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Coming Soon: Kosher Ham?

AP

Illustration Photo

Israel’s chief rabbi Yona Metzger is bringing home the bacon. His office says it is primed to allow import of an organic goose grown in Spain that tastes like pork. Metzger says three non-Jewish chefs confirm its swinish flavor. Jewish dietary law strictly forbids eating pork. Metzger’s office says there is no Jewish injunction against eating goose, no matter what it tastes like, as long as it is slaughtered according to Jewish ritual.

Secular Israelis have long enjoyed pork at non-kosher restaurants. “Kosher pork” would open new flavors to the observant.

Spokesman Avi Blumenthal said Metzger is eager to begin the importing as soon as the geese reach slaughtering weight. He said the rabbi would see that it passes “all the rabbinical kosher authorities to make sure it gets to Israel.”

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24 Comments

  • malcab

    we have already in the kosher –

    tufu ice cream
    tufu cream cheese
    tufu sour cream

    its not crab
    its not shrimp
    its not lobster

    so – kosher ham was expected
    but – who needs it

  • shlomie

    the gemarah all ready told us in chulin “ma deasur lan rachmanah sharah lun kavusay”!!, i guess there is more to the list!

  • This is a Terrible Idea

    The idea of kashrus was set out to act as a means to distinguish between the Jewish people and the other nations! Creating these type of foods, while they are kosher, bridges the gap further..

  • yossi

    #4
    To give non-religious jews a chance to eat kosher food that taste like pork instead of real pork

  • Yossi

    #4
    If someone is struggling to become a bal teshuvah but finds it hard to give up pork in the begining they will have a kosher pork substitute

  • ccc

    its very odd to me. If I got it free, I would not eat it.
    if it tastes like treif, then it might be intrinsically kosher, but its personality is not kosher.

  • declasse- intellectual

    How many years too late. There was a product on the market for begitarians and others such as the seventh day Adventists
    called Whamo. If people are that deperate and willing to pay the money so be it.
    Now the up and coming items besides buffalo meat and deer meat is soon to be kosher elk meat.-

  • When Pigs fly???

    Maybe that’s what it means when it says that when Moshiach comes Pig will become kosher. I would love to see the source for that btw. Is it Midrash, Gemara does anyone here know?

  • Milhouse

    #5 and #10, you have a serious problem with your hashkofoh. If something is kosher then it’s kosher. End of story. Food doesn’t have a “personality”. A chicken that was not shechted is no less forbidden than chazer. There’s nothing at all wrong with treif except that Hashem chose to forbid it; He could just as easily have forbidden celery and then that would be treif. We’re told that chazer is called that precisely because Hashem will one day return it to us; what will you say on that day?

    In the meantime Hashem created substitutes that taste like the things He forbade. There is nothing that is forbidden, for which Hashem didn’t create a substitute to give us a similar experience in a permitted way. Why would He do that if the experience was to be avoided? Not for the sake of baalei teshuvah, or for “kiruv”! He did it because He created olam hazeh for us to enjoy, and this is one of the enjoyments He created in it, so He wants us to have a kosher way to do so (or an opportunity for iskafiya by denying it to ourselves, or by delaying it).

  • Esty B.

    This is not for me & my family. Probably very expensive just for curiosity of the taste of pork.

  • Batya C.

    Re_pig_nant

    Before I started becoming baal tshuva, my kitchen was treif, except for one thing. I didn’t buy non-kosher meat to cook. (I guess it was ingrained in me because my mom has always been “semi-kosher” and always bought kosher meat to cook.}
    One day a friend asked me, “Aren’t you being a little hypocritical? I go to a great butcher shop with really fine meat, open on Saturday,too, and their meat is less expensive than kosher.” So I I took her advice and went there. As I stepped in the shop, I couldn’t understand why my heart was pounding so hard. Something didn’t feel right. I looked at the showcases of nice-looking ground beef, steaks, etc. Then I proceeded to peruse the non-refrigerated items on the shelves. THERE IT WAS: a large can of HAM sitting on the top shelf. My gut reaction was: flee. And I did. I never went back again.

    When I read this article, it immediately brought that experience to mind again. It made me feel literally sick.

    All I can say is shame on the Yidden who okayed this “kosher” ham to be put on the market. Why promote selling a product that stands for everything a Torah-true Jew is not!

  • oink-honk honk-oink

    HOW WAS THIS ACHIEVED? Were some stem cells infused into the goose’s egg while still in her body? If so the change of taste at first glance would seem to indicate that botul would not apply. Something radical was dinr to drive out the normal taste of goose and infuse the pig taste. Is this pigoose or goospig or whatever a result of mixing the cells of different species? Do all modern poskim agree that this result is kosher? How many have weighed in on this issue? I know that there was a kinus some years ago that touched on new genetic possibilities, but I don’t know how this reflects in halacha l’misa. Also since there is a halachic requirement that we have a kaballa that a particular fowl is acceptable even when all simonim are met, would this new goose-looking pig-tasting creature qualify as a goose for those whose family kaballa includes goose as acceptable?

    As for the emotional aspect -feh!!!!But that’s not halacha- let’s not forget parave ice cream after a fleshik meal, or baco-bits, or parave cheese or fake crab,, etc etc. For myself, I can wait, but the halichic questions are fascinating.

  • CR

    From what I hear from my office mates the flavor of ham is more due to the curing process than the meat itself. IOW, you could take any kosher meat and spice it so it tastes exactly the same as the “original”. There has already been “kosher ham” made from turkey for a while. Similarly, there is kosher “crabmeat” made from pollock or haddock fish. And so on.

    Grow up, people. The Gemara says that there is kosher food that tastes the same as any issur. Now we have concrete examples. The upright among us can eat and enjoy!

  • Simple Jew

    The issue is not eating the goose, but selling it under the title of immitation-ham, which is disregarded by the majority.

    Such as “immitation-crab” sushi.
    Were they to sell haddock fish sushi (without the treif reference) it would easily be justified, but to sell it as crab-flavored by name is an impropriety.

    To elucidate, imagine a shadchanit promoting the frum Jewish women they are trying to setup with the term “immitation zonahs”…

    It can be oversimplified, but it doesn’t taste so simple.

  • Super Dave

    I am in no way Jewish, raised in a “Christian” family, yet i have a great respect for the wisdom of Kosher tradition. Anyone can understand the comfort of eating foods one grew-up eating and for me there were quite a few recipes my mother prepared using various types of pork. Now as an adult i understand the value of eating kosher and though i no longer eat pork there are some recipes i would like to “re-visit” and as always i look for the best kosher “alternative” to those “non-kosher” ingredients.
    We are all human stuck on this rock and go back far enough we all come from the same Man so if one wills to better his choices, who has the right to say he is not worthy? To me it is not about rejecting bad choices as it is about making better ones.