History of Kosher Laws (Kashrut)

The word kosher is Hebrew for ‘fit’ and thus the laws of kashrut govern what foods are ‘fit’ or permissible for Jewish people to eat.

As Jews we have been governed by these rules since G-d first commanded the Israelites to follow them when they were wandering in the Sinai desert. The basic laws were imparted to Moses on Mount Sinai and are contained in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

These rules include details of the land and sea animals that we are allowed to eat as well as those that should be avoided. For instance, amongst the kosher laws found in the Torah is the stipulation to only eat ‘beasts of the earth’ that have cloven hooves and chew the cud.

There is also an ethical dimension to the kosher laws in the Torah. Notably we are told not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk the reason presumably being that it would be unkind to do so.

Over the ensuing generations rabbis formulated an additional set of guidelines to help put the laws of the Torah into practice. These can be found in the Talmud and Mishnah and include instructions about how to remove blood from meat by both soaking it in water and adding salt to it. This enables us to refrain from eating the blood of an animal as commanded by the Torah.

Although the history of kosher laws can be traced back to the exodus from Egypt, the debate surrounding them is very much alive in the modern world. This is partly because the advert of new technologies often provokes questions about how they should impact on the practice of kosher laws. For instance, there are particular rules relating to metal, glass, fine porcelain and earthenware. However, there are no laws concerning Pyrex which was a twentieth century ‘discovery’.

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