What’s For Dinner?

As guests strolled in, Mishpacha plumbed the psyches of people willing to victimize their palettes with the novel and unexpected – from locusts to water buffalo. Responses to the question, “What are you doing here tonight?” were variegated.

“The good food,” one hungry-looking participant shot back. “You’re not going to get any deep philosophical stuff from me. I’m here because the food’s really good. Sorry!”

But most tasters at the $100 a plate feast were eager ideologues.

“There is a mitzvah in the Torah to know how to differentiate between the tamei and the tahor, a mitzvas aseh de’Oraisa,” Rabbi David Yudkevich of the Shomron Rabbinate remarked. “Sadly, many animals have become forgotten. For me, the eating is merely a light accompaniment to this great Torah lesson of preserving the mesores.”

For Abish Rand, who had come in from Mir Yeshivah, the restaurant table was an extension of the shtender.

“My reason for coming is mainly because I am very into the Yerushalmi at the end of Kiddushin (4:12), which says, ‘A person will give a judgment and reckoning for all that his eyes saw and he did not eat,’ even though I didn’t necessarily see any of these things before coming here,” he said. “The idea is to see what the Ribbono Shel Olam made available for us and to appreciate it.”

And indeed, that Yerushalmi appeared in print at the end of the six-page long menu.

“Regarding the mesores,” he went on, “throughout my learning I try to see how things used to be. I think it is very relevant to Torah learning to see how things were done once, as opposed to nowadays. We don’t even see things from a hundred years ago anymore.”

You’re confident with what you are eating here?

“I clarified beforehand. Some of the things I was told to stay away from – it’s not worthwhile to enter into halachic controversy. These included the muscovy duck, the kingclip fish, and the swordfish.” Indeed, the organizers sent all participants a detailed letter several weeks before the dinner explaining every item and its kashrus pedigree.

Rand’s remarks were interrupted by an immense crash. In keeping with Rav Moshe Feinstein’s psak that the mesorah of kosher animals requires a visual sighting of the animals in question, the Ari duo had brought a number of caged birds as a visual accompaniment and one of them, perhaps the pheasant which spent the evening leaping in a desperate attempt to escape, had sent its cage crashing to a courtyard below.

Down in the kitchen, world renowned chef, Moshe Basson, was in the midst of unususually challenging preparations, but confident that for him the seudah would be a success,  as he was used to cooking exotic animals every day of the year. Indeed, his robust frame, mahogany skin, and pigtail was an interesting contrast to his propensity to spout forth pesukim to suit the occasion. Right now, he was describing the swordfish as cherev shlufa beyado, its sword bared in its hand.

Upstairs, Trungo Ardani, who came from Ethiopia sixteen years ago, was baking Ethiopian pitas, known as injera, on a disappointingly modern hot plate using flour produced from a teff grain that grows only in the Ethiopian highlands. Later in the meal, Professor Zohar Amar of Bar Ilan University would explain that according to a tradition of the Geonim the five grains of Eretz Yisrael are long and with a horizontal groove, so that this round, smooth grain does not qualify for the Hamotzi blessing. Indeed, Rav Yosef Hadana, chief rabbi of the Ethiopians, recommends beginning meals with regular bread of the five species to preempt any halachic doubts regarding the injera.

Next to a bloodthirsty exhibit of antique shechitah knives, animal skulls, bottled fish, and taxidermied beasts and birds, Ari Greenspan was explaining the logistical challenges of bringing the varied species of the evening together under one roof.

“All the locusts someone was raising for us died in the heat wave,” he said. “So we went on line and found where they produce locusts for laboratories, which was England. This happened to be twenty minutes north of my cousin’s house. So I told my cousin – buy a ticket to come to Israel. At the same time, we could not get pheasants in Israel that were mature. I have a friend who is in charge of kashrus in Rome and we knew that in Italy we could get the pheasants. We had the shochtim in Italy shecht the pheasants for us.

“Back in England, my cousin bought two hundred and fifty locusts and brought them (already dead) to Rome, where he picked up the pheasants and arrived in Yerushalayim the day before the dinner.”

By now the dining courtyard was filling beyond capacity, about fifteen waiters were weaving their way through an obstacle course of chairs and legs, and diners were flavoring their injera pitas with genuine hyssop (Eizov) dip.

At the end of one side table with other chassidish-looking Yidden sat Rabbi  Avraham Dovid Moskowitz of the London Beis Din, who later discussed the kashrus of the blue marlin fish, explaining that it was regarded as perfectly kosher for years until a non-Jewish ichthyologist (fish expert) was appointed by an important beis din to draw up lists of kosher and non-kosher fish and demoted the blue marlin to the blacklist of eels and lobsters. Nowadays, most posekim worldwide regards the blue marlin as kosher and it was indeed included in the night’s repertoire.

Rav Moskowitz said he decided to attend in order to show his support for the cause.

