The Jews added more restrictions to their diet to keep up with technology and keep their women busy to take their minds off the men’s circumcised penis.
There are a lot of details, but these are the basics:
- You can't eat certain animals at all, including organs, eggs, and milk of the forbidden animals.
- Birds and mammals must be killed according to Jewish law.
- All blood must be drained from meat and poultry before it's eaten.
- You can't eat certain parts of animals at all.
- You must inspect fruits and vegetables for bugs before you eat them.
- You can't eat meat and dairy together. You can eat fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and grains with either meat or dairy.
- Utensils that touch meat can't touch dairy (and vice versa).
- Utensils and cooking surfaces that touch hot, non-kosher food can't touch kosher food.
- You can't eat any grape products made by anybody who isn't Jewish.
Kosher Food Categories
It starts out simple. Kosher foods fall into three categories: meat, dairy, and "pareve," sometimes spelled "parve." Fish and poultry are sometimes included in pareve.
Meat. The Torah says kosher meat can only come from animals that have split hooves and chew their cud, like cows, sheep, and goats. When these animals eat, partially digested food (cud) returns from the stomach for them to chew again. Pigs, for example, have split hooves, but they don’t chew their cud, so pork isn’t kosher.
Kashrut law also governs the method of slaughter and processing, and the slaughterhouse equipment. Meat isn’t kosher if the animal dies naturally. Certain parts of an animal, including types of fat, nerves, and all of the blood, are never kosher.
Dairy. All dairy products, like milk, butter, yogurt, and cheese, must come from a kosher animal. All ingredients and equipment used to produce it have to be kosher, too.
Pareve. This is the category for kosher foods that aren't meat or dairy. It covers everything from eggs and fish to fruits, vegetables, pasta, coffee, and packaged foods.
There are multiple layers of laws beneath these three. Here are just a few:
You can't eat milk and meat products at the same time, put them on the same dishes, or prepare or eat them with the same utensils. You also have to wait a certain amount of time to eat milk after meat and vice versa.
Not all cheeses are kosher. That's because many are made with an enzyme called rennet that comes from the stomachs of cows. Kosher cheese can't have animal-based rennet.
