If you are 'kosher', what does that mean? How does it effect what food you can eat?

Question

I was watching Hogan Knows Best and Linda baked cookies to give out to her new neighbours in Miami and a few of the houses she went to would not accept her cookies because they were 'kosher'. What does that mean? And what food CAN they eat if they can't eat Linda's home-baked cookies?

They said something about Jewish people...are Jewish people all kosher? What does kosher mean?!

Answer 1

A cookie has butter in it. Kosher cooking seperates meat utensils from dairy cooking utensils. Some people take it even further and have two seperate ovens. If a cookie has been made using utensils that are also used to touch meat (eg, mixing bowls, spoons etc)even if the utensils are clean, it is not kosher.

Some jews are very very kosher, others pick and choose.

Answer 2

In the context of cookies, if they are kosher it means they aren't made with yeast (leavened).  Jewish people eat matzo crackers which taste like cardboard, they're like water biscuits.

Kosher food is food which Judaism allows Jews to eat.  There are specific rules in the 'Torah', the first 5 books in the old testament.  There used to be good health reasons but these days they're outdated.  For animals, they need to be slaughtered in a specific way whilst a rabbi prays, it's a symbolic sacrifice to Yahweh and animals with cloven hooves and seafood aren't allowed (at one time pigs etc and seafood was far more likely to cause illness).

Halal is the muslim equivalent, but an Imam needs to pray.

There are varying degrees of extremity, I've known Jews who ate bacon when no-one was looking, at the other end of the spectrum there are jews who won't open the fridge or a tin can of food on Sabbath.

Kosher salt on the other hand has nothing to do with Jews; it's just a grade of salt which at one time jews used to preserve meat, these days it's just coarse-ground salt.

Answer 3

the main idea of preparing kosher (but also halal) food was not a bad one but like with so many things it has been taken to extremes and has been made to fit certain groups or interests.

what one can eat or not, or how food should be prepared, wiki can give a much better answer than i can obn the space here.

I am of German origin, not jewish, but have a certificate that i am allowed to cook and prepare kosher food. it took me a while to do it, but if you work with a little bit common sense it is not to difficult.

and you don't have to be jewish to enjoy gefillte fish, kugel or kreplach...

On many occasions when we were doing big kosher functions we ahd to set up an "extra" room and all the things were there that were not supposed to be. Vodka is ALWAYS kosher and so is a good WHISKEY but only the more expensive brands...

No problem for me, only why to pretend and than do it how it suits you, anyway.

Answer 4

appropriate for the occasion.

Answer 5

I honestly think you know

But you do the work

I found the information

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

You should post in the social & culture section

wow  this it is so sad

think > >  there are social cultures who will - - can - not change their upbrining from thousands of years  ago

BECAUSE their leaders said God said  thousands of years ago then their leaders discovered sanitation,.. but being radical extreamists.. applied their human ideas to physilogy and simple chemestry along with an extream reverence to honor the animal. Aggghaaaa..

Kosher> > many views,, the fear God will spoil the hunt..  Maybe God would curse the tribe,..any time religion refuses to accept nonsense of the real world..???

Sorry no one can point out 2000 thousand years ago there was NO America..  

there was no refrigeration..

many plagues still continued until the alchemey was accepted ..

OK - - Please look at this site's home page..

there is a drawing of a steer in the lower left corrner

any intelegent educated person that understands physical biology knows the blood has no preference to front shoulder or the ham Only a human could call the rear end dirty..

I know my God makes NO dirty animals for food not even the pig... No dirt passes from the intestines to blood just fluides

Answer 6

Kosher means that the food has been approved by the head Jewish guy. It doesn't go against any of their diet rules.

Answer 7

Generally, it means that they can't with things that are taken out of animals with cloven hooves. There's a big list of things that are Kosher in the link. I dont think that it will have offended them, if you have trouble picturing it from what I've heard its a very similair situation as being a Vegan.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher

Answer 8

Just enter the word "Kosher" in Google, and all the information about it is there - go to "Kosher Food" for the answers you want.

Answer 9

Kosher literally comes from a Biblical word meaning "fit" or "proper." Although the rules require many, many years of study in order to master, in brief:

1. Animals must have split hooves and chew their cud AND be slaughtered according to rather complex rules.

                        2. Birds must be from a list originating in the Bible, but transmitted via tradition AND slaughtered according to slightly less complex rules.

                        3. No food may contain any admixture of a dairy product and any meat products.

I suggest the work: THIS IS MY G-D by the novelist Herman Wouk for a good explanation of these laws in English.

Answer 10

Eating kosher means many things, and yes Jewish people eat kosher. The reason for this is to eat "clean" foods. There are many things that determine the kosh*ivity? of food. Check out the wiki page on it, its actually pretty interesting.