Kosher

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Kosher describes food that complies with kashrut, the traditional Jewish dietary laws. Stemming from initial prohibitions on eating blood,^[1] ritually unclean animals, and a somewhat cryptic passage that states not to "boil a kid in its mother's milk", kashrut developed in later, post-Torah tradition to include many of the following rules:

• Mammals may only be eaten if they chew the cud and have a cloven hoof (horses and pigs are notably banned). Carnivorous mammals and wild game which has not been slaughtered according to Jewish law are also banned.
• Only fish with fins and scales may be eaten; shellfish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, and insects are not allowed.
• Birds must not be carrion-eaters or birds of prey.
• Meat and milk may not be mixed in the kitchen or on the table. (However, fish, eggs, and plant-based foods are known as pareve, meaning "neither", and may be eaten freely with either milk or meat.^[2]
• Animals must be killed with a single stroke of the knife and drained of blood; animals not killed in this matter are not acceptable, nor are animals that are diseased or damaged.
• The sciatic nerve is forbidden; some Jewish butchers remove this, but others simply dispose of the hindquarters of the animal.
• During Passover, a few more complicated regulations exist, forbidding leavened bread, beer, or anything else that can ferment. Rice and corn are generally up for debate—Sephardim are fine with them, Ashkenazim usually are not^[3]. During Passover, you should definitely stock up on Kosher Coke, because it's sweetened with cane or beet sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, which causes near instant diabetes, irrepressible anxiety, makes your tongue feel like a piece of shoe leather, and will damn you to an eternity of servicing Andy's BDSM fetishes in hell, you fucking goy heathen!

Kosher is rejected by almost all branches of Christianity, although a few sects, such as Seventh-day Adventism, maintain kosher dietary requirements, along with other Jewish traditions. Halal, the dietary strictures of Islam, is heavily modeled on kashrut.

For the most part, kosher regulations are highly complex and differently enforced depending on the community; on the whole, Sephardic kitchens are less strict than Ashkenazic, and some Reform and Reconstructionist Jews obey kashrut only during Passover.

Contents 1 Kosher in slang 2 See also 3 Sources 4 Footnotes

[edit] Kosher in slang

In common parlance, "kosher" is used to mean "okay" or "cool" - as in "don't tase me, bro -- it's not kosher!"

[edit] See also

• Kosher wine
• Halal
• Vegetarianism
• God hates shrimp

[edit] Sources

• Usenet rec.food.cuisine.jewish Kosher FAQ
• Roden, Claudia, The Book of Jewish Food, New York: Knopf, 1996, ISBN 0394532589.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ Deuteronomy 12:20-28
2. ↑ In practice, kosher kitchens keep separate sets of cookware and plates, and kosher restaurants are traditionally either dairy or flayshig (meat).
3. ↑ Not like they would buy sake or bourbon anyways.