#jewish dietary law

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint Cornelius the Centurion

1st century

Feast Day: October 20

Patronage: soldiers, benefactors, philanthropists, Jewish converts

Saint Cornelius the Centurion was the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity. He was an Italian Captain of the Roman Army. As related in the Acts of the Apostles, an angel appeared to him and invited him to seek St. Peter for instructions and baptism. At the same time, St. Peter had a vision from God that released the Jews and converts from the strict dietary Mosaic laws. After St. Peter baptized Cornelius and his family the Holy Spirit descended upon all of them.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (Website)

[dragoneyes618]

"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

 In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about  to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine

[hindahoney]

Here is a brief, non-comprehensive introduction to what "keeping kosher" means! A few things worth noting: the way people keep kosher can vary by minhag (custom), such as Sephardi Jews not eating fish with dairy, while Ashkenazi Jews will, but won't eat fish and meat on the same plate. I didn't get into kosher for Passover and the differences between minhag because it's an incredibly complicated topic, and the same applies for things like cholov yisrael, why chicken is fleishig but fish is pareve, and why some agencies are more trusted than others (Hebrew National, I'm looking at you). For a more detailed explanation, below the cut I have listed my sources. I hope you learned something new, thanks for reading!

If you liked this, you may also like my post about Shavuot and tzniut.

Sources:

The Basics of a Kosher Lifestyle

Kashrut: Jewish Dietary Laws - Judaism101

Kosher Certification, Orthodox Union

Kosher Flavors and Additives, Star-K

Orthodox Union: How To Handle Fake Kosher Symbols

WARNING: Fake Kosher Symbols Appearing on Products

[a-very-tired-jew]

Being a secular Jew in places where there aren't a lot of Jews to begin with.

This has been on my mind a lot these past few months. I am originally from the Philly area, which has a large Jewish population, and grew up surrounded by secular and religious Jews. However, in pursuing my career I've moved across the USA and lived in the South East, the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Central Southern region. In all of these areas I have been the only Jew my new social circle has met, and on every occasion they have this perceived stereotype of what a Jew is that is contradictory and they don't even know it. I've stated before that I grew up in the Reconstructionist movement, but in all honesty I have always been a secular Jew and neither myself nor my family practiced Halaka (even my Conservative grandparents didn't, nor did my great-grandparents). Part of this is due to the culture in the north east, the pseudo-assimilation, and the integration of Jewish culture with many other cultures. I grew up eating cheesesteaks and hoagies from Jewish delis. I worked in a deli that sold kosher products on one side and cured pork products on the other. Bagel sandwiches with bacon? Absolutely. Were there people who kept kosher in my community and social circle? Of course, but they got a steak sandwich instead of a cheesesteak and we thought nothing of it. But moving out of the area? Hoo boy. I would eat bacon and goyim would absolutely freak out on me. "Aren't you Jewish?! YOU CAN'T EAT BACON!". Not realizing that there were Jews who didn't abide by those rules. They would then tell me all about Judaism from the TV they watched and/or other media they consumed, and it'd always have a scene of secular New York Jews eating pepperoni pizza. They literally had an example right there in front of them and they didn't understand. I remember even bringing it up to a friend and they went "wait, pepperoni is made from pork?" That alone made me take psychic damage. So this is for my goys out there who seem to think every Jew keeps dietary laws and restrictions. We don't. We have nothing against those that do either. We're all one big tribe with a lot of variety in it. But we do all have IBS and are lactose intolerant.

[redditantisemitism]

Here’s an interesting one-is this antisemitism? I think so. Let’s discuss:

First, the context. This comment was left on a post containing this meme, poking fun at the messianic “Jews” (they aren’t Jewish) and antisemitic Christians that appropriate Pesach.

Now. This person does make a few correct statements, and I’ll give them credit. They’re right that a lot of Christians and Christianity are antisemitic. But with that out of the way, let’s look at the myriad of ways they’re so very wrong:

I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about Passover

User admits that they are not qualified to be making judgements. As a Christian it isn't their place to tone police Jews anyways, but especially since they admit that they have no idea what they're talking about.

I would refrain from throwing all Christians under the bus

I'm sure they would. That isn't what is happening though, and framing it like this highlights their defensiveness- they aren't trying to have a productive conversation, they just don't like seeing Christianity being portrayed this way. Playing the victim, and not for the last time.

The Catholic church has largely been the main culprit here

Interestingly, there is a Catholic elsewhere in the thread blaming the Protestants. Typical Protestant vs. Catholic stuff, and this user is using it to attempt to distance themself from the "bad" Christians. Also, in my experience, almost every Christian "seder" I've seen or heard of has been held by a Protestant sect of some sort.

it's important to know that all the while the persecution was happening to jews by christians, there have been other christians speaking out against it.

More of the same, see above. "not all Christians!"

Please don't forget about the Christians who are willing to lay down their lives for the Jewish people.

Here's where the fetishization starts. Also, literally nobody asked you to do that, don't use us to feed your martyr complex. Also also, where exactly are these Christians, because they've been doing a shitty job.

Christians like myself are perfectly capable of seeing Yeshua in the Passover without changing it, or preaching to you up and down about it.

And this is where the explicit antisemitism starts, as opposed to the red flags we've been seeing. This person, based on their language, seems to be some sort of "Torah believing Christian"- something inherently appropriative and antisemitic.

Furthermore, YOU SHOULD NOT BE SEEING JESUS IN PASSOVER. That is, at best, idiotic, and at worst, actively antisemitic. It's certainly supercessionist. JEWISH TEXTS DO NOT PROPHESIZE JESUS. Christians should not be touching Pesach uninvited in ANY way, regardless of if they change things or not.

Yeshua didn't change it and neither should we

This person demonstrates an astounding level of ignorance. Any modern Seder would HAVE to be different than any Seder Jesus might have held (assuming he even existed), because it is impossible to do it like him. There is no temple to offer animal sacrifices at, like there would have been at the time. Regardless, not only should Christians not be changing seders, they shouldn't be touching it.

They then rant for a while about how Easter is bad. Which. My dude. That's your holiday. Go fuck around with that and leave Jews alone.

Please have patience and a soft heart for Christians who believe that:

More "not all Christians", this time with an added level of playing the victim. Hard pass.

-Jews don't need to be converted

Even stopped clocks are right twice a day.

-Christians have the holidays and events wrong

Uh? No? Is this some weird Christian intracommunity thing? Your holidays are your holidays, leave ours alone.

-the dietary laws were upheld by yeshua

Regardless of if this is true or not, Jesus was Jewish. This poster isn't. Kosher is for Jews. Christians aren't entitled to Jewish practice just because they worship a Jew.

-all of the torah was upheld by yeshua

see previous bullet point.

-the Jews are the chosen people of God

Typical Christian misunderstanding of "Chosen". "Chosen" to uphold the mitzvot, not to be better, or put on a pedestal. This is another example of how they fetishize Jews, and it does not get better.

-the Jews come first

See previous bullet point. Fetishization like this is disgusting and harmful. It removes humanity and personhood from Jews, instead presenting us as some mystical object of worship that we never claimed to be and can never live up to. We are not a zoo exhibit, we are a vibrant and living culture.

-salvation is of the Jews

See previous bullet point. We are people, not a tool for your salvation.

-the Jews have been entrusted with the words of Yah*weh

See previous bullet point. Also super disrespectful to just throw that name around in Jewish spaces, but I don't know what I expected from an antisemitic, philosemitic Jew fetishist.

-we should be suffering with the Jews, not against them

WE ARE NOT FUEL FOR YOUR MARTYR COMPLEX. Plenty of Jewish suffering would be alleviated if Christians like this person would just leave us alone. But they don't actually want Jewish suffering to stop, because then they'd lose a tool and a way to play victim.

they end with a plea not to lump all Christians together with the "bad" ones- something literally nobody was doing. Once again, it's a lot of "Not all Christians!!!" and their own self-victimhood. They say not all Christians are "like that", which is true. But this one certainly is.

