What is Kosher Meat?
After writing about different standards in Kashrus, one of my readers asked me to clearly define what is kosher meat, in particular what is Chalak Bait Yosef, and do Ashkenazim eat Chalak Bait Yosef and from Sefardi Kashrut Organizations.
Kosher Meat
In order to be Kosher meat there are several requirements:
1) The meat has to come from a “Kosher animal” as delineated in the Torah, the Jewish Bible, and in the codes. Which are they? The short answer is cows, sheep, and goats. The Torah also lists seven other animals, like deer, giraffe, antelope, etc. However, in the Ashkenazic community we have a custom that we only eat from those species for which we have a tradition that the previous generations actually ate from them.
2) The animal has to be slaughtered in the method prescribed by the Torah, called Shechita (pronounced sh’kheeta). I went into this in moderate depth in an article on a different blog. For the article, and for my take on anti-shechita ideologists you can see the article here at Jewish Kosher Foods. Any deviation from any of the details of shechita could render the animal not Kosher.
3) The animal has to be free from any specific defects or wounds which are delineated in the Talmud in the third chapter of Chullin, and in the codes in Yoreh Deah toward the beginning. Like, for example, a hole in the foodpipe, a sliced windpipe, a hole in the heart through to the inner chambers, a hole in the lung, and others. Practically speaking, most of these defects or wounds are not common enough so that Jewish law requires to check all of the organs and limbs, with one major exception — the lungs. The presence of adhesions in the lung can render an animal a “Treifa,” not Kosher, either because it indicates a hole which has not closed completely, or that it can pull and strain and develop into a hole. And such adhesions are not uncommon.
Besides the three points above, several other things have to be done to the meat to make it ready for the consumer:
a) The blood, which is forbidden to eat, has to be removed either by salting or by roasting, as delineated in the Shulchan Aruch. There are special laws regarding the liver, but I choose not to go into that in this article.
b) Prior to the salting, certain blood vessels have to be removed or cut, and certain parts of the animal must be removed, mainly forbidden fats.
Now, back to the lungs: Most adhesions in the lungs render the animal “not Kosher.” If there are no adhesions, and the lungs are smooth, then the animal is called “Chalak” (smooth in Hebrew) or “Glatt” (smooth in Yiddish), “Glatt Kosher.”
It became accepted in the Ashkenazic community a ruling that if the adhesion can be peeled off carefully by someone who has both technical expertise and also extra religious piety, and the is lung tested afterwards, then the animal can be rendered “Kosher,” but not “Glatt.” Additionally, the Askenazic community adopted a tradition that if there are only one or two small easily pealable adhesions then the animal is still “Glatt.”
The author of the Shulchan Aruch, (the main body of Jewish law used today), the Bait Yosef, never accepted these leniencies. Therefore for meat to be “Kosher” it has to be Glatt. (I mention on the side that this dispute only regards older animals. Veal and lamb have to be “Glatt” according to everybody).
Therefore, at first glance, any meat that is Kosher for the Sefardic community should perforce be Kosher also for the Ashkenazic community. However, this is only in respect to the third aspect, that of defects or wounds. On the other hand, the Shechita should be more or less identical for both communities.
So do Ashkenazim eat meat from Sefardic Hechsherim? My answer: I don’t know that they don’t, however it seems to me that not.
After I repeat that which I prefaced earlier, that I don't know my right from my left regarding the faults and weaknesses that people find with the various Kashrus organizations, I can tell you the following: When I was learning Shechita some 12-14 years ago, my teacher told me that he had a job working in a certain Shechita plant, where in a given afternoon he would work for three different Kashrut organizations. For example, from 2-3 he worked for one Hechsher, and then at three the supervisors and the inspectors of that Hechsher left and a new group of supervisors and inspectors came in. All the same Shochtim, the same staff, the same lung-checkers, and so forth. For an hour until 4. Then from 4 to 5 still another Hechsher. My teacher told me that the differences between one Hechsher and another were striking, interesting and significant, with regard to the number and makeup of the teams, of the pace at which they were to shecht, and regarding the care they took in checking the knife, and how particular they were to details which were above the letter of the law. Given also that in the preparation of meat for the consumer there is also the salting and the removal of certain things as I mentioned above in a and b, I can easily understand how a community might wish to use only their own Kashrut organizations. Postscript: I was hesitant to write about the second half of the question for two reasons: 1) I am a person who by nature doesn't go in for digging into all of the schmutz that surrounds why people don't like this hechsher or that hechsher, therefore I am not well-versed in all of rumors nor up to date. Additionally, I am also allergic to "machlokes" (dissension not for the sake of Heaven), so I don't feel comfortable writing in the public arena even if I was proficient. And, besides that, 2) I am not really that proficient. Even though I have learned more than half of the Talmud and a third of the Shulchan Aruch, I have never actually learned the subject of Treifos from the inside, from the Shulchan Aruch. It remains one of the holes in my learning. But let's begin and see where this takes us...