred to me maybe 10 years ago. I was in Israel, and as you know, the favorite pastime during Chol Hamoed, the intermediate days of Passover in Israel, is to go for a hike. So we had a great scholar leading us on a hike. We rented a bus and there was a daughter of a great rabbi who you and I both know, and we stopped at a snack place and

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:19]: I am looking at the packages of potato chips to see if I could eat these potato chips, me and my kids, as exactly the point that you raised because so many times in Israel it says kosher lePesach-leshomrei kitniyot. And this daughter of a rabbi absolutely cracked up laughing at me. And she goes, you don’t understand. We made aliyah to Israel. And once you’re in Israel and your kids go to the local school and they have playdates and all that, it’s game over. This is

Geoffrey Stern [00:02:49]: one homogeneous society. And she just couldn’t get over the fact that I was looking at this, the detailed print, to see whether we could eat it. So you’re absolutely right, and we are going to end up today talking exactly about that situation in Israel. But before we go there, let’s get back to the Parsha. We are in Leviticus 11, and it says, speak to the Israelite people thus. These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals. The

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:20]: word it uses for creatures is hachayah. And Rashi picks up on that immediately because it doesn’t use the word behemot. And chayah comes from the word life. And he says that this focus on diet is basically a great advocacy for the Jewish and the Israelite love of life and improving one’s life, and that we, in a sense, are separated from other

Geoffrey Stern [00:03:51]: nations, other cultures, by separating ourselves from what is impure. So he really, if we’re going to talk about diet and how it affects the Jewish kind of look at life, he picks up on it right away. And then the verses go on to start saying that an animal, a mammal, has to have split hooves to chew cud twice. We all know that. And then I was a little surprised that

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:21]: the word it used was not kasher, velo kasher, kosher and not kosher. But it kept on using the words of purity, that these animals that are not edible are tameh, unclean. Usually, we would see a word like that which would have to do with the priests and maybe that they couldn’t participate in the services, they would have to go dunk themselves in the mikvah, wait a prescribed amount of time. And then

Geoffrey Stern [00:04:52]: if that wasn’t enough, in verse eight, it says, you shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses. They are impure for you. So I said, I can’t believe I. I’ve never noticed this before. But really, they’re talking about the laws that you and I would normally associate with kashrut, which, first of all, has to do with the whole Jewish people. And they’re

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:23]: using the technical terms of tumah, and not only what you can eat, but also what you can touch. Rashi says he picks up on mib’saram, of their flesh. With respect to their flesh, one is placed under a prohibition to eat, but not in respect to the bones, sinews, horns, and claws. So those of you who were afraid that you wouldn’t be able to play football anymore because a football is made of pigskin, or you

Geoffrey Stern [00:05:53]: tennis aficionados that have your racket strung with catgut. Rest assured, Rashi is to the rescue. We can still touch these things, but it’s only their flesh. But what I’m getting at, Rabbi, is we’re already getting into the minutiae of what you can eat, when you can eat it, who you can touch. I was struck by this use of impure tameh, that’s for sure.

Adam Mintz [00:06:20]: You know, part of it has to do with the fact that in the time of the temple, everything was talked about in terms of being pure and impure. It wasn’t just what you could eat, but if you couldn’t eat it, then you couldn’t deal with it because it was considered to be impure. But you’re 100% right. There seems to be something beyond eating and not eating. It’s something that we don’t deal with. You know, it’s related to the fact that in Israel, there’s a question whether you’re allowed to, you know, to have pigs, to own pigs, because maybe pigs are tameh. It’s not just that you can’t eat them, but you can’t be involved with pigs. Right? You shouldn’t own them in Israel.

Geoffrey Stern [00:07:00]: But again, we’re walking a fine line. The next Rashi talks about not touching, and he is struggling with, are these rules for the Kohanim only, or are they rules for all of Israel? And, of course, following the rabbinic sources that he’s aware of, he says, you know, when all of the Jews come on a pilgrimage festival, like we would have done on Passover just now, they all have to be in a sense of purity, so everybody can touch at that point. But what I’m trying to get at is, as we always say in Madlik, it’s never what it appears to be, and it’s never as simple as one might think. And already we’re starting to see that there are nuances here of what you can eat, what you can’t, which part of the animal can you touch. It becomes a kind of fascinating. Then it gets to sea animals, fish in particular. And of course, there it has the famous scales and fins. Here it doesn’t say Tumat that it’s impure. Here it says Sheketz Heim Lachem, that they are detestable to you. The great academic Milgram is bothered by this, and he goes, maybe because fish are in the sea and so much of the purety laws have to do with going to the mikvah and dunking in the sea. It couldn’t use the word tameh and lo tameh, but it used detestable. I’m really not buying his answer, but I am loving his question because again, we’re trying to figure out what categories things go in. And you can’t say the word sheketz, Rabbi, without bringing in. It’s like a miskite. It’s really a visceral reaction. Those things are swarming stuff. They’re disgusting. Who would want to eat them? So it also is more than necessarily just ritual. It’s also a question of habit and comfort level. What thinks you?

