These are the regulations concerning animals, birds, every living thing that moves in the water and every creature that moves about on the ground. You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.
Leviticus 11:46-47 (NIV)
Throughout my life I’ve been blessed with good food and great cooks around me! I consider food to be one of God’s most wonderful creations – what better than to get around the table with family or friends and enjoy together some great tasty food with some good conversation? And if you’re not convinced about that, I’m sure I could come up with a sound Biblical argument in its favour!
Growing up in a Jewish family definitely had some advantages and good food was one of them; much of what we did as a family centred around preparing, cooking and eating good food. My mum was very strict about keeping to the dietary laws as originally laid out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 of the Bible and further developed by the Rabbis. The main regulations can be divided into three areas:-
• the distinction between permitted and prohibited animals, fish,
birds, reptiles and insects.
• the prohibition against eating blood.
• the prohibition against the mixing of meat and milk.
From an early age I learnt that these rules were not to be broken and my mum had everything in place to ensure there were no violations. She bought all her meat and poultry only from Jewish butchers who came under the supervision of the ‘Beth-Din’ which ensured that, not only was the meat strictly kosher, but also that it had been prepared by the hallowed method of shechitah - a swift cut by a razor-sharp knife - which Jews believe to be the most painless means of slaughtering the animal. Most of the blood would then be drained but even so, my mum would then kasher the meat – render it perfectly pure from blood. She would soak it in water for half an hour, then cover it all over with salt and allow it to remain for an hour and then rinse it with fresh water. She also kept separate sets of crockery and cutlery for meat and milk foods.
There was no chance of breaking the rules inside our house, but outside was another matter (and I blame this on the bad influence of my elder brother!). We would frequently sneak out to the local Wimpy Bar (Wimpy preceded McDonalds in the UK back in the 60s) and devour very non-kosher hamburgers. Even worse would be cheeseburgers – not only non-kosher but also a mix of meat and milk – if she ever would have found out, I doubt I’d still be alive now to tell the story!
Fortunately now under the new covenant, there’s no longer the need to abstain from eating anything for religious reasons (1 Cor 10:25; 1 Tim 4:1-4) while it’s still important to be sensitive to others so as not to offend (Rom 14:14-15). The harder challenge now is to distinguish between what’s clean and unclean in all aspects of life and to keep it ‘kosher’ in our hearts and minds rather than in our mouths and stomachs.
DetailsLarry
February 14th, 2008
3 Responses to “Down2Earth: 9. Clean or Unclean?”
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February 29th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I can’t seem to find an e-mail for you. I would love to speak with you further about checking out a site that I created. Maybe we could trade links. Please feel free to e-mail me to discuss.
Thanks.
JV
http://www.godsurfer.com
March 6th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
hi Jeff, sorry about the delay in getting back to you. If you click on the ‘threedays team’ at the top of the home page and then scroll down to my entry, you’ll see my email there - feel free to contact me.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am
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