Keeping Kosher?
 

This is a question for our Jewish brothers & sisters out there.... I am a non-Jewish Texan, taking a course in Jewish Law (which I have found fascinating). I have chosen to write my paper on the Kashruth, and since I can count on one hand the number of actual Jewish friends and acquaintances I have (and none of which keeps kosher), I thought I'd come here and get some insight.

What I'd like to know, is do you keep kosher, and to what extent? Why do you/don't you keep kosher (I'm looking for a more personal reason than "just because the Torah says so"), and how do your friends/relatives who do keep kosher react when you don't? What are the consequences of not doing so? Do you find it difficult or easier to keep kosher in this day and age?

The friends I have are "holiday Jews", and it has only been within the last few years that I realized such a thing existed (like I said, I am from Texas--deep in the Bible Belt--and up until a couple of years ago had a very uneducated-naive understanding of Judaism).

Anyway-thank you in advance for your insight. If you are not comfortable posting your response to the forum, but are willing to share, please feel free to pm me.

Andi, I PMed you!

I don't keep kosher, but I don't eat pork, and I won't allow pork or shellfish in my house. Most of my family and my Jewish friends do the same.

Actually, most of the laws aren't in the Torah - they have been built up over the centuries as a way of "building a wall around the Torah" and making absolutely certain you don't "accidentally" break a law - but if you've been studying Jewish law, you already know this :) This is why, for instance, I don't care about mixing meat and dairy. The original commandment is to not cook a kid in its mother's milk. This has been expanded to forbid mixing any meat with any dairy (and show me a chicken that can produce milk :rolleyes: ). Those who keep strictly kosher have separate plates and silverware for meat and dairy, and won't eat dairy for a few hours after eating meat. I think that's overkill - but that's just my opinion, and I have a lot of respect for those who do make the difficult decision to keep strictly kosher.

Hope this helps :)

I'm not Jewish, but I think this is an interesting topic. The school I attended is located in a suburb of Columbus, and one that has quite a few Jewish residents.

My roommate one year baby-sat for a Jewish family that was kosher, and fairly strict about it. They had the separate plate thing going on & such. My roommate, who also is not Jewish, used to be worried that she was accidentally doing something 'wrong' whenever she was feeding the kids because she wasn't at all familiar with what was and wasn't acceptable (aside from what the mother had instructed her). And the kids were too young to be able to tell her if she did mess something up.

Thanks Lisa-
I PM'd you back, but let me know if you didn't get it. GC likes to lock up on me when I try to send PMs, and sometimes I can't tell if the messages went through! I appreciate your thoughts!

Maybe someone can provide more detail than I can but I remember one Passover season reading that people strictly keeping kosher in Israel wouldn't drink tap water from one particular source because people would feed the ducks leavened bread and the bread not eaten by the ducks would stay in the water supply thus people would be eating leavened bread from their water source.

It was a few years ago that I read that and I'm afraid that I don't remember anymore details.

Please check these places:

http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm

http://www.jewish.com/askarabbi/Kashrut/


I grew up keeping kosher and my DH doesn't eat any red meat or non-kosher fowl, shellfish or meat. We don't keep kosher, technically, but have considered it over the years.

Thanks Barbara-
I have found TONS of information on the net, but somehow haven't stumbled upon the "Ask A Rabbi" site. Thanks for sending it...

And thanks to everyone who has PM'd me about your personal experiences--it has been nice to have more than the "book version" to use in my research!