Is it kosher?

Who decides what is and isn’t kosher? Will the next generation be able to keep to the laws of kashrut in a cost of living crisis? If you had the power to make McDonalds, KFC or Guzman y Gomez kosher, which one would you choose? Plus, welcome to the bonkers world of Jewish Buy, Sell, Swap groups. 

This episode was filmed and edited by Alleyway Productions 

Watch it on YouTube

The vocalist in the theme song is Sara Yael 

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Transcript

Intro And A Kosher FMK Twist

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A shame to ask, ashamed to admit, got dewy, dewy questions. This is it, this is it. Why is wicked simple are unsure how to ask? We'll open up the books, the ark will open up your cynical heart. No such a thing as a dumb question. Okay, that's mostly true. Tammy and Shoshana are here for you. Ashamed to admit. Ashamed to ask.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

It's everything you didn't get in Jewish studies class. Hello. And welcome to another episode of Asham to admit, a Jewish independent podcast. I'm Tammy Sussman.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Is it my line? Yes! I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

I'm Shoshana Gottly Becker. Shoshana Gottli Becker.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

You ready for a little game of FMK?

SPEAKER_03 0:57

I'm scared. Just because I know what this episode's about and it doesn't lend itself to FMK.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

It's a it's a different it's a little bit different, this FMK from your usual FMK. Today, FMK stands for Fuck it, let's make it kosher.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

So I don't have to like rate the attractiveness of foods.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

I'm not gonna make you do that today. Another day, maybe. Please no. But not today. Sufganiot top. And that's next Freddo Frogs.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Sufganiot for our international listeners or non-Jewish listeners. Donuts. Jam-filled donuts. Jam-filled donuts. Okay, that's not on the list. So what I've done today is I've learnt my lesson and I've actually prepared.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

You understood how games work.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

So you brought examples. Yeah, you taught me how games work. So today I've brought in examples. There are three lots of food items or genres, and you need to choose which one. Fuck it, make it kosher. Okay. If you had the authority to do so.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

I I think I do.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Yeah, I was gonna say I see you as someone with a lot of authority.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

I was out at an engagement party yesterday, and someone came up to me and they're like, hey, like been listening to the podcast. I join your cult. And I was like, that makes two people. My wife and Paul.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

I was chatting to someone at the Jewish Food Festival.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Oh yeah, I didn't go.

Choosing Bacon Seafood Or Lab Meat

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Last week, I saw a Sky there. Classic. And someone came up to me and said, Hey, I'm the older sister. I'm the one who puts her hand up a chicken's ass. No context. No context. And I kind of forgotten that that's something we had said in one of our episodes. It was amazing. I was like, okay. Then the penny dropped. Alright, so you ready? I'm gonna get my notes out. Okay. FMK. I'm ready. Bacon, lab grown meat, seafood.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

I have two clarifying questions. Number one, it is machlocket whether lab grown meat is like I think lab grown meat is kosher. Like I don't think anyone says it's not kosher at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I thought the rabs were still on the fence.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

I don't know. Like I don't know. Okay, let's pretend it's not kosher. What kind of seafood are we talking about?

SPEAKER_02 3:20

All of it? Like prawns, calamari, oysters.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

I'm gonna say seafood just because it in like it intrigues me more than the concept of bacon. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, because Jews have some pretty good alternatives to bacon.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Turkey bacon? Yeah. Also, like I I'm so Jewish that if I'm in a cafe and they are cooking bacon, I feel sick. Like the smell makes me gag. I used to work at Dimmix in the city, like the big one, and there was a cafe right above the register, and in the morning I couldn't work the register because all I could smell was the bacon and I'd be like, it's gross. Did you tell them that? No, I just couldn't like I just put up with it.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

I'm personally a big fan of bacon. In fact, it brings back core memories of going to Bar and But Mitzfur on a Saturday morning. No, because if a bar about mitzvah during the Bar A Butt Mitsfye, year seven, if one of those was at the Great Synagogue in the CBD, Sydney CBD, my mum would drive me there and we'd go, we'd do McDonald's drive-thru on the way and get bacon aim at muffins because my dad wouldn't let us have it in the house.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