Chag Pesach sameach everybody, and stay off the fuss bus.

[kemetic-dreams]

All Abrahamic religions claim to be monotheistic, worshiping an exclusive God, although one who is known by different names. Each of these religions preaches that God creates, is one, rules, reveals, loves, judges, punishes, and forgives. 

However, although Christianity does not profess to believe in three gods—but rather in three persons, or hypostases, united in one essence—the Trinitarian doctrine, a fundamental of faith for the vast majority of Christian denominations, conflicts with Jewish and Muslim concepts of monotheism.

Since the conception of a divine Trinity is not amenable to tawhid, the Islamic doctrine of monotheism, Islam regards Christianity as variously polytheistic.

Judaism and Islam have strict dietary laws, with permitted food known as kosher in Judaism, and halal in Islam. These two religions prohibit the consumption of pork; Islam prohibits the consumption of alcoholic beverages of any kind. Halal restrictions can be seen as a modification of the kashrut dietary laws, so many kosher foods are considered halal; especially in the case of meat, which Islam prescribes must be slaughtered in the name of God. Hence, in many places, Muslims used to consume kosher food. However, some foods not considered kosher are considered halal in Islam.

With rare exceptions, Christians do not consider the Old Testament's strict food laws as relevant for today's church; see also Biblical law in Christianity. Most Protestants have no set food laws, but there are minority exceptions

The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) embraces numerous Old Testament rules and regulations such as tithing, Sabbath observance, and Jewish food laws. Therefore, they do not eat pork, shellfish, or other foods considered unclean under the Old Covenant. The "Fundamental Beliefs" of the SDA state that their members "are to adopt the most healthful diet possible and abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures".

Proselytism

Judaism accepts converts, but has had no explicit missionaries since the end of the Second Temple era.

Judaism states that non-Jews can achieve righteousness by following Noahide Laws, a set of moral imperatives that, according to the Talmud, were given by God[k] as a binding set of laws for the "children of Noah"—that is, all of humanity. It is believed that as much as ten percent of the Roman Empire followed Judaism either as fully ritually obligated Jews or the simpler rituals required of non-Jewish members of that faith.

Christianity encourages evangelism. Many Christian organizations, especially Protestant churches, send missionaries to non-Christian communities throughout the world. See also Great Commission. Forced conversions to Catholicism have been alleged at various points throughout history. The most prominently cited allegations are the conversions of the pagans after Constantine; of Muslims, Jews and Eastern Orthodox during the Crusades; of Jews and Muslims during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, where they were offered the choice of exile, conversion or death; and of the Aztecs by Hernán Cortés. Forced conversions to Protestantism may have occurred as well, notably during the Reformation, especially in England and Ireland

[tamamita]

I don't think you were ever asked this before. Could a Jewish person eat at a halal restaurant, and a Muslim at a kosher restaurant?

Kashrut is completely different from Muslim dietary laws, because of the various prohibitions in Kashrut that is not considered prohibited within Islamic law, such as mixing meat with dairy. Not only that, but for someone to perform the ritual slaughter (schechita) you require a schochet, while in the case of Islamic ritual slaughter (Zabitha), any Muslim can perform the slaughter. With that said, I don't think Halal food is considered Kosher to Jewish people.

As for Muslims, any food from the people of the Book is permissible as long as it has undergone a ritual slaughter and provided the butchers are ritually pure. In most cases, any slaughtered food from Christians are considered impermissible, since majority of them do not follow a dietary law. Jewish people have a much stricter rule regarding Kashrut, thus any food considered Kosher is Halal by majority of scholars. According to most Shi'a scholars, it is permissible to eat from the food provided by the People of the Book with the exception of meat.

[mariacallous]

It’s remarkable how just a handful of ingredients — celery, onion, carrots, mushrooms, barley and water — can truly transform into something hearty and nourishing. This isn’t unlike other Jewish foods, like cholent or chicken soup; Jews are masterful at transforming the ingredients on-hand into dishes that feed bellies and souls.

I am sure you have heard of mushroom barley soup, maybe enjoyed a bowl at your local deli or diner, or perhaps your grandmother made it from scratch. But did you know that mushroom-barley soup, or krupnik, is even more Jewish than matzah ball soup?

As Joel Haber explains in this piece, krupnik is a simple and hearty Polish soup made from barley and various root vegetables. Eastern European Jews had a strong affinity for mushrooms, since they were rich, nutritious and, best of all, they grew abundantly in local wooded areas, making them free.

Making this soup without meat also allows it to be pareve, so it can be eaten with either dairy or meat meals according to kosher dietary laws. While non-Jews may have made a vegetarian version if they couldn’t afford meat, most Polish recipes stress the importance of both meat and bones to create the proper consistency, making the vegetarian version distinctly Jewish.

This soup is ideal for so many things: a comforting meal train meal, paired with crusty bread and a salad; easy to make as a big batch to enjoy all week for lunch; or when you want to hear your kids complain “I don’t like mushrooms,” and then eat the barley and carrots all around those carefully sautéed mushrooms.

Notes:

Anyone who has watched “Julie & Julia” knows you don’t want to crowd your pan when cooking mushrooms. I cook this quantity of mushrooms in three batches to allow them enough space to caramelize slightly on each side.

I chose to make this recipe with a combination of white mushrooms and baby bella mushrooms. You can absolutely mix different types of mushrooms based on your taste (or what you have on hand), as long as the total quantity is around 1 lb.

If you want to turn the mushroom flavor up even more, you could add some rehydrated porcini mushrooms as you sauté the mushrooms. You can also add some of the hydrating mushroom liquid into the both for extra umami.

To make this soup pareve (non-dairy), just omit the butter.

This soup keeps well in the fridge for 3-5 days and can be frozen; you may just need to add some additional water or broth when reheating.

[magnetothemagnificent]

Hello, I would like to ask if you have, or can suggest where to find, a simple glossary of common/basic Jewish terms to English? I’ve found myself infinitely scrolling your blog on mobile and while I’ve learned a lot from reading your answers, several of the terms go over my head

You're good! Yes, there's more than one Jewish language, and in fact there's so so many dialects of many different places Jews have had a diaspora population in. Here's a good glossery I found which includes a lot of common Hebrew and some Yiddish words. (Although Yiddish isn't the only Judeo-language.)

As for words I regularly use on my blog, here's a bit of a short glossery haha. I tried to think of words and phrases I regularly use, but I could have missed something.

Ashkenazi- refers to Jews descended from Jews who settled in Germany and Eastern Europe in the diaspora.

Ayin Hara- Evil Eye

Beit HaMikdash- Either of the two Jewish Temples from history that were both destroyed.

Chabad- A movement within Chassidism that follows the values and practices taught by the Lubavitcher dynasty of Rabbis, and especially the seventh and last Rabbi in the dynasty, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Chag- holiday

“Chag Sameach”- “Happy Holiday”

Chanukiyah- The eight branched candelabra with a shamash used on Chanukah

Charedi- Jews within Orthodox Judaism who observe Halakha more strictly and often reject modern and secular values and practices.

Chassidic- Jews within Orthodox Judaism categorized by increased spiritual and mystical practice that started in Eastern Europe in the 18th century that utilizes Kabbalah and “Chassidut”, which was first taught by Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem (The Baal Shem Tov)

Conservative (Masorti outside of N. America)- A branch of Jewish observance which views Jewish practice and law through both a traditionalist and critical lens. It emphasizes the importance of both preserving Jewish traditions and practice, while also making space for reinterpretation and analysis to align with modern values and ideas.

Davening- (Yiddish) praying

Golem- a creature made of clay that is created as a guardian of the Jewish people. Most famous golem is the Golem of Prague.

Goy- gentile

Halakha- Jewish law

Kabbalah- Jewish mystical tradition. Highly spiritual and exclusive even within Judaism.

Kashrut- Jewish dietary practice

Matrilineal- refers to Jews who were born Jewish through matrilineal descent. Matrilineal descent is the parameter for Jewish identity used by Orthodox and Conservative Judaism.

