Kosher Dosher...“I am a culinary Heretic"

  KOSHER—BIBLICAL VS JEWISH by Avram Yehoshua THE SEED OF ABRAHAM To abstain from all unclean animals (food), is Torah (the first five books of the Bible: Genesis through Deuteronomy). To ‘keep kosher’ the Jewish way, is both Torah and rabbinic. There is a big difference. God requires that we eat only clean meat (Torah: Lev. 11 and Deut. 14), and so do the Rabbis. But the Rabbis go further. Keeping kosher means that one doesn’t eat any dairy products with meat. The Rabbis say that one cannot have cheese with clean meat, or even use a plate for meat, that once had cheese on it. The separation of dairy and meat, with the rabbinic injunction that it’s sin if one violates it, is based on the Scripture about not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. The rabbinic view is that one should not eat meat and dairy together thereby avoiding the possibility of breaking the Commandment. 1  Of course, God never says in this Commandment that one can’t eat meat and dairy together, but this is how...

 Biblical kosher versus Talmudic kosher Solomon D. Stevens has a Ph.D. from Boston College. His publications include “Religion, Politics, and the Law” (co-authored with Peter Schotten) and “Challenges to Peace in the Middle East.” Solomon D. Stevens | Special to JT An Orthodox friend recently reprimanded me for wearing my kippah to a restaurant, which he deemed to be non-kosher. I always wear my kippah. I want non-Jews to know that there are Jews in the world who are proud about who they are and not afraid to be recognized as Jews. But beyond that, I believe that I keep kosher. I just don’t keep Talmudic kosher. For the Orthodox, there is only one standard of what is or is not kosher. I disagree, and I think this is worth discussing. Most of my Orthodox friends think that the main reason that their non-Orthodox friends do not keep their version of kosher is that they are not fully committed to a religious life. A smaller number of my Orthodox friends think that some Jews are just l...