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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2867 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 29, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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A little project I want to do this year is try cooking an "Acherburger", that is, a meal that breaks the most kosher laws possible. There's some discussion about doing that online, but it's mostly low-effort stuff like "bacon-wrapped shrimp" etc. Lame! One can do so much more.

Here's the initial plan:

For the meat patty, combine as many treyf animals as I can. The supermarket in my city has a whole bunch, e.g. rabbit, kangaroo, alligator, even bear. I'd put a little of a bunch of them in, with the bulk being pork just so It doesn't taste too weird. Animal blood is forbidden as well; so I add a little bit of that too.

Onto this we'll add cheese, of course.

For frying, one can use suet instead of oil/butter, as that's forbidden.

Produce must be tithed before consumption, and you can't eat fruit during the first three years after planting. Outside of Israel, this isn't necessary unless you know for certain that it is the case; luckily I have a relative with a lime tree I know isn't that old, so I can add lime to the sauce and break that commandment.

Produce that may contain insects must be checked, or it is not kosher. Thus we don't do that for the lettuce, deliberately closing our eyes before putting some on the burger.

We'll eat it during the passover sabbath, so the fresh bread we'll buy is Chametz, Pat Akum, and Chadash (and of course the entire preparation of the meal is forbidden due to the sabbath). Naturally none of our utensils will be kashered either.

For the drink, we'll have wine. I have a bottle of Château Musar 2015. In addition to it being not kosher, 2015 was a Sabbath year in Israel, and since the wine is from Lebanon which counts as "Eretz Yisrael", it's not allowed. We'll also make it yayin nesech by pouring a little bit of it out in dedication to Baal. Before drinking it, I'll take a Nazirite vow to abstain from alcohol just to deliberately violate it.

The one rule I have some problem with breaking is Kil'ayim, that is "the planting of certain mixtures of seeds, grafting, the mixing of plants in vineyards [...]". This applies to Israeli produce only, and buying anything like that to make sure the seed were mixed during planting seems difficult. Sure, I can get spice mixes grown in Palestine in my local spice shop, but how can I be sure it actually broke any rule when it was grown?

Anything else I've forgotten about?

How can you forget about boiling a goat in its mother's milk? Do that and include the meat in your burger.

That's the cheese/meat combo; the rule is significantly broader than the plain reading. To be fair I could in theory do the cumbersome version, but then I'd have to get goat meat and milk that I know for sure belongs to the mother, and that'd probably be too difficult.

Come on, we're trying to make a burger here, not get deleted by Uriel.

Shape the patty into a calf (bonus points if it contains veal) and color it golden with turmeric, then worship it.

Well, as far as breaking the laws of Judaism more generally, the only things you can't do to save a life are:

  1. Adultery
  2. Homosexuality
  3. Incest
  4. Zoophilia
  5. Debatably, interfaith marriage
  6. Murder

So, get married to your (assuming straight) sister, then fuck your brother and his dog while worshipping Allah, then kill all of the above - while, of course, eating the burger.

I feel like the burger idea itself (not my version thereof) is actually pretty emphatically Jewish, at least reform/reconstructionist. There's the oft sermonafied story of Jacob wrestling with angels, as a parable for the value of questioning beliefs.

Debatably, interfaith marriage

Numbers 12

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite.

If marrying a foreign Ethiopian is good enough for Moses, it's good enough for me.

But then the complainers correctly pointing out inconsistent rules were punished. So maybe the real lesson is "don't challenge the hypocrisy of your leadership, God really doesn't like that".

But I choose to interpret this as "marrying out-of-the-faith foreigners rocks, so long as you are in charge".

That'd be forbidden, but it doesn't have anything to do with the actual food specifically so I don't consider stuff like that.

Also Allah, being the/a monotheistic god, is less bad than paganism! E.g. if an idol worshipper touches kosher wine it needs to be destroyed so it doesn't benefit anybody; not so if a Muslims does.

It's kind of fun, in a mean-spirited, "early 00s atheist" sort of way.

You could probably break Kil'ayim by adding fruit from some sort of fruit salad tree? Apricot marmalade from an apricot/plum graft, for example. I think citrus is all the same species, so no lime shenanigans. French-fried pomatoes should also count.

Ah, it wasn't intended to be mean-spirited at all – mostly as a fun puzzle due to how complicated the laws are, and that it seems nobody has tried to do it before. Kashrut only applies to actual Jews anyway, so I figure if my intentions aren't bad it's not an issue.

The problem with grafted fruit is that I'd need to find one nearby, and since I gotta do it just before Easter it's very likely not going to be in season! Although now after reading more about it on the Wikipedia article it seems that it's just the act of growing such food that's prohibited, eating it is fine: "Diverse seed-plantings or vegetables that grew together in violation of the biblical command are permitted to be eaten", so I guess I can skip that after all.

Kashrut only applies to actual Jews anyway, so I figure if my intentions aren't bad it's not an issue.

No, the kosher laws which run afoul of the 7 Noachide laws- such as dedicating your meal to Baal- apply to everyone. It’s the Mitzvot that only apply to actual Jews.

Quite right, apologies for forgetting that. I haven't yet decided on whether to post about it whenever I've finished, but if so I'd probably mention the Baal thing without actually performing it. Another good reason is that it would also be the least kosher meal that'd nevertheless be permitted to eat if it would save one's life, and involving idolatry would mess that up.

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