Menorah- lit. “lamp”. Used mainly to refer to the seven branches lamp used in the Beit HaMikdash or the Chanukiyah used on Chanukah.

Midrash- Broadly refers to Rabbinic exegesis of traditional Jewish texts (the Tanakh and some additional texts) with alternative interpretations of the text.

Minhag- Jewish custom.

Mitzvah- commandment.

Mizrachi- broad term referring to Jews descended from Jews who settled in Asia and North Africa in the diaspora. Sometimes used to distinguish between those who populations predated Sephardic presence, although other times is used inclusively of Sephardic Jews.

Orthodox- a branch of Jewish observance categorized by strict adherence to Halakha and traditional Jewish values.

Patrilineal- refers to Jews who were born Jewish through patrilineal descent.

Reform- a branch of Jewish observance that affirms the central tenets of Judaism while also acknowledging the diversity of Jewish practice and the need for adaptability in Jewish life and practice.

“Refua Shelemah”- Full recovery. Hebrew for “Get well soon”.

Rosh Chodesh- The ‘head’ of the month.

Sephardi- refers to Jews descended from Jews who settled in the Iberian Peninsula in the diaspora and those who settled in other lands following the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal.

Shabbat- the Jewish Sabbath

Shofar- an animal horn traditionally made from a ram or kudu’s horn that is used in Jewish ritual.

Talmud- The most central text of Jewish law comprised of the recorded writings and debates of the Rabbis of the Jewish court during the Second Temple Period. Composed of the Mishna, which is written in Hebrew, and the Gemara, which is written in Judeo-Aramaic.

Tanakh- Acronym for Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim. The canonized collection of Jewish texts: The five books of Moses, the Prophets, and Writings.

Yom Tov- lit. “good day.” Another word for holiday.

And as always, if there's any word or phrase you're confused by, you're welcome to ask.

Although, I do have a tag "#if jew know jew know" which I use for posts about more "inside" stuff only intended for other Jews to understand or relate to, so if you're not Jewish and don't understand something that uses that tag, that's alright, you're not supposed to understand.

[id in alt]

[brw]

eating pizza atm, maybe better questions will come after, but for now: what pizza toppings do u think hank & wanda would enjoy (if any) 🎤🐌

Hank McCoy is a pepperoni or meat feast guy to me. If he's going to order fast food, he's going all in on the greasy goodness. There's a comic panel out there somewhere of him ordering multiple pizzas, vegetarian, pepperoni and regular, but I don't feel like trekking through all of Infinity Crusade to find it, but that's what I figure Hank is about. Go big, or go home.

Speaking of Infinity Crusade, that's the comic that canonised Wanda Langkowski being a devout Jewish person, so she probably doesn't eat pizza, and if she does it's in according to Kosher dietary laws, so any pizza she does eat is probably likely to be homemade or from specific establishments she knows follows the same rules.

Send me asks!

[devoted1989]

A list of animal ingredients and their alternatives helps consumers avoid animal ingredients in food, cosmetics, and other products.

By the Nazarene Way.

There are thousands of technical and patented names for ingredient variations. Furthermore, many ingredients known by one name can be of animal, vegetable, or synthetic origin. If you have a question regarding an ingredient in a product, call the manufacturer. Good sources of additional information are the Consumer's Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients, the Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, or an unabridged dictionary. All of these are available at most libraries.

Adding to the confusion over whether or not an ingredient is of animal origin is the fact that many companies have removed the word "animal" from their ingredient labels to avoid putting off consumers. For example, rather than use the term "hydrolyzed animal protein," companies may use another term such as "hydrolyzed collagen." Simple for them, but frustrating for the caring consumer.

Animal ingredients are used not because they are better than vegetable-derived or synthetic ingredients but rather because they are generally cheaper. Today's slaughterhouses must dispose of the byproducts of the slaughter of billions of animals every year and have found an easy and profitable solution in selling them to food and cosmetics manufacturers.

Animal ingredients come from every industry that uses animals: meat, fur, wool, dairy, egg, and fishing, as well as industries such as horse racing and rodeo, which send unwanted animals to slaughter.

Rendering plants process the bodies of millions of tons of dead animals every year, transforming decaying flesh and bones into profitable animal ingredients. The primary source of rendered animals is slaughterhouses, which provide the "inedible" parts of all animals killed for food. The bodies of companion animals who are euthanized in animal shelters wind up at rendering plants, too. One small plant in Quebec renders 10 tons of dogs and cats a week, a sobering reminder of the horrible dog and cat overpopulation problem with which shelters must cope.

Some animal ingredients do not wind up in the final product but are used in the manufacturing process. For example, in the production of some refined sugars, bone char is used to whiten the sugar; in some wines and beers, isinglass (from the swim bladders of fish) is used as a "clearing" agent.

Kosher symbols and markings also add to the confusion and are not reliable indicators on which vegans or vegetarians should base their purchasing decisions. This issue is complex, but the "K" or "Kosher" symbols basically mean that the food manufacturing process was overseen by a rabbi, who theoretically ensures that it meets Hebrew dietary laws. The food also may not contain both dairy products and meat, but it may contain one or the other. "P" or "Parve" means the product contains no meat or dairy products but may contain fish or eggs. "D," as in "Kosher D," means that the product either contains dairy or was made with dairy machinery. For example, a chocolate and peanut candy may be marked "Kosher D" even if it doesn't contain dairy because the non-dairy chocolate was manufactured on machinery that also made milk chocolate. For questions regarding other symbols, please contact the Orthodox Union (212-563-4000) or other Jewish organizations or publications.

Thousands of products on store shelves have labels that are hard to decipher. It's nearly impossible to be perfectly vegan, but it's getting easier to avoid products with animal ingredients. Our list will give you a good working knowledge of the most common animal-derived ingredients and their alternatives, allowing you to make deci-sions that will save animals' lives.

Adrenaline. Hormone from adrenal glands of hogs, cattle, and sheep. In medicine. Alternatives: synthetics.

Alanine. (See Amino Acids.)

Albumen. In eggs, milk, muscles, blood, and many vegetable tissues and fluids. In cosmetics, albumen is usually derived from egg whites and used as a coagulating agent. May cause allergic reaction. In cakes, cookies, candies, etc. Egg whites sometimes used in "clearing" wines. Derivative: Albumin.

Albumin. (See Albumen.)

Alcloxa. (See Allantoin.)

Aldioxa. (See Allantoin.)

Aliphatic Alcohol. (See Lanolin and Vitamin A.)

Allantoin. Uric acid from cows, most mammals. Also in many plants (especially comfrey). In cosmetics (especially creams and lotions) and used in treatment of wounds and ulcers. Derivatives: Alcloxa, Aldioxa. Alternatives: extract of comfrey root, synthetics.

Alligator Skin. (See Leather.)

Alpha-Hydroxy Acids. Any one of several acids used as an exfoliant and in anti-wrinkle products. Lactic acid may be animal-derived (see Lactic Acid). Alternatives: glycolic acid, citric acid, and salicylic acid are plant- or fruit-derived.

Ambergris. From whale intestines. Used as a fixative in making perfumes and as a flavoring in foods and beverages. Alternatives: synthetic or vegetable fixatives.

Amino Acids. The building blocks of protein in all animals and plants. In cosmetics, vitamins, supplements, shampoos, etc. Alternatives: synthetics, plant sources.

Aminosuccinate Acid. (See Aspartic Acid.)

Angora. Hair from the Angora rabbit or goat. Used in clothing. Alternatives: synthetic fibers.

Animal Fats and Oils. In foods, cosmetics, etc. Highly allergenic. Alternatives: olive oil, wheat germ oil, coconut oil, flaxseed oil, almond oil, safflower oil, etc.

Animal Hair. In some blankets, mattresses, brushes, furniture, etc. Alternatives: vegetable and synthetic fibers.