Oh god, your mum was like, go into a mum mitzvah at the great, it's too Jewish. Gotta do something on the way to make it less Jewish.

unknown 4:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

I love that fear.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, she's gonna kill me for outing.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

You're the only person in the world who's like, bacon makes me think of bar mitzvahs at Sydney's grandest synagogue.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

I'm sure there's more. If you're if you're one of those people who enjoy. I don't think there's anyone. It's you and your mum. That's it. Get in touch. Sorry, mum. Okay, she does listen to this podcast. Okay. That's nice of her. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Very proud of you.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Okay, not after this episode. All right, next slot. FMK. McDonald's KFC or Guzmani Gomez.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Oh. Oh, that's hard. I think I know what you're gonna say though. I think I'm gonna say KFC.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I knew you were gonna say that.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

I just like I really like chicken and I want to explore chicken in all of its like all of its opportunity. You know? I do. I love a good chicken wrap. Okay. That's like the one thing when I'm like, I'm out and about. I wish I could just get a chicken wrap right now, you know? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Because you won't eat kosher uh unkosha meat at all.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Yeah, I only eat kosher meat, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

I thought you I thought you were gonna choose that because in Israel they have kosher McDonald's, so you've experienced also like I've just experienced a hamburger before.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

You know what I mean? Yeah, like there's not often that you get the fried chicken or the chicken, I don't know, tenders.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

And Mexican food, I'm pretty sure like you could replicate or yeah, we eat tacos at home all the time.

SPEAKER_03 6:09

Yeah, yeah.

Fast Food Dreams And Kosher Limits

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Okay, last one.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

I like this again.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Um cake.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Yeah, I like I like thinking.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Nutella?

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Mm-hmm. Kosher.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Not always, not in every country. Okay, so you have the authority to make Nutella kosher kosher for everyone, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:29

That's a big responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Lint balls. Have you ever had one?

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Yeah. Or chewing.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Also kosher. Are they?

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Lint balls, I think they have to be made like in a certain place and then they're kosher.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

So you get Again, it's that all lint balls never are everywhere for eternity. Forever.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Because Nutella wavers sometimes it is and it's not, then it is.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

It's like oil prices, it's like it's up and it's down.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

I thought you meant like palm oil that makes it, but no, you were making a reference to I was being smart.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

I was being modern.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Um, okay, so Nutella, limp balls, or chewing gum.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

I have okay. This is you're gonna learn something about me.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

I love learning things about it.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

I have TMJ inflammation?

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Yeah, yeah. Everyone has TMJ.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

I know. It's just like it's crazy, but I can't chew gum because it makes my jaw hurt. So gum's off the table. Gum is dead to me. Alright, so you're not going with that. Oh, that's hard. I think lint balls. You hate children. I if there's more variety, and there are other chocolate spreads that one can eat. Like that disgusting dark chocolate, like the Hashaha um Israeli one. Just eat that. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yeah. So your alternative is all the disgusting things. Think about all the children.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

All the children who I had to put up with the disgusting things of Kashrot in my childhood. They can handle it. And you children these days, children these days need struggle in their life. They're too weak. It's because they have so much kosher stuff. Someone just goes to Israel, brings them back kosher, kosher Nutella all the time. Yeah. No, that's stupid. They don't know struggle. Just yeah, just like have a hazelnut and a butter Cadbury. It's the same.

What Makes Food Kosher

SPEAKER_02 8:18

And just put it in your mouth at the same time. This whole Kashrut business is on my mind because we're discussing Kushroot. Today. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ashamed to admit that I hate Kashroot. Why do you hate it? No, I'm just kidding, I don't. It's just I'm ashamed of it. I don't know much about it. Okay. Beyond the stuff that you learn in primary school, beyond the there's meat, there's milk, you shouldn't have it together. Something, something about an animal's hoof. It's hoof.

unknown 8:54

Hoof?