Adam Mintz [00:09:06]: Yeah, there’s no question that that’s right. That’s interesting about Milgram.

You say you don’t buy his answer, but his question is definitely right on the mark. I mean, you have to be able to answer his question. Whatever answer you give, you have to be able to answer his question.

Geoffrey Stern [00:09:18]: Yes, yes. So here too, he says from their flesh, one, however, is prohibited in respect to fins and bones. But you’re not prohibited from fins and bones. You can’t just eat their flesh. So again, all sorts of different bifurcations. I looked up in the OU, and the OU asks a question: Can you eat the bones of non-kosher animals? You know, there used to be, when we were growing up, Rabbi, there was a whole question about gelatin. There are issues of whether it is mosif ta’am, whether it adds to the taste or not. But in any case, in this source sheet, you will see that, number one, those steak knives that you have that have little bone on the side of them, you can continue using them. They can be used.

And again, what I’m trying to get at, because I want to get to the kitniyot as soon as we can. What I want to get to is it doesn’t always as simple as it seems. There are other issues that relate to these dietary standards that always come up. And then as we get to the end of the chapter, it gets into the reasoning behind it. And in Leviticus 11:41, it says all the things that swarm upon the earth are an abomination. They shall not be eaten. So it’s using this word, sheketz, you shall not be eaten among all the things that swarm. You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves with anything that swarms. 

And then in 44, it says, for I, God, am your God. You shall sanctify yourselves and be holy. This is like, that’s the bumper sticker: You should be holy because I am holy. You shall not be.

Adam Mintz [00:11:13]: That’s not our topic, but that’s a very… I mean, that appears all over in the Torah. It’s hard to know what that means. Why should we be holy? Because God is holy. I know that we should be kind because God is kind. But what does that mean? We should be holy like God is holy? Anyway, just pointing out that’s something for a future class.

Geoffrey Stern [00:11:32]: It is the one connection, I think, that the rabbis would say, because we started with the Rashi that says this is to divide you. They would say “kedoshim tihiyu perushim tihiyu,” that being holy is to be separate, to separate something, to segregate it. And I think that aspect of it does, kind of, part of the dietary laws, there’s no question about it, is to separate you from others, other communities possibly, but also for another way of life. So that’s definitely there.

And then it says, you shall not make yourselves impure through any swarming thing that moves upon the earth. For I, God, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, you shall be holy, for I am holy. These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, all creatures that swarm on earth, for distinguishing between the impure and the pure, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that shall not be eaten. So there are two things that are distinct here. One, I made reference before, it’s about that havdalah. It talks about “l’havdil bein hatamei u’bein hatahor.” And I think that’s where there would be a sense of holiness.

And then the other thing is, and Rashi notes this, it uses a different verb for coming out of Egypt instead of what it would normally say. Rashi points out here, it says, I am the one who brought you out. Again, there’s an academic scholar (Everett Fox) who says maybe he’s mimicking the word of chewing one’s cud (ma’aleh gera) where one brings up. That’s fantastic.

Adam Mintz [00:13:33]: Somebody says that? That’s great.

Geoffrey Stern [00:13:35]: I don’t like that too much. But again, I give them credit for picking out the verb choice. What Rashi says again is, this is a different type of yitziat Mitzrayim. This is elevating one’s lifestyle. And that’s ultimately what the dietary laws were supposed to do, elevate us above the people of Egypt. So again, a recurring theme here is using one’s dietary restrictions to separate one and/or a community from other communities.

Adam Mintz [00:14:09]: Really good. I mean, okay. I mean, so let me just review this for a second. It’s interesting that the laws of kosher, the laws of kosher animals have all these different elements to it. They have the idea of holiness: You shall be holy. It has the idea of tamei, that these things are considered the opposite of holy, which is tamei. And it goes back to the land of Egypt, the idea of being separate. That’s what you said. What does it mean to be holy? To be holy means to be separate. The fact that God took us out of Egypt, we just finished the holiday of Pesach. The fact that God took us out of Egypt means we’re separate, we’re different, we’re not like everybody else. That’s why God took us out of Egypt. And the first thing he did was he gave us laws. Because leaving Egypt isn’t enough. If you just take us out of Egypt and we’re the same as the Egyptians, that’s not really very interesting. But the fact that we have laws, that’s “Hama’ale,” right? He elevated us because he gave us the law that made us holy because God himself is holy.