Arachidonic Acid. A liquid unsaturated fatty acid that is found in liver, brain, glands, and fat of animals and humans. Generally isolated from animal liver. Used in companion animal food for nutrition and in skin creams and lotions to soothe eczema and rashes. Alternatives: synthetics, aloe vera, tea tree oil, calendula ointment.

Arachidyl Proprionate. A wax that can be from animal fat. Alternatives: peanut or vegetable oil.

Aspartic Acid. Aminosuccinate Acid. Can be animal or plant source (e.g., molasses). Sometimes synthesized for commercial purposes.

Bee Pollen. Microsporic grains in seed plants gathered by bees then collected from the legs of bees. Causes allergic reactions in some people. In nutritional supplements, shampoos, toothpastes, deodorants. Alternatives: synthetics, plant amino acids, pollen collected from plants.

Bee Products. Produced by bees for their own use. Bees are selectively bred. Culled bees are killed. A cheap sugar is substituted for their stolen honey. Millions die as a result. Their legs are often torn off by pollen-collection trapdoors.

Beeswax. Honeycomb. Wax obtained from melting honeycomb with boiling water, straining it, and cooling it. From virgin bees. Very cheap and widely used but harmful to the skin. In lipsticks and many other cosmetics (especially face creams, lotions, mascara, eye creams and shadows, face makeups, nail whiteners, lip balms, etc.). Derivatives: Cera Flava. Alternatives: paraffin, vegetable oils and fats. Ceresin, aka ceresine, aka earth wax. (Made from the mineral ozokerite. Replaces beeswax in cosmetics. Also used to wax paper, to make polishing cloths, in dentistry for taking wax impressions, and in candle-making.) Also, carnauba wax (from the Brazilian palm tree; used in many cosmetics, including lipstick; rarely causes allergic reactions). Candelilla wax (from candelilla plants; used in many cosmetics, including lipstick; also in the manufacture of rubber and phonograph records, in waterproofing and writing inks; no known toxicity). Japan wax (Vegetable wax. Japan tallow. Fat from the fruit of a tree grown in Japan and China.).

Benzoic Acid. In almost all vertebrates and in berries. Used as a preservative in mouthwashes, deodorants, creams, aftershave lotions, etc. Alternatives: cranberries, gum benzoin (tincture) from the aromatic balsamic resin from trees grown in China, Sumatra, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Beta Carotene. (See Carotene.)

Biotin. Vitamin H. Vitamin B Factor. In every living cell and in larger amounts in milk and yeast. Used as a texturizer in cosmetics, shampoos, and creams. Alternatives: plant sources.

Blood. From any slaughtered animal. Used as adhesive in plywood, also found in cheese-making, foam rubber, intravenous feedings, and medicines. Possibly in foods such as lecithin. Alternatives: synthetics, plant sources.

Boar Bristles. Hair from wild or captive hogs. In "natural" toothbrushes and bath and shaving brushes. Alternatives: vegetable fibers, nylon, the peelu branch or peelu gum (Asian, available in the U.S.; its juice replaces toothpaste).

Bone Char. Animal bone ash. Used in bone china and often to make sugar white. Serves as the charcoal used in aquarium filters. Alternatives: synthetic tribasic calcium phosphate.

Bone Meal. Crushed or ground animal bones. In some fertilizers. In some vitamins and supplements as a source of calcium. In toothpastes. Alternatives: plant mulch, vegetable compost, dolomite, clay, vegetarian vitamins.

Calciferol. (See Vitamin D.)

Calfskin. (See Leather.)

Caprylamine Oxide. (See Caprylic Acid.)

Capryl Betaine. (See Caprylic Acid.)

Caprylic Acid. A liquid fatty acid from cow's or goat's milk. Also from palm and coconut oil, other plant oils. In perfumes, soaps. Derivatives: Caprylic Triglyceride, Caprylamine Oxide, Capryl Betaine. Alternatives: plant sources.

Caprylic Triglyceride. (See Caprylic Acid.)

Carbamide. (See Urea.)

Carmine. Cochineal. Carminic Acid. Red pigment from the crushed female cochineal insect. Reportedly, 70,000 beetles must be killed to produce one pound of this red dye. Used in cosmetics, shampoos, red apple sauce, and other foods (including red lollipops and food coloring). May cause allergic reaction. Alternatives: beet juice (used in powders, rouges, shampoos; no known toxicity); alkanet root (from the root of this herb-like tree; used as a red dye for inks, wines, lip balms, etc.; no known toxicity. Can also be combined to make a copper or blue coloring). (See Colors.)

Carminic Acid. (See Carmine.)

Carotene. Provitamin A. Beta Carotene. A pigment found in many animal tissues and in all plants. Used as a coloring in cosmetics and in the manufacture of vitamin A.

Casein. Caseinate. Sodium Caseinate. Milk protein. In "non-dairy" creamers, soy cheese, many cosmetics, hair preparations, beauty masks. Alternatives: soy protein, soy milk, and other vegetable milks.

Caseinate. (See Casein.)

Cashmere. Wool from the Kashmir goat. Used in clothing. Alternatives: synthetic fibers.

Castor. Castoreum. Creamy substance with strong odor from muskrat and beaver genitals. Used as a fixative in perfume and incense. Alternatives: synthetics, plant castor oil.

Castoreum. (See Castor.)

Catgut. Tough string from the intestines of sheep, horses, etc. Used for surgical sutures. Also for stringing tennis rackets and musical instruments, etc. Alternatives: nylon and other synthetic fibers.

Cera Flava. (See Beeswax.)

Cerebrosides. Fatty acids and sugars found in the covering of nerves. May include tissue from brain.

Cetyl Alcohol. Wax found in spermaceti from sperm whales or dolphins. Alternatives: Vegetable cetyl alcohol (e.g., coconut), synthetic spermaceti.

Cetyl Palmitate. (See Spermaceti.)

Chitosan. A fiber derived from crustacean shells. Used as a lipid binder in diet products, in hair, oral and skin care products, antiperspirants, and deodorants. Alternatives: raspberries, yams, legumes, dried apricots, and many other fruits and vegetables.

Cholesterin. (See Lanolin.)

Cholesterol. A steroid alcohol in all animal fats and oils, nervous tissue, egg yolk, and blood. Can be derived from lanolin. In cosmetics, eye creams, shampoos, etc. Alternatives: solid complex alcohols (sterols) from plant sources.

Choline Bitartrate. (See Lecithin.)

Civet. Unctuous secretion painfully scraped from a gland very near the genital organs of civet cats. Used as a fixative in perfumes. Alternatives: (See alternatives to Musk.).

Cochineal. (See Carmine.)

Cod Liver Oil. (See Marine Oil.)

Collagen. Fibrous protein in vertebrates. Usually derived from animal tissue. Can't affect the skin's own collagen. An allergen. Alternatives: soy protein, almond oil, amla oil (see alternative to Keratin), etc.

Colors. Dyes. Pigments from animal, plant, and synthetic sources used to color foods, cosmetics, and other products. Cochineal is from insects. Widely used FD&C and D&C colors are coaltar (bituminous coal) derivatives that are continously tested on animals due to their carcinogenic properties. Alternatives: grapes, beets, turmeric, saffron, carrots, chlorophyll, annatto, alkanet.

Corticosteroid. (See Cortisone.)

Cortisone. Corticosteroid. Hormone from adrenal glands. Widely used in medicine. Alternatives: synthetics.

Cysteine, L-Form. An amino acid from hair which can come from animals. Used in hair-care products and creams, in some bakery products, and in wound-healing formulations. Alternatives: plant sources.

Cystine. An amino acid found in urine and horsehair. Used as a nutritional supplement and in emollients. Alternatives: plant sources.

Dexpanthenol. (See Panthenol.)

Diglycerides. (See Monoglycerides and Glycerin.)

Dimethyl Stearamine. (See Stearic Acid.)

Down. Goose or duck insulating feathers. From slaughtered or cruelly exploited geese. Used as an insulator in quilts, parkas, sleeping bags, pillows, etc. Alternatives: polyester and synthetic substitutes, kapok (silky fibers from the seeds of some tropical trees) and milkweed seed pod fibers.

