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When I was old enough to ride a bike through town (no helmet of course), every so often I'd pedal down to my grandfather's office.
He had the corner office of distinction in a law firm where he showed up every day after his swim at the Elk's Club (from which he was old enough to have been banned for the first half of his life).
There he would show me the latest letters received from his other grandchildren, try to teach me about puts and calls, and there he explained the whole kosher thing to me.
"Kosher means unclean. You see, if you don't cook pork properly, it can make you sick, even kill you. It's a very unclean animal. So it was banned for obvious reasons. One of the innovations of the Reform Movement was to acknowledge the reality that there is no longer any danger of eating pork, so there is no reason it should remain unclean."
If you stop to think about it, you'll realize that there are hundreds if not thousands of species that are not kosher. So why did my grandfather in his secular sermon single out the sow?
Fast-forward a couple decades, when I was a young rabbi giving a class in Seattle.
Playfully, I asked, "What's the bracha to make on pork?"
My sharp audience all quickly responded, "That's a trick question - there's no bracha to make on pork! It isn't kosher!"
"Ahh, but it's actually a double-trick question. Because pork can become kosher - let's say, for instance, a person is starving and the only thing they have to eat is pork. To save their life, they have to eat it!"
Afterwards, an older woman approached to speak with me.
"Rabbi, I want you to know something. I'm a survivor. At the end of the War, we were starving, At one point, the only thing to eat was unkosher meat, and we ate it. But I would never have eaten pork!"
I told her that I respected her very much but that she was wrong - pork is no different than any other non-kosher meat.
But then I challenged her, and I'll invite you to challenge your table tonight with this question - Why does pork seem to have a special status among all the many non-kosher foods?
Question #2 - What makes something kosher or not anyhow (for animals, there are at least 5 criteria)?
Shabbat ShalomHe had the corner office of distinction in a law firm where he showed up every day after his swim at the Elk's Club (from which he was old enough to have been banned for the first half of his life).
There he would show me the latest letters received from his other grandchildren, try to teach me about puts and calls, and there he explained the whole kosher thing to me.
"Kosher means unclean. You see, if you don't cook pork properly, it can make you sick, even kill you. It's a very unclean animal. So it was banned for obvious reasons. One of the innovations of the Reform Movement was to acknowledge the reality that there is no longer any danger of eating pork, so there is no reason it should remain unclean."
If you stop to think about it, you'll realize that there are hundreds if not thousands of species that are not kosher. So why did my grandfather in his secular sermon single out the sow?
Fast-forward a couple decades, when I was a young rabbi giving a class in Seattle.
Playfully, I asked, "What's the bracha to make on pork?"
My sharp audience all quickly responded, "That's a trick question - there's no bracha to make on pork! It isn't kosher!"
"Ahh, but it's actually a double-trick question. Because pork can become kosher - let's say, for instance, a person is starving and the only thing they have to eat is pork. To save their life, they have to eat it!"
Afterwards, an older woman approached to speak with me.
"Rabbi, I want you to know something. I'm a survivor. At the end of the War, we were starving, At one point, the only thing to eat was unkosher meat, and we ate it. But I would never have eaten pork!"
I told her that I respected her very much but that she was wrong - pork is no different than any other non-kosher meat.
But then I challenged her, and I'll invite you to challenge your table tonight with this question - Why does pork seem to have a special status among all the many non-kosher foods?
Question #2 - What makes something kosher or not anyhow (for animals, there are at least 5 criteria)?
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