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Hoof? I don't know. How do you pronounce hoof?

unknown 8:57

Hoof.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Something about its hoof and about it eating food and then vomiting it up again to give it to its kid.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

It's like everything you need to know.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 9:06

I yeah. Again, you've got like all of the elements, you've mixed them together. I love it. Okay, ask me your kosher question.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

So what makes food kosher?

SPEAKER_03 9:15

Oh, that's a good question. There's different um different things make different things kosher. Okay. It's pretty vague. Yeah. I'm gonna keep things as vague as I can, and then I won't get anything wrong because I didn't prepare properly. Because cash it stresses me out. Okay, so animals. Okay, what makes things animals. What kind of animals? So let's land, sea, or um, sky.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Let's start with land.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Okay. Land animals, you are correct, have to have split hooves and chew their cud. Chewing their gut cud is when they have like multiple stomachs, and part of their digestion process is like regurgitating what they've eaten, eating it again and swallowing it and back and forth. So cows apparently have like four stomachs.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Which is what I've always heard from rabbis, but never from scientists. I don't know if it's true.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Do you want me to look it up?

SPEAKER_03 10:13

Yeah, fact check. Fact check. Fact check. Pause the clock, stop the clocks. Keep talking while I look it up. Um, so yeah, so have to have um split hooves and chew their cud. Um and that's the reason why one of the reasons pigs are like, do they have four stomachs? Sloading.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Cows don't actually have multiple separate stomachs, but they have one stomach with four distinct compartments. That's four stomachs, that's enough. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Thank you, rabbis. You have not failed me today. Um, okay, so yeah, so the split hooves and they chew their cud. Okay. The reason why pigs are one of the most famously non-kosher or halal examples of an animal is because they have split hooves. Right? So visibly from the outside they look as though they could be kosher, but they don't have the chewing their cud part of things, so therefore they're not kosher. Are the animals I'm pretty sure that are the same? Cat no, camels, maybe? I don't know. I can't remember. But pigs are like famously only the split hooves, but they don't chew their cud. Okay. So they don't have four compartments in their stomach. Sure. Okay. I don't know. I I'm not a scientist. Okay. Not a pig scientist. All right. Um, so that's what like that's what makes meat kosher, the animals. Yeah, what about chicken? Chicken, oh, there's a bird. Oh, okay. Of the sky. Okay. Even though they don't fly. Right. There's a list of kosher and non-kosher birds. So that's really easy. You just look it up in the Torah, and if it says it there, you can eat it. If it doesn't say it, you can't eat it.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Do you have any idea how they got to that list in the first place? Yeah, God said, write down these birds.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

Right. Yeah. Wow. There's lots of different theories. Some of them are like the birds that aren't that are listed as not kosher tend to be. I don't know what not. It's not a war bird, but it's things like eagles and vultures, like sort of attack birds. Right. Prey birds of prey. That's what I'm thinking of. Warbirds. Warbirds. So those aren't kosher, but then chickens, dark turkey, or kosher. Okay. There aren't that many birds. And I don't think they've discovered any new birds since what was written in the Torah of the list of things you can't eat.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So like rainbow loricates?

SPEAKER_03 12:32

I don't know. I don't know if it's on the list or not. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Wouldn't you just love to get inside of God's brain and be like, what was she thinking when she put those things? Like, why hate so split hooves so much? Or like.