“For years, Ari Greenspan and Ari  Zivotofsky have been moser nefesh to preserve the mesorah and are doing something very important for the future of kashrus. With the destruction of communities over the generations, most local traditions have become forgotten and nowadays we shecht only about three kinds of fowl that are convenient and cheap for industry; for the dozens of other types, the mesorah has all but disappeared. The actual preservation of mesorah is no less important than studying halacha lema’aseh.”

It was that fear, that traditions of generations would simply disappear, that pushed  Greenspan and Zivotofsky forward. “We continued our hunt, not for animals, but for traditions. Sadly, we realized that traditions can easily be lost. Up until fifty years ago there were Jewish communities all over the world that each had a local shochet. The shochtim and rabbonim in each locale had traditions regarding which birds in their area were kosher. Today food production is centralized and most of those communities have been destroyed. If action is not taken soon, traditions will be lost.

“A stark example of this can be seen in a book written less than two hundred years ago by an Italian shochet, the Zivchei Cohen. He presents diagrams of thirty birds that he recognized as kosher. Today we have trouble finding thirteen kosher birds altogether.

“The magnitude of the undertaking did not occur to us. For example, we suspected that the guinea fowl was kosher. So we purchased two guinea fowl, put them in a cage on top of the car, and headed out to look for old shochtim and rabbis who may have slaughtered them in the old country. In order to make sure we were getting only solid mesorahs we looked for references for any local rav or shochet we approached with our birds. Because the guinea fowl is native to north Africa, we tried north Africans and Yemenites.

“Unfortunately, none of the rabbis we consulted recognized it. After repeated attempts around Jerusalem, we were ready to give up.

“Finally, our perseverance paid off. We found an old Algerian shochet, who unequivocally recognized the bird and attested to the fact that he had slaughtered it in Algeria close to 50 years ago. Since then we have also found a Yemenite shochet, a French shochet, and a South African individual who have also provided testimony to guinea fowl being treated as kosher.”

In perpetuation of these discoveries, a dish comprised of pheasant and guinea fowl was served up, and diners testified that the pheasant’s rich, delicate flesh was truly deserving of the approbation heaped on it by Chazal (Kiddushin 31a, Bamidbar Raba 7).

Food of the Midbar

As the crowd ate pathetically tiny roast quails (Slav), Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Levinger, an expert on kosher species, discussed how the mesorah of quails was a major issue forty years ago when Israeli farmers were considering raising them in quantity.

Rabbi Levinger mentioned a biological peculiarity of quail that strikes an interesting parallel to the verse, “The flesh was yet between their teeth, before it was chewed… and Hashem struck the people with a very great plague” (Bamidbar 11:33). Quails migrating from the north down to Sinai eat seeds en route that produce poisonous acids in their flesh, which in turn can be poisonous unless one waits for the poison to dissipate. Although quails are no longer popular due to their tiny size, he said, they are still raised in Yavneh and Be’er Tuvya for their eggs, which are in great demand.

Dusk was falling, strings of lights blinked on in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood on the next hill, and King David Hotel loomed opposite like an orange blob. Now it was time to show a video of the senior New York shochet, Rav Zweigenhaft, testifying to the mesorah of the quail people were consuming below.

“I learnt shechita from my grandfather who was born in 1852 and he had the mesorah of the quails,” he declared.

Rav Zweigenhaft passed away two years ago, but his testimony, captured on video five years ago, is a typical example of the Ari duo’s tireless globetrotting effort — grabbing and classifying an old mesorah before it is too late.

After the quail bones were removed, steaming bowls of pigeon-dove-sparrow soup were ladled out. And to make the crowd more comfortable with the idea of eating street fowl, a member of the Auerbach family testified on screen that for the four generations that his family served as chief rabbis of Halberstadt in Germany, a sparrow was shechted before the beis din every Elul to preserve the mesorah that it is kosher.

Then a Yemenite Jew, Rav Chaim Giat, took the microphone and personally described how his family used to trap flocks of sparrows back in the alter heim.

“Toward evening, we sometimes took boxes and lowered them by rope inside the large, round wells Arabs used to water their fields. The birds came in to roost, and in the morning we would pull up the boxes and find over a thousand sparrows inside. After they were shechted, my whole family removed their feathers, my uncles, my aunts, and others,  and then we would feast on them. They were delicious!”

But how do 21^st-century Jews feel about eating pigeons and sparrows steamed in broth?

“It didn’t bother me at all,” Mrs. Nurit Aharoni of Efrat insisted. “I think it’s fantastic. But I must tell you that I teach science and halachah and this is an amazing example of the two genres coming together. My sisters and sister-in-law thought the idea was disgusting and didn’t come.”

Treif or Kosher?

