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Re: Dietary Customs of Jains
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To: alt-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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Subject: Re: Dietary Customs of Jains
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From: rotter@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Nora Rotter)
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Date: 31 Mar 1995 04:46:38 GMT
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From news@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu Fri Mar 31 01: 11:38 1995
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Newsgroups: alt.hindu
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Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
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References: <3lfila$e94@ucunix.san.uc.edu>
In <3lfila$e94@ucunix.san.uc.edu> vivek@cs.rice.edu (Vivek Sadananda Pai)
writes:
>tailor@crl.com (Victor Schneider) writes:
>>Actually, the original injunctions about Jewish kashrut in Genesis are
>>vegetarian and follow the Jainist philosphy. Contemporary Jewish kashrut
>>derives from the belief that the later injunctions in Exodus and elsewhere
>>supercede those in Genesis, which are much stricter.
As a Jew who keeps kosher, I am curious to find out what these passages
are. I am acquainted with a number of the original verses in the Torah
regarding dietary law, but had figured most of them to be in Leviticus.
>I don't know if it's widely known outside of Hinduism, but strict
>vegetarian Hindus also don't eat onions and garlic, just as strict
>Jains avoid it. The reasoning is different in the two cases. For the
>Hindus, these foods are in the "mode of passion" whereas for the
>Jains, it's because of the "food for the bugs" argument.
I might also add that a vaguely similar concept exists within kashrut
(Jewish dietary law). Vegetables are considered pareve, or neutral,
foods. In fact, one may cut a cold carrot with a meat knife, but the
carrot is still neutral. However, hot or spicy foods, or vegeatables such
as garlic can be more easily "charged" as meat or milk. So, other
religions consider these strong-tasting vegetables to also be different
from their blander kin.
>So here's where I found out "the hard way". As you mentioned earlier,
>Jewish thought on this topic changes over time. It seems that now, many
>Rabbis accept "sufficiently processed" food as being Kosher. So, it's
>OK to mix meat-derived products and milk, so long as the meat-derived
>product has little resemblance to meat. I believe that products
>containing gelatin are now marked Kosher by some companies, using this
>logic.
Whoa! Let's clarify this admittedly murky point in kashrut! The
_Conservative_ movement has permitted all gelatin to be eaten. The
_Orthodox_ insist upon gelatin derived from _kosher_ animals slaughtered
according to Halacha (Jewish religious law). Rennet from stomach lining
has been permissible according to the reasoning above (that it is
modified enough to no longer be meat). Yet it still _does_ matter as to
what animal died and how it died to the Orthodox and also to traditional
Conservatives (saying "conservative Conservatives" is a real mouthful!)
>>>than any knowledge I have about Jainism. I've been to (Hindu) houses where
>>>there was a "meat" set and a "clean" set of dishes, and only the latter
>>>was used for religious events, etc.
:-) I used to joke that there were some Jewish homes with 3 sets of
dishes: milk, meat, and treyf (meaning unkosher). Seriously though, I
own five catagories of cooking and eating utensils (I won't say sets,
because that would imply that I have five versions of everythin, which I
don't):
1. Regular dairy
2. Regular meat
3. Some pareve cooking utensils (this way I can cook some pareve items and
keep them neutral)
then there are dishes used for Passover, which is its own creature so I
won't get into it other than to say that for traditional Jews, it
requires a whole different set of dishes.
1. Passover dairy
2. Passover neutral
I don't own Passover meat because I was really broke when I started
observing Passover more structly and so I couldn't afford meat much less
a whole new set of dishes.
>I'd be interested in hearing more about what you've found on this issue.
>I hope my fellow readers on this newsgroup would be tolerant about
>hearing about it as well, since I believe that interfaith dialogue can
>prove to be valuable.
I agree and I would be very interested to hear further on Hindu dietary
Laws. I really didn't mean to spend so much bandwidth here on kashrut,
but I did want to clarify some points. Hopefully what I have posted will
inspire further discussion. I have some questions as well:
are there times of year where Hindu dietary law becomes modified within
the context of a festival (ie., Jews not eating leaven during Passover,
Catholics eating vegeatarian during Lent)?
Are there any rituals involved with the preparations of food? May a
Hindu eat food prepared by a non-Hindu?
Are all Hindu sects strictly vegetarian in theory, or are there some that
say that chicken or fish is OK? Are there also notions of waiting
periods between kinds of foods?
Thanks!
Nora Rotter
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