Why These Rules Exist

SPEAKER_03 12:46

So it's also interesting. There's three different kinds of Jewish law around and mitzvot and all of the things we keep, right? One is we do it because it's historic testimony. So we keep the laws of Pesach because it reminds us of the time in history when we escaped Egypt. So it's connected to that. One of them is Mishbat, is civil law, Mishbatim, okay, which are laws between people that make sense that you would find probably in most organized societies. And the third one is called chok, which just is like we don't know the reason. And so it's things like kashrut. We're not given explicit reason behind why we do it. The reason is God says don't eat these things. And now we're like trying to figure out why, and people are and people say it's it's healthier, right? Apparently, bacon and and pig products carcinogenic or something. Everyone's like, well, God knew it. And then the same with with seafood, right? They're the garbage of the sea because they're along the ocean floor. And everyone's like, well, God knew it. I don't know. I think also it's probably ancient Israelites are a coastal people, or a lot of them are because you know they're on the Mediterranean. And a lot of cultures around them who they were disagreeing with and fighting with were probably eating sea creatures.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

And a really big way to distinguish distinguish yourself and separate from people you don't like are the things that you eat, right? And especially in a culture that is so surrounded by community and communal eating specifically, to say I'm not eating at your house because you eat this wrong thing is like a huge thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

I've noticed that even for the people who aren't religious, who are secular Jews, they still keep certain kashrut um practices because they'd said, well, even if there wasn't God telling us what to do, it could have been that the Israelites were just like, well, that food keeps giving us food poisoning, so we're not gonna get that.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

I think it's also it's even if you don't believe in God, there is something really important about retaining cultural practice. And and food is the thing that connects us to our ancestors, right? Yeah. So I I think that it is as much an important cultural practice as it is a religious practice, which is why people draw their different lines in different places. I'm willing to go to a regular restaurant and I just won't eat the kosher meat because that's the thing that's important to me, but I'll eat a salad because that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

You know?

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

And but for some people that's not enough because there are other things that make things kosher.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Okay. So then we get to, we've covered meat, but then we've get we get to this idea that you can't have fish. Oh, sorry. But you mentioned it that the stuff at the bottom of the ocean, like so there's two different things.

Meat Milk Parev And Waiting

SPEAKER_03 15:41

There's things you can't eat, which is seafood, lobsters, prawns, eel, thing like that. Um, oysters, another example. But the fish themselves have to have fins and scales. Yeah. And so there's lots of different fish that you can figure out if they're kosher or not just by looking at them as fish. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

What about mixing you can have fish with milk, but you can't have meat with milk. Yeah. Because there's something I remember from primary school, it's offensive to cook a mother in a cook a baby in its mother's milk.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Well, it's just it's not that it's offensive, it's that's just the way that it's said in the Torah. Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk. Okay. And then the rabbis expand those laws, right? It's not just about one specific goat cooking it in one specific milk, but it's about all meat and milk products should be separate. And then you set up time like limits. So you wait six between three to six hours, usually, between eating meat and then milk. Which is why um like pariv dessert, like dairy-free desserts are so big in the Jewish community. Because if you're if you if you want ice cream after dinner, but you're having steak for dinner, you need a parv ice cream. Okay, so can you explain what pariv is to Parv is gender neutral. So you so you're non-binary. Yeah, you have um chalavi in Hebrew or milchuk in Yiddish, which just means it's dairy, and then you have fleshik or basar Yiddish in Hebrew again, if it's meaty, and then if it's neither of those things, it's pariv.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

So an example of parv is egg.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Another example of parv is tofu. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Let's play this game. Soy. Name us name something else. Quick. Jelly. Actually, it depends what it's made of. Okay. Because if it's made if it's beef gelatin, then you can't have it because it's made of beef. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Trick question. Name something else. I'll tell you. It's a fun game. So, and so you need to wait between three and six hours.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

You're supposed to wait six hours, and then somewhere along the way, some community started doing three hours, and there's one community, I think they're Dutch, wait one hour. Okay. And they're kind of the the lowest. But it's between usually three and six, is most people.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Because that's the amount of time people say it takes for your gut to digest the food.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, but it's also like ancient rabbis making this stuff right, you know, or getting it from God.