According to the Ari duo, the next course, wild turkey, was actually the most questionable food of the evening, because it is difficult to claim that the North American turkey has any kind of mesorah and indeed, poskim are hard put to find a good rationale for its widespread acceptance. Despite that, turkey consumption in Israel is the highest in the world, and perhaps to symbolize this venahafoch hu (upside down) situation, Chef Moshe Basson announced the entrance of the turkey stew with a cacophonic banging on a tray followed by tipping the stew pot upside down on a serving dish.

Other dishes served included a quartet of four fowls including the famous muscovy duck that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, but does not quack like a duck. Originally, Rav Yissochor Dov Illowy, who arrived in the United States from Europe in 1853, declared it treif with the backing of Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch and Rav Nathan Adler of Great Britian. Nonetheless, after a century and a half of controversy, the Israeli rabbinate regards it as kosher. Also on the menu was the mullard duck, a hybrid of the muscovy and regular ducks, whose mere existence is used as proof that the muscovy is indeed kosher – since it interbreeds with a kosher species.

The most controversial contender of the evening was a large frozen swordfish, which was now carried in by the beaming Greenspan, while behind him a cook’s assistant staggered in under the load of a cloth-wrapped brother specimen that had been steamed to perfection. The swordfish was recorded as kosher by the Knesses Hagedolah four hundred years ago and regarded as kosher by many gedolim over the years; indeed, Jewish communities around the Mediterranean in such places as Turkey, Italy, Gibraltar and North African have eaten this fish for centuries and still do. Nonetheless, the swordfish became suspect some decades ago when Rav Moshe David Tendler ruled that although baby swordfish do have some sort of scales, they disappear by the time the fish becomes adult. Furthermore, he ruled that the biblical term translated as “scales” refers to scales that can be removed without tearing the skin. Whatever scales the swordfish have don’t seem to fall into this category. However, swordfish are a bit of a mystery in the scientific community, since they cannot be raised in captivity, and can only be observed swimming or dead. The Knesses Hagedolah ruled that the swordfish does have scales in the water which are lost when the fish shaked violently while being captured.

Conservative Rabbis have ruled that swordfish is kosher, since the Talmud states explicitly that it is kosher. Most Orthodox Rabbis, however, are doubtful whether the fish mentioned in the Talmud is today’s swordfish.

Now, the organizers invited the diners to examine the frozen specimen and see for themselves. About eight men took up his invitation and set to scratching its hide with a credit card, resulting in nothing but a gooey mucosa, which contained, as one of them put it, “Not even one miserable scale.” This is because it takes patience and careful observation to find them.

Highlights of the meat courses were a cow’s utter — which the Sages say is the way to taste what mean and milk taste like when cooked together, sheep and goat in endives, spotted deer and red deer, and water buffalo, which was declared kosher by the Israeli Chief Rabbinatein 2006. This was after several years of research by Greenspan, Zivotofsky and Dr. Zohar Amar proving not only that the water buffalo chews it cud and has split hooves as required by halachah, but that there is a mesorah that water buffalo slaughtering was a custom among Jewish communities in the past, and gathered testimonies from elderly butchers. In order for the rabbinate to examine the teeth and body structure of the animal, Greenspan and Zivotofky had a water buffalo skeleton delivered to the desk of Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar.

The highlight of the meal was, of course, the desert locust, which was served sautéed on a bed of vegetables.

Regarding this insect, Zivotofsky explains that he has examined the subject closely in conjunction with world locust expert, Dr. Zohar Amar.

“The mesorah on chagovim is today only found among Yemenite and Moroccan Jews,” he notes. “This raised the question whether other Jews may eat them. Of course the same question can be asked regarding birds: Can Jews of one group rely on the mesorah of another group? This question was addressed by many of the rishonim and acharonim, and most of the later authorities, including the Shach, who ruled that indeed all Jews may rely on each other.

“Regarding chagovim the question would appear to be the same. However, there the mesorah is more controversial. Even the great Moroccan/Israeli authority, the Or HaChaim questioned it, so it is less clear cut. There are some contemporary authorities who permit chagovim to the general public, and others who prohibit them to all but Yemenites and Moroccans.”

Throughout the meal, the organizers insisted that each person follow his own posek about whether to sample them or not. Food reporter Yonatan Sternberg, was disappointed with the sautéed specimens served on a bed of lettuce and beet salad.

“They were rather small without meat on them,” he complained. “I would say it was more the experience than something tasty. Not something I would order or eat on a daily basis. It reminded me of a dry chicken wing in soy sauce; it didn’t really have much of a flavor to it. It was just the experience of sitting in a restaurant and eating locusts, which is not something that is common in Israel.”

After a marathon six hours, the fourth Mesorah dinner finally drew to its end, but not before hundreds of people had become part of the chain of transmission. Everyone there who paid attention to the lectures and testimonies, and carefully examined the live birds can now attest to the mesorah of such feathered friends as the quail, pheasant, and guinea fowl. This author included.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 321)