The Big and Small: Kashrut Revisited Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg Beth Am Synagogue 1.4.14 ~ Parashat Bo 5774
The Big and Small: Kashrut Revisited Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg Beth Am Synagogue 1.4.14 ~ Parashat Bo 5774 This week, in Parashat Bo, includes a description of the final three plagues. The first of these, then, is the eighth. I’ll save you the trouble of counting them off in your head and tell you it’s locusts. Much has been written about each of the plagues. Even now, in the dead of winter, the Pesach story is quite compelling as the Jewish people’s formative story. So, the plague of Arbeh is discussed and debated. But a question rarely asked, at least in normative Jewish circles, is the following: are these locusts kosher? The answer, a very Jewish one, is “maybe.” Sephardic and Mizrahi communities, like the Yemenites, have been eating locusts for centuries. Ashkenazi authorities are less clear since their ranks have not seen the expertise required to distinguish kosher locusts from other species of insect. All this came to a head last year in Israel when neighboring Egypt experienced a literal plague of locusts in March, and the swarms began to make their way into Israel, a concern to local farmers. But some Israeli chefs were enamored of the whole thing, cooking up the bugs and serving the rare kosher delicacy. Chef Moshe Basson of Eucalyptus Restaurant was one doing so. His restaurant is known for serving Biblical foods (which are delicious if you’ve never been there). He told The Guardian: “They taste something between sunflower seeds and baby shrimps…I like them, but they’re desired not because they are delicious but because they are rare.” Yum.
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