Two Kitchens In One House

SPEAKER_02 18:19

I understand. Now, in some houses of really observant people around the world, you'll see that they not only will they not mix milk and meat, they'll have two separate sets of plates, cutlery, sinks, dishwashers.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

So kosher is the the food you eat has a designated kosher, not kosher status, but also the utensils and the crockery that you use to make it can be kosher and not kosher. And they absorb the fl the flavors. Uh I'm gonna keep doing this a lot, inverted commas, right? It absorbs the the particles of meat or milk if it's you've heated something up on a plate or used it hot.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Um, but then it's really funny because heat is also applied to things like onion and garlic. Spicy things are considered heat as well. So if I chop a cold steak on a cutting board, technically that cutting board and that knife aren't meaty. But if I cut the steak and an onion at the same time, the onion's heat particles, spicy particles, cause the meaty particles to stick to the knife and the cutting board. Therefore, all of those things are now meaty.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Your eyes have glazed over halfway through.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

No, it's just another question that I think I had in the Passover episode as well, which is like, how did we get from God saying you shouldn't cook a kid in its mother's milk to you sh cannot chop an onion with meat and you can, but then you can't, and you need two dishwashers. Like, how did it get?

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Because we have been discussing things to death for like 2,000 years, and in those discussions, we turn over every hypothetical situation to figure out what to do in situations. So we have multiple books telling us exactly how to live our life from the moment we wake up to the time we go to sleep, and that involves a lot of that time, especially for women historically, has been spent in the kitchen. So it makes sense that there are a lot of rules around what to do in the kitchen. You know? I do, and I'm trying not to judge. But there's also dishwashers are a fairly new invention. Some people say you can use the dishwasher for both meat and milk, but that's only certain communities. Um people say you can use the same oven if you're wrapping all of your food in foil, that's different communities. Every Sfati Ashurazi, there's huge differences between how they keep kosher. But everyone has those fundamental samenesses. You know, it's just like the little details. Otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Shoshana, selfishly, I'm hoping you can answer a question that no one has ever been able to answer.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

Uh-oh. I do have to say, yeah, this is not a reflection on like what this episode is gonna turn out as. You look like I'm talking cash. You're just staring at me the most blank I've ever seen. It's like you took a gummy before this episode.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

I did not take a gummy. I think it's the haircut.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

I think it's You're just distracted by your own haircut. There's not even a mirror for you to be looking. We don't have a monitor. You're just thinking about your haircut. I'm that's all I'm thinking. I just thought I was like, you know, cutting steak on a board, and you're just it's slowly turning into you going, won't won?

SPEAKER_02 21:47

I'm joking about the haircut. That is, it's all of that stuff. I'm trying I try not to get too judgmental, but I'm just Oh, you just like hate it. People live their whole lives by it.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

I know. And then people have. Yeah, completely separate dishes. I think there's gonna be a huge change that we see in sort of our generations. I'm kidding, we're the same generation, but like you know, they're not micro-generationally different. People are living in smaller and smaller apartments, so it's not feasible to have two ovens and dishwashers, and it's not feasible to have two of every single dish in your house. So, like I have friends who in their apartment they only have milk, like they only eat dairy things, they don't have any meat unless they go out because they don't have the equipment or the space for it all.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

It's also very expensive to buy kosher meat.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

We don't have the houses to fit it in. The cost of kosher food keeps going up and up and up. I think we're gonna see a shift either in people relying on leniencies more than they used to, um, and like sort of doing away with how hardcore a lot of people are, or people are just gonna stop doing it because it's it's just prohibitive sometimes. Like it's really hard as young people.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

We're almost running out of time for this episode. Oh, what's your big question? You had a big question that Johnny. Which I'm relieved because I'm bored by this episode. Is that relief? Not by you.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

I'm just I said we shouldn't do cut frut. I didn't want to discuss it.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

I'm regretting this, but it's important. It's important. And a lot of people listen to this who Look, if you're bored by this episode, leave a review.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Or if you have any if you've loved this episode and are really sad that we've spent a lot of it with Tammy just being bored by, just DM me. Message me directly.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

I'm about to make this episode a thousand times less boring because I'm about to drop a Kashroot bombshell.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

And it's a family story.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Is this the question you have for me?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

No, I just thought of it now.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

Oh, okay.

