With the release of the latest Star trek movie, a matter of some halachic import presents itself.
Ship-board kashrus!
It is the considered opinion of this blogger that there should be at least FIVE dedicated food replicators on board the Starship Enterprise.
[Backgrounder, from Wikipedia: A replicator works by rearranging subatomic particles, which are abundant everywhere in the universe, to form molecules and arrange those molecules to form the object. For example, to create a pork chop, the replicator would first form atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc., then arrange them into amino acids, proteins, and cells, and put it all together into the form of a pork chop. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_%28Star_Trek%29).]
FIVE REPLICATORS
Question: Why are five dedicated food replicators required?
Answer: One each for milchediks and Fleishediks. One for treif for the non-Jewish crew members. Plus two more for Peysach.
Question: Why are dedicated Peysach food replicators required?
Answer: The warp-drive traverses light years. Under normal (non-warp) speeds, Peysach will be celebrated every year, and while it would clearly be onerous and impossible to observe Peysach for every light year traversed at warp-speed, at least one full Peysach will have to be celebrated during each warp jump.
[As the bubble of 'normal' space-time surrounding the ship during warp is artificial, and therefore objects in normal space can still interact with space craft at warp velocity, normal halachic conditions for space-time must be presumed.]
Note, because Starfleet ships are as big as a small city, the search for chometz may be limited to quarters within the eruv. If, however, all crew members will attend a seder, chometz has to be removed from the entire ship excepting the warp core.
[Bedikas chometz should be completed BEFORE the beginning of the day during which warp velocity is reached. Remember, the day begins at night fall, so the search must be performed no more than twenty five hours earlier, and while there is still a presumption of darkness (so that the chometz may be seen by the shadow it casts on surfaces when illuminated by a candle) before the light part of the day prior to the day on which warp-speed commences.]
Since no complete warp jump is possible within Israel (because of the distances traversed in warp mode, either it would take you OUT of The Land if it began in The Land, or it would deliver you into The Land from a point far outside The Land), warp drive almost by definition means chutz l'aretz - this means two seders.
Hence the need for two dedicated kosher le Peysach food replicators, and an on-board mashgiach because even with two dedicated food replicators for the chag, there will be a need for kashering for Peysach.
Libun chamur for both meat replicators, libun kal for both dairy replicators. Irui (hagala) all surfaces, followed by a layer of aluminium foil for preparation areas. And make sure that your tablecloths have been thoroughly washed recently, as cloth may attract dust and kleine shrotzim that render it unfit for the festival.
Question: Why kashering for BOTH meat and BOTH dairy replicators, even if only one of each will be used?
Answer: Because the obligation is that your entire household should be fit for Peysach, not just the items that you intend to use during the festival. It is by that reason that chometz must be gotten rid of before the chag. Please note that as the halachic status of Feringhi is still in doubt, it is best to sell your chometz to a Klingon (or, even better, a Netureikartanik). This is to avoid any inadvertent transgressions bein adam le’chaveiro.
Regarding koshering the facilities, it is very likely that the onboard mashgiach will be a chabadnik. Chabad is well known for providing kitchen kashering services for people who are far from an established Jewish community, as well as Jewish-outreach to far-flung kehilim in addition to kosher for Passover matzos in even the most out-of-the-way locales.
[NOTE: shmure matze can NOT be made during warp speed for obvious reasons.]
SEPARATE DINING FACILITIES
An additional issue is the need for separate dining halls for Jewish crew members, and a lavishly appointed tea room for the hours in between meals.
The non-Jewish members of the crew, when fressing their treif, should mamesh be discouraged from doing so in either the kosher dining halls OR the tea-room, lest one mistakenly assume that treif is replicated there, OR be misled into believing that what they are eating is actually permitted.
This is probably a matter for the unions, and should in any case be including in contract negotiations.
REPLICATED FOODS
It has been argued that the food replicators do not actually create meat or dairy foods, in that they take 'raw' nutrient material and shape it and flavor it so that it looks and tastes like whatever is desired. The analogy is with the mon that the Hebrews ate in the midbar.