Duodenum Substances. From the digestive tracts of cows and pigs. Added to some vitamin tablets. In some medicines. Alternatives: vegetarian vitamins, synthetics.

Dyes. (See Colors.)

Egg Protein. In shampoos, skin preparations, etc. Alternatives: plant proteins.

Elastin. Protein found in the neck ligaments and aortas of cows. Similar to collagen. Can't affect the skin's own elasticity. Alternatives: synthetics, protein from plant tissues.

Emu Oil. From flightless ratite birds native to Australia and now factory farmed. Used in cosmetics and creams. Alternatives: vegetable and plant oils.

Ergocalciferol. (See Vitamin D.)

Ergosterol. (See Vitamin D.)

Estradiol. (See Estrogen.)

Estrogen. Estradiol. Female hormones from pregnant mares? urine. Considered a drug. Can have harmful systemic effects if used by children. Used for reproductive problems and in birth control pills and Premarin, a menopausal drug. In creams, perfumes, and lotions. Has a negligible effect in the creams as a skin restorative; simple vegetable-source emollients are considered better. Alternatives: oral contraceptives and menopausal drugs based on synthetic steroids or phytoestrogens (from plants, especially palm-kernel oil). Menopausal symptoms can also be treated with diet and herbs.

Fats. (See Animal Fats.)

Fatty Acids. Can be one or any mixture of liquid and solid acids such as caprylic, lauric, myristic, oleic, palmitic, and stearic. Used in bubble baths, lipsticks, soap, detergents, cosmetics, food. Alternatives: vegetable-derived acids, soy lecithin, safflower oil, bitter almond oil, sunflower oil, etc.

FD&C Colors. (See Colors.)

Feathers. From exploited and slaughtered birds. Used whole as ornaments or ground up in shampoos. (See Down and Keratin.)

Fish Liver Oil. Used in vitamins and supplements. In milk fortified with vitamin D. Alternatives: yeast extract ergosterol and exposure of skin to sunshine.

Fish Oil. (See Marine Oil.) Fish oil can also be from marine mammals. Used in soap-making.

Fish Scales. Used in shimmery makeups. Alternatives: mica, rayon, synthetic pearl.

Fur. Obtained from animals (usually mink, foxes, or rabbits) cruelly trapped in steel-jaw leghold traps or raised in intensive confinement on fur "farms." Alternatives: synthetics. (See Sable Brushes.)

Gel. (See Gelatin.)

Gelatin. Gel. Protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones with water. From cows and pigs. Used in shampoos, face masks, and other cosmetics. Used as a thickener for fruit gelatins and puddings (e.g., "Jello"). In candies, marshmallows, cakes, ice cream, yogurts. On photographic film and in vitamins as a coating and as capsules. Sometimes used to assist in "clearing" wines. Alternatives: carrageen (carrageenan, Irish moss), seaweeds (algin, agar-agar, kelp—used in jellies, plastics, medicine), pectin from fruits, dextrins, locust bean gum, cotton gum, silica gel. Marshmallows were originally made from the root of the marsh mallow plant. Vegetarian capsules are now available from several companies. Digital cameras don't use film.

Glucose Tyrosinase. (See Tyrosine.)

Glycerides. (See Glycerin.)

Glycerin. Glycerol. A byproduct of soap manufacture (normally uses animal fat). In cosmetics, foods, mouthwashes, chewing gum, toothpastes, soaps, ointments, medicines, lubricants, transmission and brake fluid, and plastics. Derivatives: Glycerides, Glyceryls, Glycreth-26, Polyglycerol. Alternatives: vegetable glycerin—a byproduct of vegetable oil soap. Derivatives of seaweed, petroleum.

Glycerol. (See Glycerin.)

Glyceryls. (See Glycerin.)

Glycreth-26. (See Glycerin.)

Guanine. Pearl Essence. Obtained from scales of fish. Constituent of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid and found in all animal and plant tissues. In shampoo, nail polish, other cosmetics. Alternatives: leguminous plants, synthetic pearl, or aluminum and bronze particles.

Hide Glue. Same as gelatin but of a cruder impure form. Alternatives: dextrins and synthetic petrochemical-based adhesives. (See Gelatin.)

Honey. Food for bees, made by bees. Can cause allergic reactions. Used as a coloring and an emollient in cosmetics and as a flavoring in foods. Should never be fed to infants. Alternatives: in foods—maple syrup, date sugar, syrups made from grains such as barley malt, turbinado sugar, molasses; in cosmetics—vegetable colors and oils.

Honeycomb. (See Beeswax.)

Horsehair. (See Animal Hair.)

Hyaluronic Acid. A protein found in umbilical cords and the fluids around the joints. Used in cosmetics. Alternatives: plant oils.

Hydrocortisone. (See Cortisone.)

Hydrolyzed Animal Protein. In cosmetics, especially shampoo and hair treatments. Alternatives: soy protein, other vegetable proteins, amla oil (see alternatives to Keratin).

Imidazolidinyl Urea. (See Urea.)

Insulin. From hog pancreas. Used by millions of diabetics daily. Alternatives: synthetics, vegetarian diet and nutritional supplements, human insulin grown in a lab.

Isinglass. A form of gelatin prepared from the internal membranes of fish bladders. Sometimes used in "clearing" wines and in foods. Alternatives: bentonite clay, "Japanese isinglass," agar-agar (see alternatives to Gelatin), mica, a mineral used in cosmetics.

Isopropyl Lanolate. (See Lanolin.)

Isopropyl Myristate. (See Myristic Acid.)

Isopropyl Palmitate. Complex mixtures of isomers of stearic acid and palmitic acid. (See Stearic Acid.)

Keratin. Protein from the ground-up horns, hooves, feathers, quills, and hair of various animals. In hair rinses, shampoos, permanent wave solutions. Alternatives: almond oil, soy protein, amla oil (from the fruit of an Indian tree), human hair from salons. Rosemary and nettle give body and strand strength to hair.

Lactic Acid. Found in blood and muscle tissue. Also in sour milk, beer, sauerkraut, pickles, and other food products made by bacterial fermentation. Used in skin fresheners, as a preservative, in the formation of plasticizers, etc. Alternative: plant milk sugars, synthetics.

Lactose. Milk sugar from milk of mammals. In eye lotions, foods, tablets, cosmetics, baked goods, medicines. Alternatives: plant milk sugars.

Laneth. (See Lanolin.)

Lanogene. (See Lanolin.)

Lanolin. Lanolin Acids. Wool Fat. Wool Wax. A product of the oil glands of sheep, extracted from their wool. Used as an emollient in many skin care products and cosmetics and in medicines. An allergen with no proven effectiveness. (See Wool for cruelty to sheep.) Derivatives: Aliphatic Alcohols, Cholesterin, Isopropyl Lanolate, Laneth, Lanogene, Lanolin Alcohols, Lanosterols, Sterols, Triterpene Alcohols. Alternatives: plant and vegetable oils.

Lanolin Alcohol. (See Lanolin.)

Lanosterols. (See Lanolin.)

Lard. Fat from hog abdomens. In shaving creams, soaps, cosmetics. In baked goods, French fries, refried beans, and many other foods. Alternatives: pure vegetable fats or oils.

Leather. Suede. Calfskin. Sheepskin. Alligator Skin. Other Types of Skin. Subsidizes the meat industry. Used to make wallets, handbags, furniture and car upholstery, shoes, etc. Alternatives: cotton, canvas, nylon, vinyl, ultrasuede, pleather, other synthetics.

Lecithin. Choline Bitartrate. Waxy substance in nervous tissue of all living organisms. But frequently obtained for commercial purposes from eggs and soybeans. Also from nerve tissue, blood, milk, corn. Choline bitartrate, the basic constituent of lecithin, is in many animal and plant tissues and prepared synthetically. Lecithin can be in eye creams, lipsticks, liquid powders, hand creams, lotions, soaps, shampoos, other cosmetics, and some medicines. Alternatives: soybean lecithin, synthetics.