A Kosher Butcher Family Bombshell

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Came back to me. Like muscle memory. Like I'm gonna be angry at you for sharing this? Maybe, yeah. Okay. So do you know that I come from a long line of kosher butchers? I didn't know that. Yeah, all the way, my grand my paternal grandfather and his brother started the first kosher butcher in Sydney.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

A lad or Hadassah? Which one?

SPEAKER_02 24:20

It was another one. It was the first one.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

What was it called? Sussman.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

It was called Susman.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Everything about this sounds like you are making it up.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

No, I'm not. It was first, but those were their comp those came later.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

The Sussman's were the first.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Okay. So my dad was kosher, kosher, kosher, kosher. Um, when he met my mum, she was not kosher. And she was like, this is too expensive. This is annoying because back then you couldn't just go to Kohl's to get your kosher meat. Yeah. And he was like, nah, like, I can't not be kosher. My dad was the first one to like not be a kosher butcher. He what's the word for when you like chopped? No, you're like, you're he broke the cycle. He broke the cycle of kosher butchers.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Of trauma, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

And then one day he's at an event with my mum. There's a butcher there who's not kosher. And he tells this guy, oh, my parents are kosher butchers, and they're talking about kosher mate. And this guy who's not a kosher butcher said there was a kosher event, kosher catered event. They ran out of meat. They called me to supply the meat. And my mum looked at my dad and said, You see, you don't even know what you're getting is kosher. And so my dad said, Fine, make the change at home, but just don't tell me when you're doing it. Like I can't know when it's happening, but I won't eat kosher.

SPEAKER_03 25:55

I want to know more about the event that took place kosher.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

I know. Isn't that a scandal? That is scandalous.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Scandal. There was a story in Montreal once of because there's also certain parts of an animal you can't eat. So you're not supposed to eat like the back hind leg. The rump. The rump, right? And there's sort of uh a nerve that runs the way through that you're not supposed to eat. It's really hard to cut around, so you just don't eat like the sort of hind leg. And apparently and you're also not supposed to benefit from non-kosher food, meaning you're not supposed to sell it to anyone else. And there was this huge thing in Montreal years and years ago, I remember hearing about they were selling their rumps to non-kosher butchers or restaurants and things like that. Good on there. And they got in so much trouble for it.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

I respect that. Anyway, the big question that I have for you, which no one has ever been able to answer.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

I'll see if I can change that.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

So you can't cook a kid in its mother's milk, but you can eat a chicken omelette when an egg is technically a chicken miscarriage. Oh, I can answer this. That is more offensive.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Chickens weren't considered meat until later on in the fact. So chicken, it used to be that chickens were designated par of. And then for whatever reason, I could not tell you the specifics. But along the way, chicken and bird meat has become become come to be considered meat, like basar or flaish. And so I my answer to you would be that they were just two par of things together. One of them was changed, like that's that's the answer. It's it's seen as like a lesser being type, like a live being type than a than a mammal.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

So can we make chickens par of again? Can we start a movement? Make chickens par of again.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Yes, no, all right.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

But do you see the logic? Like an egg is it's like a chicken, period.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

I yeah, I think that it's about, yeah, sort of trying to designate different levels of being and I guess animal intellect, if that makes sense. Right. And I think that even back in the day, rabbis could look at cows and and and feel more kinship to a cow and see it as a more complex being than, say, a chicken or fish.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

So fish is still part of it as well, right? Chick-like fish isn't considered meat either.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

You're right.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

And so I that I think that's a lot to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Do you think it's just that one rabbi formed a connection with a chicken and was like, you are smart. Do you reckon that's how it started?

SPEAKER_03 28:46

No, I don't think so. Okay. I can't remember the reason. But I also I think that it's really interesting that a lot of animals who we know to be real like we know that elephants are really, really smart. We can't eat elephants. And and octopus are really, really, really smart as well. Sorry that you you shuddered because you hate the tentacles. But also we don't eat the I think that there's maybe something connected to the idea of the complexity of the animal, the complexity of their thought. Gonna get angry vegan emails. All animals are smart, all animals have complex inner loves. How dare you!

