Goat wrote:nygreenguy wrote:
No biscuits and gravy?!?!?! Oh, the humanity! That right there is enough reason to never be jewish!
Depends on what you make the gravy from.
Some of the Kosher laws as they are practiced today I think are silly. For example, there is no actual reason from a biblical point of view not to mix chicken and dairy, but the Rabbi's decided to restrict that to reduce the chances of mistakes being made. Silly and stupid in my opinion.
Depends on how you understand the laws. One strand of thought -- which I actually worked out on my own before I met it in my reading -- holds that all the Kosher laws come from the first one, the prohibition of consuming blood, because "the blood is the life."
Meat = death. The dietary laws are intended, in the opinion of some scholars, to keep us aware of, and humble about, the fact that eating meat requires one of our fellow creatures to die. That death must be as painless as possible -- thus the rigid requirements for kosher slaughter, a literally razor-sharp blade through the throat. It must be a creature that does not itself survive by killing; thus the prohibition of birds of prey, explicitly named in the Torah, and the limitation to herbivorous ruminants (which are also not typically very aware or intelligent, as predators have to be). One must remember that one's meal entails a death, and one must treat the animal humanely, with respect, and with humility. The Native Americans, some of them, had a tradition that seems related; asking the permission of the spirit of the deer before they hunted it, and thanking the deer for its gift of life and food after they killed it. It's a matter of remembering one's place in the "circle of life" - and death.
On the other hand: Milk = life. Milk is provided by God, or Nature if you like, to nourish new life; it's for young animals, including young humans. It seemed to the ancients to be impious and arrogant, not to say "an abomination" (which, of course they DID say) to mix life and death in that manner. It its most extreme form, that would be cooking a young goat in its mother's milk, which was meant, in nature, to have sustained it and helped it grow; using the mother goat's gift to her child to make a meal of it after it has been killed seems somehow insulting and contemptuous, on top of the perhaps necessary killing of her little one for food.
By extension, using the milk of ANY creature -- a symbol of life, almost literally life itself -- in a dish including the meat of ANY creature, including fowl -- which meat, again, is quite literally death, dead meat -- seems impious and "abominable" in the same way. A bit repugnant, when you think about it that way.
In my understanding, the kosher laws are about respect for life, humility in the face of death, and gratitude for the gifts that God -- or Nature -- has given us. Not as silly and stupid as all that, as I see it.
ETA: All that said -- and I feel a bit, um, sheepish about admitting this -- biscuits with pork sausage gravy is one of my favorites, and I make it for my client and myself for lunch at least twice a week.
One of the other great things about being Jewish is that we leave each other alone about these things. I've never seen a Jew lord it over another Jew with even an implicit "more observant than thou" attitude. It's just not done, at least among any of the Jews that I know.
Always wondered.
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