In Episode 1, Elana and Robin introduce the concept of a “blogcast” and how it’s different from the JLV Podcast, which is available to members of the JLV Shomrim. Robin asks a LOT of questions (more than 4!) and together, they explain the concept of kashrut — kosher food, keeping kosher, and even a mention about “kosher for Passover.”

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Show Notes:

  • JLV Shomrim
    • The JLV Shomrim are Jewish Learning Venture’s most generous supporters, who have committed to sustaining the Agency and its initiatives. Shomrim – guardians – are the stewards of our community who ensure that we continue to provide Jewish education and engagement across the Greater Philadelphia community.
    • Learn more about the JLV Shomrim here.
  • Vocabulary
    • Here are some words mentioned during this episode and their definitions:
      • Kashrut: the body of Jewish religious laws concerning the suitability of food. The rules cover which foods to eat, how to prepare them, and how to combine them. “Kosher” describes any food that complies with those rules.
      • Trayf (Yiddish): Food that is prohibited by kashrut. The word is derived from the Hebrew טְרֵפָה (trēfáh) meaning “torn.” Other variations: treif, treyf, or tref.
      • Hechsher: a rabbinical endorsement or certification especially of food products that conform with traditional Jewish dietary laws. 
      • Parve: made without milk, meat, or their derivatives
  • Further reading:

And if you came here looking for the answer to whether or not rabbit is kosher…it isn’t! (No cloven hooves, no cud-chewing!)

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Transcript:

Elana
Hi, I’m Elana Rivel, Jewish Learning Venture’s CEO.

Robin
And I’m Robin Matthews. I have a thousand titles. I’m the Director of jkidpride, PJ Our Way Engagement, and I’m JLV’s graphic designer.

Elana
And we want to welcome you to the first episode of our new blogcast, More Than 4.

Robin
I have questions. First, what is a blogcast?

Elana
Well, Jewish Learning Venture has had a blog for a really long time, right? And we were thinking maybe it’s time to try a new format, shake it up a little, turn our blog into a podcast. And call it a blogcast

Robin
Oh, that’s clever. But why not just call it a podcast?

Elana
Well, we already have a podcast that’s exclusive to our Shomrim, our most generous donors, and we wanted to create content that was available to everyone.

Robin
But if people wanna listen to our original podcast series, they can join our Shomrim, right? We can link the info to that in the show notes, I guess.

Elana
Perfect. Okay, so you said you had more questions?

Robin
Yeah, I have lots of questions. So, More Than 4. So that was the next question I was gonna ask what the name of the blogcast More Than 4 means.

Elana
Well, you may be familiar with the four questions we ask on Passover, and –

Robin
Don’t ask me to ask them right now. And actually, They’re four answers and only one question. Right? That’s not even four questions. It’s very misleading.

Elana
Precisely. It’s misleading. It is misleading. You’re right, it’s very confusing.And maybe that’s one of the questions we’ll answer in an upcoming episode.

Robin
Teaser.

Elana
But the idea is that there are actually so many questions and answers in Judaism. Some really simple and some much more complicated. And one of the coolest things about Judaism is how we’re encouraged to ask questions and seek answers in conversation with one another. So in this blogcast, we’re going to do just that: answer questions.

Robin
That seems ambitious! I mean, I know we’re Jewish Learning Venture, but really have we learned it all?

Elana
Well, of course not. But we do know lots of things. And more importantly, we have lots of connections and resources. We know lots of people. So we can find the answers or the people who know them.

Robin
So where are we going to get these questions? Like, who’s asking?

Elana
Really like, you weren’t kidding! You were serious that you had a lot of questions! So they’ll come from our listeners. Our listeners will comment or email with the things they’ve been wondering about about Judaism, Jewish traditions, culture, holidays, words, and we will find the answers whether because we have an expert on our staff or because we can find someone else who can join us as a guest.