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Do you know any South African vegans?

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Yeah, like probably like one.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

I just in my voice, in my head, like the angry complaining voice is a South African one.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

We are cutting that out. Why? Because we will lose even more followers.

SPEAKER_03 29:37

What do you mean? I say that with all the love in my heart.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

No, you don't.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

Yeah, I do. We're cutting that out.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Alright.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Um, I double dare you to leave it in. I double dog dare you leave it in.

Shame In The Shtetl Half Coke

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Alright, looks like I'm leaving it in. Yeah. It's time for our favorite segment. Shame in the Steddel.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Oh, okay, nice. Today's That was ASMR for paper.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Thank you. You're welcome. Um, today's screenshot. This is my favorite. Comes not from a Facebook group, but we're branching out to WhatsApp groups.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

So this is from a WhatsApp group in a suburb of a state in a country, what we call us.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

I'm if I get kicked out of this group, I'm leaving the podcast. So we are anonymizing this to the max. This takes place, this may or may not take place in a country, state, and suburb.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

In a magical land. Okay. And what what's what was the group set up for?

SPEAKER_03 30:44

The group is set up as a buy-cell swap group. And so you can post anything you have that you want to get rid of from your home, and someone will come and collect it, probably. Sometimes they pay for it, sometimes they'll just take it. Okay. Um, but because they're Jews, it's just that is it a Jewish group? Yeah. Because it's it's so it's a it's anything. Sunglasses, if you have a pair of sunglasses, I have a bag I'm getting rid of, tables, chairs, whatever it is. But then sometimes because it's Jews, people go crazy. So one the other day was like um that someone sent me a photo of was uh like a half jar of cream, like like hand cream recently opened, not very used. Or I've seen ones before that people have shown me of like medication, only one taken out, no longer needed. And I'm like, oh my god. Anyway, this one's my personal favorite that I've seen.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

What is it?

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Half bottle of coke free pickup from Anonymous Jewish suburb.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Why? Why is someone giving away half a bottle of coke?

SPEAKER_03 31:48

I love it because it is in fact half, and then there's also a photo attached of half a bottle of coke. I love it because coke for me is one of the things that it goes bad if you don't drink it really. It goes non-fizzy after a while. So it's just it's a tick and time bomb.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

So you don't think this is a joke?

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Oh no, this is 1000% serious.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

I thought it was a joke. I thought someone's trolling this route.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

No, I've seen before, people have sent me photos of half a tray of chicken cutlets cooked on a barbecue and someone else has taken it. Try a cooked hot dogs. I didn't eat them all at the party. Someone's taken it.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Is it a Jewish thing? Because we don't have to be a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

One time I went and picked something up from someone's house because of one of these groups, and I think it was it was like a bag of cucumbers that they had bought too many or something, and I was like, Yeah, I'll make some pickles. And then they messaged me, they're like, Hey, I also got too much garlic. Do you want some? So then they just added the garlic in for free.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

I went to their house and just it was on their doorstep. I loved it. It always looks like you're robbing someone, you just like go into their front yard, like, yink, and then walk away. I love it. But they do get crazy. This is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah, this is absolutely crazy. How do you you don't know if one of the kids in this household hasn't taken a swig straight from the bottle? It's true.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

That's just the risk that you have to be willing to take in a buy sell swap group, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Thank you so much for listening. That's it for today's show.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

You've been watching andor listening to Asham to Admit with me, Shoshana Gottly Becker, and this person, Tammy Sussman, from a long line of kosher butchers.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

This episode was brought to you by the Jewish Independent with Aliway Productions. The vocalist in our theme song is Saria L More credits in the show notes. More? More half bottles of Coke in the show notes.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, share it around and give it a positive review.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Send it to the people at DJA Kosha Products.

SPEAKER_03 34:01

And say, hey, I think you should sponsor this podcast.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Thank you so much, and see you next week. Bye. Bye.