Geoffrey Stern [00:15:10]: And it’s a fascinating way to look at dietary laws. And I would say, and this is an aside, that when I was made fun of for looking at the fine print on the side of that package, you could make a case that for 2000 years the Jewish people have been doing something that nowadays is very trendy. It’s trendy now to say: Is this lactose available for lactose intolerant people? Was this made in a factory where they also do peanuts? Is it organic? But we Jews have been understanding the importance of diet for a long, long time. And the world is kind of catching up to us. You know, the old thing of you are what you eat, that is something that is part and parcel of this.

I think the other thing that we have to recognize is what’s missing is that those who would argue that the kosher laws have to do with being healthier. I think what we’ve come up against is there’s a sense of purity, there’s a sense of distinction, there’s even a sense of this disgust. This is ours. We eat these kinds of things. We don’t eat grasshoppers or we don’t eat frog’s legs. You’re in France today, so I think that it’s very cultural, it’s very social. And yes, it’s ritual. That spiritual level to it is the dietary. And I think we owe the ancient Israelites great credit for focusing so much on that. And as we’re going to talk about now, the tradition did not stop in the desert of the Israelites. Laws of diet are with us even till today.

And so what I’d like to do is to kind of segue into this question that I was asked over and over again for Passover, which is, what is this deal that Eastern European Jews don’t eat kitniyot, legumes, they don’t eat rice, they don’t eat corn, they don’t have hummus, whereas Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews do. And I took most of the material from the responsa, a Rabbi, that was written by the Conservative movement about ten years ago where they decided — drumroll please — to permit Jews to have kitniyot. And my first comment was, don’t they have anything better to work on? Like, what about a two-day Yom Tov now?

Adam Mintz [00:17:45]: What do you mean? Now that you just spent the week of Pesach, you understand how important kitniyot is?

Geoffrey Stern [00:17:50]: It is. And, you know, I think it’s kind of like saying you’re permitted to have chicken instead of turkey on Thanksgiving. That’s not going to affect. It doesn’t feel right to me. We’re used to not having rice on the table. It has to be a little difficult, Rabbi. It can’t be too easy, right?

Adam Mintz [00:18:06]: Well, and say it even better than that. It’s part of the tradition. Our parents never had rice on the table and our grandparents never had rice on the table.

So we maintain that tradition. It seems too easy—not so much too easy to allow rice, but too easy just to say, okay, you know, it’s a different world, we’ll just change the customs. If we do that, there’ll be nothing left unless there’s a compelling reason.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:24]: So now we’re going to look a little bit at the history and some of the back and forth. It all starts with the Talmud, the Mishnah in Pesachim, and then the Talmud that comes after it. The key thing, Rabbi, is that what determines what you can’t eat is the flip side of what you must eat. So if there is a mitzvah to eat matzah on Passover, the thing that you’re not allowed to eat has to be able to be used for matzah.

Geoffrey Stern [00:18:54]: And what the rabbis in the Jerusalem Talmud say is that if you don’t have to take challah from it, if you don’t have to separate that piece of bread when you make it, then not only can you not use it for the seder or for the mitzvah of eating matzah, it can’t become chametz. It can become sour. They say, you know, if you leave your corn standing or if you leave your rice standing, over time, maybe it’ll become spoiled. It can never really rise. And that’s their point.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:25]: And it seems to be a pretty dry case that rice, for instance, there should be nothing that is not permitted for it. The Rambam in Mishna Torah says the prohibition against chametz applies only to the five species of grain. However, kitniyot, rice, millet, beans, lentils, and the like do not become leavened, even if it needs rice flour or the like, with boiling water and covers it with fabric until it rises like dough. That is not becoming leavened. It’s permitted to be eaten.

Geoffrey Stern [00:19:56]: And I always thought, you know, it was like a Sephardic thing, maybe because Mizrahim liked their rice so much. But it seems to be a pretty straightforward case. I think, in this instance, Rabbi, besides what you said a second ago about it’s what we’re used to. You can’t find a good reason to prohibit it. We have Talmudic sages. Jacob bar Asher writes, there are those who prohibit eating rice and all sorts of kitniyot in a cooked dish because varieties of wheat mix into them. This is an excessive stricture, and it’s not customary to do so.