Robin
That sounds fun actually. And I feel like I could submit a bunch of questions, as you know, right from the jump. There’s like a million words my grandmother used to say that I don’t know the meaning of. Maybe that would be like a whole episode.

Elana
Perfect.

Robin
All right. Well, we’ll see how it goes, but we should probably jump in ‘cuz I know we actually have questions waiting in the queue.

Elana
Yeah. More than four.

Robin
Yeah. Look at you!

Elana
Okay, so we’re going to start with a question that’s complex and that raises many additional questions.

Robin
That’s right. It seems ambitious to start with a complex question, but I feel like we are up for the challenge. It’s a venture. It’s a learning venture. What, what? All right.

Elana
So our question today is what makes food kosher?

Robin
Yeah, that’s a good one. It’s a big one too, because there’s food that’s kosher and then there’s keeping kosher

Elana
And then there’s kosher for Passover.

Robin
Right. I guess for now then let’s just answer what makes food kosher? Because keeping kosher at home and kosher for Passover is like a whole different ball of wax.

Elana
Perfect. So, okay, so what makes food kosher? So we hear about kashrut, which is the practice of keeping kosher.

Robin
Is that a Hebrew word?

Elana
That’s a Hebrew word. And we learn about it in the Torah. It actually is mentioned multiple times in the Torah, in the five books of Moses, starting in the first book, even in Genesis, and really, shows up in four out of the five books.So we learned bits and pieces and from there, We have developed this system that we refer to as kashrut, and the idea of keeping kosher, sort of the concept behind it is that it’s a way to bring in holiness into our daily lives. So it asks us to take a moment and think before we eat. About where our food is coming from and how it’s been prepared.
So what we learn about food that’s kosher is that animals have to have cloven hooves, which means they are split. They must chew their cud. Meaning they eat grass and they actually regurgitate and then eat again.

Robin
Delicious.

Elana
Seafood has to have fins and scales. So shellfish is not allowed. There are specific birds that are identified. We know that birds of prey are forbidden. But then there are specific birds – they’re not totally categorized, so you have to sort of pull them out from the text as to what is and isn’t allowed. But we know that poultry is allowed.

Robin
And encouraged, I feel like.

Elana
And encouraged. It’s all over. Yeah. And meat and dairy cannot be eaten together, which comes also from the Torah. There’s a phrase that says, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” And from there we take the idea that you shouldn’t combine. So those who follow the dietary rules can’t eat cheeseburgers. As an example.

Robin
For those who choose to enjoy cheeseburgers. It’s not you, though.

Elana
Not me. I’m vegan.

Robin
Right.

Elana
And actually you just shared with me offline that you just learned about this idea of how long you wait in between. And so that comes from this idea of not eating milk and meat together and determining well, okay, so a cheeseburger seems a little obvious, but then what does that mean if I want to eat a burger and have a milkshake for dessert or an ice cream sundae? And so depending on who you ask, there is a waiting time and the question is how long that waiting time might be.

Robin
Right. Is there, like, a big reason for this?

Elana
I think it’s about the increase of holiness. The idea that we are being a little more thoughtful around the kinds of food that we’re eating, how they were killed because kosher meat was killed in a specific way.

Robin
Is it, like, more humane or is it…

Elana
It’s supposedly more humane. It’s a quick slaughter across the neck. It has to be a perfect line. So you have to be trained in how to do it so that it’s supposedly painless. You can’t eat an animal that was found dead in the woods, as an example, because you don’t know what may have happened to that animal. And just being thoughtful around how you make your food. But the other question about, you know, does it taste better? Is it about cleanliness? So some that is in the process. So with meat, once you slaughter it, it has to be salted because you can’t eat any of the blood. And so in order to draw as much of the blood out, they salt the meat. And what happens is it makes the meat a little more tender, I think. And it, and it makes it cleaner. But it’s really about the practical -salt draws out the blood and we’re not supposed to eat the blood. And then there’s food that we can’t eat, right? The stuff that doesn’t fall in these categories. And we refer to that as trayf, which I don’t actually know if — I think that might be Yiddish.