Linoleic Acid. An essential fatty acid. Used in cosmetics, vitamins. Alternatives: (See alternatives to Fatty Acids.)

Lipase. Enzyme from the stomachs and tongue glands of calves, kids, and lambs. Used in cheese-making and in digestive aids. Alternatives: vegetable enzymes, castor beans.

Lipids. (See Lipoids.)

Lipoids. Lipids. Fat and fat-like substances that are found in animals and plants. Alternatives: vegetable oils.

Marine Oil. From fish or marine mammals (including porpoises). Used in soap-making. Used as a shortening (especially in some margarines), as a lubricant, and in paint. Alternatives: vegetable oils.

Methionine. Essential amino acid found in various proteins (usually from egg albumen and casein). Used as a texturizer and for freshness in potato chips. Alternatives: synthetics.

Milk Protein. Hydrolyzed milk protein. From the milk of cows. In cosmetics, shampoos, moisturizers, conditioners, etc. Alternatives: soy protein, other plant proteins.

Mink Oil. From minks. In cosmetics, creams, etc. Alternatives: vegetable oils and emollients such as avocado oil, almond oil, and jojoba oil.

Monoglycerides. Glycerides. (See Glycerin.) From animal fat. In margarines, cake mixes, candies, foods, etc. In cosmetics. Alternative: vegetable glycerides.

Musk (Oil). Dried secretion painfully obtained from musk deer, beaver, muskrat, civet cat, and otter genitals. Wild cats are kept captive in cages in horrible conditions and are whipped around the genitals to produce the scent; beavers are trapped; deer are shot. In perfumes and in food flavorings. Alternatives: labdanum oil (which comes from various rockrose shrubs) and other plants with a musky scent. Labdanum oil has no known

Myristal Ether Sulfate. (See Myristic Acid.)

Myristic Acid. Organic acid in most animal and vegetable fats. In butter acids. Used in shampoos, creams, cosmetics. In food flavorings. Derivatives: Isopropyl Myristate, Myristal Ether Sulfate, Myristyls, Oleyl Myristate. Alternatives: nut butters, oil of lovage, coconut oil, extract from seed kernels of nutmeg, etc.

Myristyls. (See Myristic Acid.)

"Natural Sources." Can mean animal or vegetable sources. Most often in the health food industry, especially in the cosmetics area, it means animal sources, such as animal elastin, glands, fat, protein, and oil. Alternatives: plant sources.

Nucleic Acids. In the nucleus of all living cells. Used in cosmetics, shampoos, conditioners, etc. Also in vitamins, supplements. Alternatives: plant sources.

Ocenol. (See Oleyl Alcohol.)

Octyl Dodecanol. Mixture of solid waxy alcohols. Primarily from stearyl alcohol. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Oleic Acid. Obtained from various animal and vegetable fats and oils. Usually obtained commercially from inedible tallow. (See Tallow.) In foods, soft soap, bar soap, permanent wave solutions, creams, nail polish, lipsticks, many other skin preparations. Derivatives: Oleyl Oleate, Oleyl Stearate. Alternatives: coconut oil. (See alternatives to Animal Fats and Oils.)

Oils. (See alternatives to Animal Fats and Oils.)

Oleths. (See Oleyl Alcohol.)

Oleyl Alcohol. Ocenol. Found in fish oils. Used in the manufacture of detergents, as a plasticizer for softening fabrics, and as a carrier for medications. Derivatives: Oleths, Oleyl Arachidate, Oleyl Imidazoline.

Oleyl Arachidate. (See Oleyl Alcohol.)

Oleyl Imidazoline. (See Oleyl Alcohol.)

Oleyl Myristate. (See Myristic Acid.)

Oleyl Oleate. (See Oleic Acid.)

Oleyl Stearate. (See Oleic Acid.)

Palmitamide. (See Palmitic Acid.)

Palmitamine. (See Palmitic Acid.)

Palmitate. (See Palmitic Acid.)

Palmitic Acid. From fats, oils (see Fatty Acids). Mixed with stearic acid. Found in many animal fats and plant oils. In shampoos, shaving soaps, creams. Derivatives: Palmitate, Palmitamine, Palmitamide. Alternatives: palm oil, vegetable sources.

Panthenol. Dexpanthenol. Vitamin B-Complex Factor. Provitamin B-5. Can come from animal or plant sources or synthetics. In shampoos, supplements, emollients, etc. In foods. Derivative: Panthenyl. Alternatives: synthetics, plants.

Panthenyl. (See Panthenol.)

Pepsin. In hogs' stomachs. A clotting agent. In some cheeses and vitamins. Same uses and alternatives as Rennet.

Placenta. Placenta Polypeptides Protein. Afterbirth. Contains waste matter eliminated by the fetus. Derived from the uterus of slaughtered animals. Animal placenta is widely used in skin creams, shampoos, masks, etc.Alternatives: kelp. (See alternatives to Animal Fats and Oils.)

Polyglycerol. (See Glycerin.)

Polypeptides. From animal protein. Used in cosmetics. Alternatives: plant proteins and enzymes.

Polysorbates. Derivatives of fatty acids. In cosmetics, foods.

Pristane. Obtained from the liver oil of sharks and from whale ambergris. (See Squalene, Ambergris.) Used as a lubricant and anti-corrosive agent. In cosmetics. Alternatives: plant oils, synthetics.

Progesterone. A steroid hormone used in anti-wrinkle face creams. Can have adverse systemic effects. Alternatives: synthetics.

Propolis. Tree sap gathered by bees and used as a sealant in beehives. In toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, supplements, etc. Alternatives: tree sap, synthetics.

Provitamin A. (See Carotene.)

Provitamin B-5. (See Panthenol.)

Provitamin D-2. (See Vitamin D.)

Rennet. Rennin. Enzyme from calves' stomachs. Used in cheese-making, rennet custard (junket), and in many coagulated dairy products. Alternatives: microbial coagulating agents, bacteria culture, lemon juice, or vegetable rennet.

Rennin. (See Rennet.)

Resinous Glaze. (See Shellac.)

Ribonucleic Acid. (See RNA.)

RNA. Ribonucleic Acid. RNA is in all living cells. Used in many protein shampoos and cosmetics. Alternatives: plant cells.

Royal Jelly. Secretion from the throat glands of the honeybee workers that is fed to the larvae in a colony and to all queen larvae. No proven value in cosmetics preparations. Alternatives: aloe vera, comfrey, other plant derivatives.

Sable Brushes. From the fur of sables (weasel-like mammals). Used to make eye makeup, lipstick, and artists' brushes. Alternatives: synthetic fibers.

Sea Turtle Oil. (See Turtle Oil.)

Shark Liver Oil. Used in lubricating creams and lotions. Derivatives: Squalane, Squalene. Alternatives: vegetable oils.

Sheepskin. (See Leather.)

Shellac. Resinous Glaze. Resinous excretion of certain insects. Used as a candy glaze, in hair lacquer, and on jewelry. Alternatives: plant waxes.

Silk. Silk Powder. Silk is the shiny fiber made by silkworms to form their cocoons. Worms are boiled in their cocoons to get the silk. Used in cloth. In silk-screening (other fine cloth can be and is used instead). Taffeta can be made from silk or nylon. Silk powder is obtained from the secretion of the silkworm. It is used as a coloring agent in face powders, soaps, etc. Can cause severe allergic skin reactions and systemic reactions (if inhaled or ingested). Alternatives: milkweed seed-pod fibers, nylon, silk-cotton tree and ceiba tree filaments (kapok), rayon, and synthetic silks.

Snails. In some cosmetics (crushed).

Sodium Caseinate. (See Casein.)

Sodium Steroyl Lactylate. (See Lactic Acid.)

Sodium Tallowate. (See Tallow.)