Geoffrey Stern [00:20:58]: So I put this into the category of was it produced in a factory where they also produce peanuts? So they’re kind of like pulling threads here to try to figure out why you can’t have them. There were others who said, and this is kind of interesting, he says, concerning kitniyot, our rabbis customarily prohibit eating them on Pesach, but many great sages permit them. So this is Rabbeinu Peretz speaking. He says, my teacher, Rabbi Yechiel would eat the white bean called favas. He ate fava beans and said, in the name of great sages, and he cited as a proof that even rice you can eat.

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:28]: He says, nevertheless, it is very difficult to permit a thing that everyone, since the earliest sages, treats as prohibited. So he’s saying exactly what you said.

Adam Mintz [00:21:39]: Right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:21:40]: They can’t find a reason, but they simply make it prohibitive. And I think that’s why it was kind of interesting to start in Leviticus because we have presuppositions, and we also have practice. And I have a feeling that practice dictates more than anything else what ultimately ends up in the law. They looked around. They knew what Tefillin looked like. Then they had to go to the sources and figure out where they knew it from. But there were certain unbroken traditions.

Adam Mintz [00:22:08]: I just find it interesting that he moves from rice to fava beans, you know? I mean, because generally, when you think about kitniyot, you talk about rice. You should know that there are some cultures that eat rice but don’t eat other kitniyot because, you know, rice seemed to have been, you know, kind of a distinctive thing, right, Sharon? There are some. Some people eat rice, the Turkish Jews, or they eat other things, but they don’t eat rice. Sharon corrects me. They eat everything else, but they don’t eat rice. That rice. Because rice looks so much like wheat flour, not that it was grown next to the wheat, but because rice looks like wheat flour. Therefore, people were strict on rice, but they weren’t strict on string beans. You see that? I don’t know if you’re going to get to that. That’s a jump. One thing is rice, one thing is fava beans, and one thing is string beans. And then one thing is peanuts and peanut oil, right? How far afield are you going to get? And mustard seed and all the things we didn’t eat on Pesach, you know, is there a limit?

Geoffrey Stern [00:23:16]: Yeah, and it’s a slippery slope. I remember I once belonged to the Jewish Center, and Rabbi J.J. Schachter, he says, I’m giving the lecture you never heard. Usually, a rabbi gets up and says all the things that are prohibitive. I’m going to give you a list of all the things that don’t need a hechsher. And he says, orange juice produced before Pesach doesn’t need a hechsher. And so, you know, it’s just a different gisha, a different approach. The other thing that does come up, and we kind of discover so much about the laws of kashrut just by looking at this one issue, is that they used to make some sort of porridge out of rice, and it looked kind of identical to a porridge that you would make from oats. So he says the Talmud permitted rice. This was specifically in their day when all were fluent in the laws of prohibition and permission. But in these later generations, it’s clear that one should be restrictive. So here they’re kind of blaming it on the decline of the generation. But, Rabbi, it smacks a little bit of marit ayin, where somebody looking at you eating that rice pudding would think, oh, look, Rabbi Adam is having chametz, or it’s permitted to have oatmeal. So again, it’s what will the neighbor say that comes into it. And Rabbi Moshe Isserles says the custom in Ashkenaz is to be restrictive. One should not diverge from this. And another rabbi says all this is nothing but an added restriction, but one should not diverge from it.

Adam Mintz [00:24:55]: Because they were accustomed to behave in a certain way, I just want to say one thing here. There’s a difference between Rabbi Moshe Isserles and the next one, the Taz, and that is Rabbi Moshe Isserles thinks that you actually need to be strict. The Taz doesn’t think you need to be strict. He just says that our parents were strict and our grandparents were strict, therefore we should follow in. You know, and that’s a very interesting thing. You know, I just want to say that generally we just got out of Pesach. There’s a tendency. And this is true, you know, I deal with a lot of different kinds of people. This is true about Jews who are not always so strict. All year long on Pesach, they’re strict. Now, that’s because that’s part of a tradition. But there actually is a halakhic, a legal reason for that as well. And that is that if you eat non-kosher food, it’s no good to eat non-kosher food. But the punishment for eating non-kosher food is that you get 40 lashes. The punishment for eating chametz on Pesach is that you get kareit, that your days end early. So, you know, sometimes the severity of the punishment reflects the severity of the prohibition. So all year long, ah, you know, it’s only 40 lashes. So you want to make sure you eat kosher. But you don’t have to be strict about kosher, you just have to do it right. But when it comes to chametz, you’re afraid, you can get kareit. Now that’s big time, that’s serious. And therefore, you want to be extra, super duper stringent. So I just want to say that the Rama’s coming from a legal place. Not only from a marit ayin place, but from a legal place also.