Robin
We’ll put it in the show notes.

Elana
That goes with not only the categories of food, but as an example, the, you know, the cow that was found dead in the pasture is trayf. We can’t eat that meat.

Robin
So it has to have cloven hooves and chew its cud. Which is why pork, for example, is not, ‘cuz pigs have cloven hooves, right?

Elana
Correct.

Robin
But they don’t chew cud, so it doesn’t meet those two requirements.

Elana
Exactly. Right. Exactly. It has to meet all of it.

Robin
So no bacon-wrapped scallops. That’s a double whammy.

Elana
So that really covers sort of what makes food kosher. It has to be a certain category. It has to be killed,if it’s meat, in a specific way. And then once it gets to the market, it has to have certification. And there are a number of them that you might see on a product. So the most common is what we call the “ou.” It’s an O with the U inside that tells us that that group of rabbis, the organization has certified that kosher, even if it’s dairy or it’s a dry goods product, you want to know that it was prepared on equipment that did not have non-kosher dairy or meat stuff, etc.

Robin
So is that thing called the hechsher? That’s a term I just learned, like I’ve learned since working here. Because when we do programming, we make sure that snacks that we give are hechshered.

Elana
Exactly. Yeah. So that comes from the same root as kashrut, hechsher and it’s the idea that it was given the certification of approval. And sometimes you see a triangle-k is another. There’s a star-K–

Robin
I’ve seen something that has a P.

Elana
So if you have a star-K with a little p, that means it’s also kosher for Passover.

Robin
And what about parve?

Elana
So parve are things that are neither considered meat nor dairy and they can go with either. So vegetables, fruits are parve. Fish is actually considered parve.

Robin
Why is fish not a meat? That’s so weird.

Elana
I don’t know. And to throw an extra question out there, there are people who believe that chicken should be considered parve.

Robin
Huh. Interesting. So can you eat — I feel like I have way more questions than I thought I was gonna have about this. It’s fascinating to me. But can you eat eggs that come from a non-kosher chicken? I mean, I guess it doesn’t become kosher ’til it’s killed, so it’s fine while it’s–

Elana
Yes. And I’m not sure there’s a — I’m trying to think, what’s a bird that we can’t eat that lays eggs that people eat? Here’s the thing about kashrut, right? You can continue down the rabbit hole. There’s so many important and meaningful questions.

Robin
And you can’t eat rabbit, can you? I kept trying to figure it out as you said rabbit hole. I was like, doesn’t have hooves, it’s not a bird…

Elana
So there’s a lot of reading. There are a lot of options for resources. We’ll put a couple of resources for people who want to know. And there are levels of kashrut, right? We know that people adapt kashrut in a way that works for their family. If you asked half a dozen people why they choose to keep kosher, the reasons will vary. Some people will say, ’cause it’s what we learn in the Torah. And others will say, I want my family to be more mindful. And some say I like the meat better. There’s so many different reasons for why people might choose to live that way, that they also might tweak the kashrut to fit their lifestyle, as we know with so many other rituals and traditions in Judaism.

Robin
Well that definitely cleared some things up and brought up more questions! And we got to talk about cloven hooves! How often does that come up in casual conversation?

Elana
So if you have questions about Judaism, no question is too big or too small, obviously, because this one could have gone on and on, let us know. Send us an email at morethan4 – using the number 4 – @jewishlearningventure.org. That’s morethan4@jewishlearningventure.org. You can tweet us at @jlearnventure. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/jlearnventure. Or reply in a comment wherever you found this podcast linked.

Robin
I’m super excited to see what other questions our listeners have.

Elana
Me too, and I’m excited to do the research or to find the experts who can answer them.

Robin
That’s perfect. So until the next episode…