Spermaceti. Cetyl Palmitate. Sperm Oil. Waxy oil derived from the sperm whale's head or from dolphins. In many margarines. In skin creams, ointments, shampoos, candles, etc. Used in the leather industry. May become rancid and cause irritations. Alternatives: synthetic spermaceti, jojoba oil, and other vegetable emollients.

Sponge (Luna and Sea). A plant-like animal. Lives in the sea. Becoming scarce. Alternatives: synthetic sponges, loofahs (plants used as sponges).

Squalane. (See Shark Liver Oil.)

Squalene. Oil from shark livers, etc. In cosmetics, moisturizers, hair dyes, surface-active agents. Alternatives: vegetable emollients such as olive oil, wheat germ oil, rice bran oil, etc.

Stearamide. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearamine. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearamine Oxide. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearates. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearic Acid. Fat from cows and sheep and from dogs and cats euthanized in animal shelters, etc. Most often refers to a fatty substance taken from the stomachs of pigs. Can be harsh, irritating. Used in cosmetics, soaps, lubricants, candles, hairspray, conditioners, deodorants, creams, chewing gum, food flavoring. Derivatives: Stearamide, Stearamine, Stearates, Stearic Hydrazide, Stearone, Stearoxytrimethylsilane, Stearoyl Lactylic Acid, Stearyl Betaine, Stearyl Imidazoline. Alternatives: Stearic acid can be found in many vegetable fats, coconut.

Stearic Hydrazide. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearone. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearoxytrimethylsilane. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearoyl Lactylic Acid. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearyl Acetate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Alcohol. Sterols. A mixture of solid alcohols. Can be prepared from sperm whale oil. In medicines, creams, rinses, shampoos, etc. Derivatives: Stearamine Oxide, Stearyl Acetate, Stearyl Caprylate, Stearyl Citrate, Stearyldimethyl Amine, Stearyl Glycyrrhetinate, Stearyl Heptanoate, Stearyl Octanoate, Stearyl Stearate. Alternatives: plant sources, vegetable stearic acid.

Stearyl Betaine. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearyl Caprylate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Citrate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyldimethyl Amine. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Glycyrrhetinate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Heptanoate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Imidazoline. (See Stearic Acid.)

Stearyl Octanoate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Stearyl Stearate. (See Stearyl Alcohol.)

Steroids. Sterols. From various animal glands or from plant tissues. Steroids include sterols. Sterols are alcohol from animals or plants (e.g., cholesterol). Used in hormone preparation. In creams, lotions, hair conditioners, fragrances, etc. Alternatives: plant tissues, synthetics.

Sterols. (See Stearyl Alcohol and Steroids.)

Suede. (See Leather.)

Tallow. Tallow Fatty Alcohol. Stearic Acid. Rendered beef fat. May cause eczema and blackheads. In wax paper, crayons, margarines, paints, rubber, lubricants, etc. In candles, soaps, lipsticks, shaving creams, other cosmetics. Chemicals (e.g., PCB) can be in animal tallow. Derivatives: Sodium Tallowate, Tallow Acid, Tallow Amide, Tallow Amine, Talloweth-6, Tallow Glycerides, Tallow Imidazoline. Alternatives: vegetable tallow, Japan tallow, paraffin and/or ceresin (see alternatives to Beeswax for all three). Paraffin is usually from petroleum, wood, coal, or shale oil.

Tallow Acid. (See Tallow.)

Tallow Amide. (See Tallow.)

Tallow Amine. (See Tallow.)

Talloweth-6. (See Tallow.)

Tallow Glycerides. (See Tallow.)

Tallow Imidazoline. (See Tallow.)

Triterpene Alcohols. (See Lanolin.)

Turtle Oil. Sea Turtle Oil. From the muscles and genitals of giant sea turtles. In soap, skin creams, nail creams, other cosmetics. Alternatives: vegetable emollients (see alternatives to Animal Fats and Oils).

Tyrosine. Amino acid hydrolyzed from casein. Used in cosmetics and creams. Derivative: Glucose Tyrosinase.

Urea. Carbamide. Excreted from urine and other bodily fluids. In deodorants, ammoniated dentifrices, mouthwashes, hair colorings, hand creams, lotions, shampoos, etc. Used to "brown" baked goods, such as pretzels. Derivatives: Imidazolidinyl Urea, Uric Acid. Alternatives: synthetics.

Uric Acid. (See Urea.)

Vitamin A. Can come from fish liver oil (e.g., shark liver oil), egg yolk, butter, lemongrass, wheat germ oil, carotene in carrots, and synthetics. It is an aliphatic alcohol. In cosmetics, creams, perfumes, hair dyes, etc. In vitamins, supplements. Alternatives: carrots, other vegetables, synthetics.

Vitamin B-Complex Factor. (See Panthenol.)

Vitamin B Factor. (See Biotin.)

Vitamin B-12. Usually animal source. Some vegetarian B-12 vitamins are in a stomach base. Alternatives: some vegetarian B-12-fortified yeasts and analogs available. Plant algae discovered containing B-12, now in supplement form (spirulina).Some nutritionist caution that fortified foods or supplements are essential.

Vitamin D. Ergocalciferol. Vitamin D-2. Ergosterol. Provitamin D-2. Calciferol. Vitamin D-3. Vitamin D can come from fish liver oil, milk, egg yolk, etc. Vitamin D-2 can come from animal fats or plant sterols. Vitamin D-3 is always from an animal source. All the D vitamins can be in creams, lotions, other cosmetics, vitamin tablets, etc. Alternatives: plant and mineral sources, synthetics, completely vegetarian vitamins, exposure of skin to sunshine. Many other vitamins can come from animal sources. Examples: choline, biotin, inositol, riboflavin, etc.

Vitamin H. (See Biotin.)

Wax. Glossy, hard substance that is soft when hot. From animals and plants. In lipsticks, depilatories, hair straighteners. Alternatives: vegetable waxes.

Whey. A serum from milk. Usually in cakes, cookies, candies, and breads. In cheese-making. Alternatives: soybean whey.

Wool. From sheep. Used in clothing. Ram lambs and old "wool" sheep are slaughtered for their meat. Sheep are transported without food or water, in extreme heat and cold. Legs are broken, eyes injured, etc. Sheep are bred to be unnaturally woolly, also unnaturally wrinkly, which causes them to get insect infestations around the tail areas. The farmer's solution to this is the painful cutting away of the flesh around the tail (called "mulesing"). "Inferior" sheep are killed. When shearing the sheep, they are pinned down violently and sheared roughly. Their skin is cut up. Every year, hundreds of thousands of shorn sheep die from exposure to cold. Natural predators of sheep (wolves, coyotes, eagles, etc.) are poisoned, trapped, and shot. In the U.S., overgrazing of cattle and sheep is turning more than 150 million acres of land to desert. "Natural" wool production uses enormous amounts of resources and energy (to breed, raise, feed, shear, transport, slaughter, etc., the sheep). Derivatives: Lanolin, Wool Wax, Wool Fat. Alternatives: cotton, cotton flannel, synthetic fibers, ramie, etc.

Wool Fat. (See Lanolin.)

Wool Wax. (See Lanolin.)