Geoffrey Stern [00:26:35]: Absolutely.

And that’s very true. So I want to end. We’re kind of in the world of responsa literature, which is always fascinating. I want to end with two responsa on this subject. One was from the son of Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi, known as the Chacham Tzvi. He said, “I testify that my illustrious father, that sainted man, suffered greatly on account of this, on account of forbidding Kitniyot throughout Hag HaMatzot. He would rant and say, ‘If I had the strength, I would abolish this terrible custom, a stringency which causes harm and error. Because types of Kitniyot are not available for the masses to eat their fill, they must bake matzot. Instead of having one piece of matzah, which is the only thing that could become chametz that you have at your seder table, and then for the rest of the week you stay very far away from matzah,’ he says. Because they can’t eat all of these other grains, they have to. There’s a matzah industry because of this. They are not as careful with the dough as they should be. They certainly err in a matter of kashrut.” Interesting. He turns your argument kind of on its head. Fantastic.

Adam Mintz [00:27:48]: Right?

Geoffrey Stern [00:27:48]: “And matzot are expensive. Not everyone can afford as much as they need. But Kitniyot are available cheaply and easily and permitted.” He talks about the joy of the holiday.

Adam Mintz [00:27:59]: That’s, by the way, something we didn’t see yet. The economics of it is something that we don’t see till now. Very good.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:06]: So there’s the economic hardship and the joy of the holiday. And he goes as if I wish I had the koyach to do this. I wish I had the gumption to go against the grain a little bit. So I want to fast forward because we started talking about the situation in Israel, and as I said before, you can only try to redefine a law or take away a prohibition if there’s a compelling reason. Now, there’s an amazing source of teshuvot from a scholar named David Golinkin. He’s at the Schechter Institute. He has volumes and volumes of these responsa, and he writes as follows.

Geoffrey Stern [00:28:38]: He says that since there is a compelling reason to bring all of Israel to the land of Israel, Aliyah, olim la’aretz—we have that word, aliyah. Again, you don’t want to create these distinctions. You want to bring people together, and you want it to be easy. He calls it kibbutz galyot, to bring the ingathering of the exiles. And I want to finish by reading a little bit from him because it’s an amazing commentary on what’s happening in Israel today. Lastly, we would like to briefly address an important point of view vis-a-vis this custom. Is it desirable to perpetuate the differences between Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Italians, and Yemenites in Israel and the diaspora?.

Geoffrey Stern [00:29:39]: True. Perhaps it is preferable to eliminate these differences, distinctions and create one united Jewish people. This is a worthy topic, deserving of a book of its own, indeed an entire book. And he talks about the beautiful thing that says on the one hand, you’re supposed to listen to Toraht Imecha your own particular customs, but on the other, he talks about who is like your people, Israel. Goy echad ba’aretz—one people. And then he starts to say that in 1950, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel enacted several takanot regarding marriage intended to unite the Jewish people. They changed the sidur so that there was a special nusach made for the IDF.

Geoffrey Stern [00:30:11]: And he goes on to say that the IDF tried to permit Kitniyot in the army because they wanted to bring our people together. Hence, the issue under discussion has the potential to unite the Jewish people. But this was rescinded. There was so much pressure, they couldn’t do it. Nonetheless, and this is Golinkin talking, we should adopt this ruling in Israel and the Diaspora. In so doing, we will differentiate between halacha and a mistaken custom, enhance the joy of the festival, ease the burden on those with limited means, and move another step closer to uniting the Jewish people throughout the world. So it’s just fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:12]: Through this discussion of diet, we have a commentary on who we are as a people. And isn’t that at the end of the day how we started by saying for the Jews and for the Israelites, diet reflects on who we are.

Adam Mintz [00:31:21]: Fantastic. Wow, great topic. We have to archive it away for next Pesach. We’ll review it before Pesach next year. Thank you so much. Shabbat Shalom everybody. And we look forward to seeing you. We begin the post-Pesach period. We look forward to seeing everybody next week. Shabbat Shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [00:31:40]: Shabbat Shalom. Safe return from Paris and we’ll see you all next week. Shabbat Shalom. …