Thermite:
The essence of Kosher meat has a couple of basic principals:
1. to insure that people consuming the meat would not be eating meat which might cause diseases. For this reason, pork and shellfish were on the prohibited list.
2. to minimize suffering to the animals being slaughtered.
These requirements were detailed in the Old Testament, and are enforced to this day when animals are slaughtered and butchered for kosher meat. I personally take a bit of exception to the fact that modern day kosher slaughtering still relies on the use of a sharp knife to cut the animals' throats. I take the view that the intent of the laws of Kashruth (kosher food requirements) were based on the 'best available practices' in Biblical times. In modern times, less painful and quicker methods of slaughtering have come into being, and if the spirit of the Kashruth laws is to be upheld, the slaughtering practices should move with the times.
Kosher killing has a number of well-defined requirements:
A rabbi with a special qualification for slaughtering, known in Hebrew as a 'Schochet' is the only person who can kill livestock for kosher meat. The schochet follows some requirements which are detailed in the Old Testament:
1. The animal, if a male, must not have any damage to its genital organs. Hence, steers cannot be killed for kosher meat.
2. The animal must be 'free from blemish' and not diseased.
3. A cow that has recently calved or is carrying a calf cannot be slaughtered.
4. Slaughtering must be done in the quickest, most humane way, with minimized suffering for the animal being slaughtered. In Biblical times, this mean using a sharp
knife to cut the throat. The knife has its own requirements, and must be 'sharp and free from nicks or damage to the blade' so that a quick and clean cut can be
made.
5. Before slaughtering the animal, the schochet chants a blessing and prayer thanking God for giving this animal for meat.
6. Once the animal is dead, the schochet is then required to examine the internal organs and viscera for signs of disease. If any signs of disease are found, the
animal cannot be used for meat for human consumption.
7. Once the animal carcass has been inspected and passed by the schochet it must be bled out. The ancient laws of Kashruth (the maintaining of Kosher requirements)
prohibit the consumption of meat that has not been bled out.
8. Once the carcass has been bled out, the butchers can get to work on it. Kosher butchers' knives, saws, cleavers, etc have either never contacted unkosher meat or are
'made kosher' by boiling in water, or by being heated to a red heat in a fire (such as grates or grilles). Similarly, meat hooks, pans, racks, work tables, meat
grinders, bandsaws, butcher blocks, etc all have to be made kosher before kosher using in the production of kosher meat. Slaughter houses, meat packing plants,
and kosher buthers or kosher poultry markets all have regular inspections by another rabbi known as a "Meshkiach". This is an inspection by a rabbi authorized
to make the inspections, and he has a registry number and presents a certificate of his inspection. Usually, on kosher foods packaged for sale, there will be a
notation of this inspection and who the Meshkiach was who performed the inspection.
Interestingly, Muslims can consume Kosher meat as it has been slaughtered in accordance with their own Halal requirements. Observant Jews, on the other hand, cannot consumer Halal meats. In the Muslim religion, a slaughterer sanctioned by their own religious requirements does the slaughtering. Muslim friends of mine have told me that, in the case where no such slaughterer is available, a lay person can slaughter animals under Halal requirements. They say a blessing and prayer, and do the slaughtering in the same manner as Kosher meat is slaughtered. When Muslims take an airline trip, it is not uncommon for them to request kosher meals for this same reason.
As for burials, Jewish custom is to return the body to the earth as it came into this life. No embalming, no fine clothes, no makeup, no viewing. The body is stripped of any adornments, and carefully washed by members of the synagogue's burial society (or by an undertaker following Jewish customs). Burial must occur within 24 hours of death, except when death occurs on the Sabbath or on a high Holiday (Rosh Hashonah or Yom Kippur). A member of the congregation usually sits up with the body on that last night above ground. The body is wrapped in a plain shroud, and a casket made of unfinished plain lumber is used. No hardware or adornments on the casket other than a Star of David carved into the wood of the lid, and no metal fasteners- dowelled or dovetailed joints are used on orthodox Jewish caskets. Holes are drilled in the bottom of the casket to speed natural decomposition of the corpse. Burials are done by the family and congregants, and the casket goes right into the earth without a burial vault. The family of the deceased, as mourners, cast the first shovels of earth into the grave, followed by the rest of the people attending the funeral. When all present have cast shovels of earth into the grave, several of the people present usually take up the shovels and fill the grave up to the grade line. Done it myself countless times. After that, the old Jewish tradition is to have a drink of whisky or Slivovitz at the graveside and then leave without looking back. Under Jewish law, it is forbidden to visit a grave of a loved one for one year from date of death. The principal being to observe a customary period of mourning, but get on with their lives.
Burials in the mideast are even more in keeping with biblical traditions. The corpses are wrapped in shrouds and placed on wood boards. No caskets are used. The corpse is placed in a shallow grave, but a cairn of stones is then built up around and over the corpse.
I've been spending a couple of days each week doing repairs to the original ornamental steel fence at our congregation's cemetery. After 100 years, a lightly built pre-fab ornamental steel fence was showing the effects of winters, hits from mowing and snow removal equipment, and general age. I've been replacing the fence posts, welding in new posts and bracing and making new welded connections between the fence sections. It's peaceful work, and the graves of a number of old friends are nearby.
In our Catskills, the soil is a hardpan or glacial till- clay soil shot with rocks and occasional outcroppings. When we have a burial, we get a load of screened load delivered and dumped next to the open grave. This is to allow the mourners to shovel in earth free from cobbles. The sound of earth thudding on a hollow wood casket is unmistakeable, and a good sized cobble could well bust right through the lid of a casket.
One winter, with subzero temperatures, the gravedigger went to open a grave as one of our congregants had died. He scored the frozen ground with a masonry saw and went at it with a backhoe. Broke a tooth or two on the bucket of the hoe in the process. Another burial had the gravedigger hitting rock outcrop unexpectedly. He tried scoring it with a diamond masonry saw, but being winter, the water for cooling the blade froze up. This wound up costing him a diamond blade. We were able to scratch out just enough space to get the casket to depth, and he and I had to carefully jockey the casket into that grave. On yet another burial, one of our older congregants, well into his nineties, died. His wife had died a couple of years previously. We opened the grave and between rain and all else, the earth alongside the wife's casket started sloughing into the opened grave, exposing the casket. As if this were not bad enough, the weight of the soil had collapsed the lid and opened the corner of the casket such that we could see a bit of the corpse in its shroud. Nothing to do but get down in the grave and take some cardboard to close the casket and pack some earth up around it. The husband's burial went off without any further hitches.
In the Jewish religion, one of the highest forms of 'good deeds' (known as Mitzvot) which a Jew can perform is that of seeing a fellow Jew to their final rest. This is a good deed which the recipient cannot repay. I tend to joke that my own mortal remains will one day be hauled feet first through cemetery gates I build and planted along a fence I've welded on and repaired. We all get there some day, and creeping up on 70 years of age, I feel comfortable in confronting my own mortality- which, according to the Old Testament- is 'three score and ten years' afforded to a man, and more years if he is of exceptional vigor. I figure if I can put in a good day's work at the cemetery, I hope I am exhibiting the necessary vigor as I reach the 'three score and ten years' this September.
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