REFERENCES

Buyukmihci, Nermin. "John Cardillo's List of Animal Products and Their Alternatives." Cosmetic Ingredients Glossary: A Basic Guide to Natural Body Care Products. Petaluma, Clif.: Feather River Co., 1988. Mason, Jim, and Peter Singer. Animal Factories. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1980. Ruesch, Hans. Slaughter of the Innocent. New York: Civitas, 1983. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House, 1990. Sweethardt Herb Catalogue. Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1981. Winter, Ruth. A Consumer's Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1994. Winter, Ruth. A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives. New York: Crown Publishing

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Saint Cornelius the Centurion

1st century

Feast Day: October 20

Patronage: soldiers, benefactors, philanthropists, Jewish converts

Saint Cornelius the Centurion was the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity. He was an Italian Captain of the Roman Army. As related in the Acts of the Apostles, an angel appeared to him and invited him to seek St. Peter for instructions and baptism. At the same time, St. Peter had a vision from God that released the Jews and converts from the strict dietary Mosaic laws. After St. Peter baptized Cornelius and his family the Holy Spirit descended upon all of them.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[dragoneyes618]

In the pagan world, the Jews' God and laws were clearly the causes of Jew-hatred. Pagans generally tolerated different peoples and different gods, but the Jews and "their" God did not merely differ, they also were threatening. The Jews' God alone was God, and He was the God everywhere - which meant, of course, that all gods of the pagans were false. Understandable, this infuriated the Jews' neighbors. No nation or religion had ever made such audacious claims. As the historian of the classical world Yitzhak Heinemann has described it: "no other nation at that time denied the gods of its neighbors....None of the peoples refrained from partaking of the sacrifices offered to the gods, except the Jews. None of the peoples refused to send gifts to its neighbors' temples, except the Jews." As the first-century Greek writer Apion protested: "Why, if they [the Jews] are citizens, do they not worship the same gods?"

The Jews' laws, too, angered their neighbors. For example, the Jewish dietary laws restricted what and where Jews ate, and many non-Jews interpreted the Jewish refusal to eat with them as motivated by hostility. So, too, they interpreted Judaism's ban on intermarriage as hostile.

The Jews of the pre-Christian world were hated because they were Jews, not because they were rich, or successful, or for any other reason not directly related to their Judaism. If a Jew ceased practicing Judaism and adopted the majority culture's religion, he was not persecuted. A Jew willing to give up Judaism to worship and respect his neighbor's gods, to eat his neighbor's food, to marry his neighbor's child, and, in short, to cease challenging the non-Jews' values was accepted by the surrounding pagan society. Jews were rejected and characterized as haters of humankind because they practiced Judaism.

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, pages 67-68

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

I saw your reblog+tags and I'm curious: how does one play Minecraft with a Jewish twist? :0

Basically, I'm trying to play in a way that corresponds to Halakha (Jewish law), which for now mainly involves trying to simulate Shekhita (Kosher slaughter). I did a lot of research on the requirements for the type of blade (called Khalaf or Sakin Hashekhita depending on who you ask) as well as how it must be used and concluded that only a diamond or netherite sword with sharpness V was suitable for slaughtering a cow (as they deal 10 and 11 damage respectively and a cow has 10 health and it Must be a one hit kill to be kosher, additionally it cannot be a critical hit as that might count as excessive force which is forbidden).

There is so much fun to be had around Kashrut (the dietary laws) in Minecraft. Did you know you're not allowed to eat fruit from a tree until it is three years old? Thus, I can only eat apples from oaks that have existed for 36 lunar cycles (3*12 months).

I've tried playing with "must keep Shabbat" but honestly it's very annoying to once every 7th ingame day just not be able to do basically anything. Pretty much everything that can be done in Minecraft is prohibited on Shabbat, including Mining and Crafting. You can maybe go explore, but you can't take anything with you or pick up anything, or make plans for what to do after Shabbat with what you find, and you can only go by foot, which I think means you're not breaking the prohibition travel, but I'm not sure, I need to look into it. It's possible that enchanting would be allowed if you reaaally stretch the concept and try to define it as studying, which is encouraged on Shabbat. Anyway I'm currently ignoring the Shabbat part because it's annoying to keep track and there's nothing you can really do. (Not to mention if you want to properly observe Shabbat you do so with meals which in Minecraft means you need to fast all week to be hungry enough to eat several meals.)

Once I get a bit more set up I really hope to create some redstone thing at spawn that will count the days for me so I can incorporate holidays. Maybe. It would be fun to build a Sukka (hut) for Sukkot (holiday when you build and live in a hut for a week) in Minecraft, but I might end up just going by the real world calendar to make sure I have time to really celebrate ingame (especially since lunar cycles are 8 days in Minecraft which means I'll have barely any time between holidays, Sukkot alone would take up a whole month).

It's basically a fun roleplay twist and as a bonus I get to research and learn about different Mitzvot (commandments) and Minhagim (traditions) before I'm able to meet a rabbi and incorporate them into my own real life. I love learning about Halakha and Judaism and I love any excuse to ask all the silly questions about it. Like earlier today a friend and I were arguing about whether a gun that shoots blades could be used for kosher slaughter! Judaism is so great and appealing to my autism like it has probably the world's largest collection of commentary upon commentary about how to interpret the rules and what does it all mean and I could spend the rest of my life learning about it and while there are disagreements there's bound to be some answer to any question I have about an ambiguity of a rule and oh my autistic little heart.

But there's some stuff I don't feel comfortable doing yet, even in game, because they feel too important and exclusive to real Jews, such as Tzitzit (knotted strings that are attached to certain articles of clothing) on my Minecraft skin, though I drew on a kipa (traditionally a round flat little hat worn by men) because it is only a Minhag (tradition) and not a Mitzva (commandment) and I wear one in real life. I've been considering making a Mezuza (little container put on doorposts containing an important prayer and marked with the letter ש, it is a Minhag to kiss it when you pass it) by writing the Shema (the aforementioned prayer) in a book and putting the book in a barrel next to the door and then putting a button on the barrel and pressing it to kiss it and open the door, but it might also fall into this category and might have to wait until I'm further in my conversion.

Anyway thanks for listening to me infodump about Judaism, it will happen again. Also there are 613 Mitzvot in the Torah and countless more in rabbinical texts, just so you don't think I'm even scratching the surface here. This is a brief summary of scratching the surface. In Minecraft.

[scottstiles]

Why not just eat chocolate? Nobody will know and not eating things you like because of a religion seems kind of cruel? Obviously I get the pork thing - even though that stems from the time Piggys were gross and ate poop - but to not eat chocolate because men 3,000 ish years ago said 'Only eat simple bread and starve yourself" said so?

It just seems so wrong 😕 Religion should be about you and your god, not what people a long time ago said you can or can't do. I have this problem in my own faith. By rights I think it's a period of not indulgence is here or coming shortly. Yet I'm pretty sure main event guy wouldn't want people starving and whipping themselves over him. 🙄

80% of religions these days it going by what some man wrote or decreed, rather than about god and that is a giant same.

Please eat your eggs if you want. You shouldn't have to restrict yourself on word of what a group of men who lived 3000 years ago said.

there are so many things wrong with this ask but you sound so genuine and earnest and im just so fucking pissed right now that i have no choice but to answer asks in this horrible awful no good very bad new post format that im gonna make this brief.

1- i know i dont talk about it much anymore but i have my masters in jewish education and up until last year was working as a bar/bat mitzvah teacher and torah reader in my synagogue for the last like million years of my life. religion has never felt like a burden to me.

2- not eating piggies although its plausible does not necessarily come from the fact that theyre in close contact with poop. doesnt say anything about that in the biblical texts. keeping kosher is also not the same as the dietary restrictions for passover and the reasons for them are not necessarily related.

3 - not eating certain things (chametz - not "simple bread," its more complicated) on passover is not about starving yourself and its not about atonement (that holiday is in the fall), its about remembering important events in jewish history and keeping the sense memory of those events and lessons alive for thousands of years.

4- what religion is asking you to whip and starve yourself for god? sounds like a cult or a dan brown novel tbh

5- judaism is definitely based on shit some men wrote, but it most certainly was nowhere close to one man. we're talking lots and lots of very opinionated and highly intelligent and insightful men (also women if you know where to look, also some dumbass men) whose interpretations and decisions of law regarding how their society and religion could and should function without a central community or authority on earth were passed through millions of hands and thousands of more opinions through the centuries and enforced to many degrees in both extremes only to be falling apart in the last century or so thanks to inescapable global factors that have rolled through our disparate communities like indy's boulder on a rampage.

wait a minute i said this would be brief. fuck.

anywaynot eating my cadbury creme eggs is def not a burden i just enjoy complaining its probably all for the best.

also i hope this didnt come off rude i understand where you're coming from but i also invite you to do a little googling about judaism and the holiday of passover. happy holidays! ✡️🫓🍷