Another argument is that the food replicators do not replicate the actual foods, but turn 'matter' into the requested food during the beaming process. And that therefore the issue of kashrus is immaterial.
These ideas are both koferdik, mamesh!
If it has both the same nutritive value, AND tastes the same, as either meat or milch, then logically it IS meat or milch.
The alternative is that you argue that it does not have a meat or milch origin and THEREFORE cannot possibly be meat or milch. But if that were the case, it could not possibly be kosher either!
Now, you may aver that if it is neither meat nor dairy it can yet be kosher: Parve.
To which I will respond that if is NOT of a food origin, then it cannot be kosher, whereas if it is parve, hechshering (of the matter of origin) becomes an issue.
One has to assume that what comes out of a food replicator counts in all ways as food, wherefore kashrus, lechatchila, has to be maintained.
If not, frumme leite could not go into space at all.
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Further exploration of Halachic issues relating to startrek are discussed in the comments underneath this post:
http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2009/05/star-trek.html
Other matters relating to Chassidus in deep space may also be found at that blog (http://dovbear.blogspot.com/).
I encourage you to read Dovbear's posts and learn from the discussion, but as always, consult your local rabbi on kashrus and other subjects when there is any possibility of doubt. To err may be human, but it is not Talmud.
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EDUCATED TASTES
After Thanksgiving (sometime next week), we get to stare Christmas in the face. That cold hard face, those haunted eyes. That incessant nast...
32 comments:
We'll beam up a rabbi to make sure.
Bob
Jews...in...Space!
i learned recently that R' Goren pasḳened that halakha doesn't apply if you're not on planet Earth. At all. Crazy, eh? Of course, everyone else vociferously disagreed and threw asteroids at him for saying that...
If these replicators can make a little cholent, then it might not be such a bad thing. I might consider joining up for that.
Bob
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Cholent.
If it has both the same nutritive value, AND tastes the same, as either meat or milch, then logically it IS meat or milch.Absolutely disagree. We do not hold that extra-firm tofu, perfectly seasoned and cooked, which replicates the taste, texture, and nutritive value of poultry is fleishig. Why then would we do so with replicator foods?
The essential element of milchig and fleishig foods, kashrut-wise, is their animal origins and human processing. You cannot boil a kid in its mother's milk if there is neither kid nor mother.
The only POSSIBLE justification for separate milchig and fleishig replicators, dishes, etc., in this situation is to prevent placing a stumbling block before the blind., ie., should some naive crew members descend as an away party on another planet where food was produced through natural agricultural/husbandry means, they would not be in the habit of watching for issues of kashrut and might accidentally eat treif (or worse, something with no hechser at all!)
The solution, though, is easy - either each away part must be accompanied by a masgiach, or no Jews are permitted on away parties. The former solution is preferable, since it will enhance the training and employment opportunities for our traditional communities. And also give them a way to get out of the house now and then.
We do not hold that extra-firm tofu, perfectly seasoned and cooked, which replicates the taste, texture, and nutritive value of poultry is fleishig. Tzipporah, with all due respect, tofu does not and cannot replicate the taste, texture, and nutritive value of poultry - or any other meat. The very concept is an absurdity.
The only thing that tastes just like chicken is .... chicken!
The only POSSIBLE justification for separate milchig and fleishig replicators, dishes, etc., in this situation is to prevent placing a stumbling block before the blind., ie., should some naive crew members descend as an away party on another planet where food was produced through natural agricultural/husbandry means, they would not be in the habit of watching for issues of kashrut and might accidentally eat treif (or worse, something with no hechser at all!)But that is davka a very large part of what kashrus is all about! Avoiding stumbling blocks!
Entirely aside from which, if what comes out of the replicator is meat (IDENTICAL taste, texture, nutritive value, weight, appearance etcetera - then it is meat. One cannot hold that food is both 'food' and simultaneously 'not food'. Either it is food - which necessitates a concern with kashrus - or it is not food, and therefore why are you eating it?
What it was originally (before it became food) is also a matter of concern - hence the need for mashgichim.
The solution, though, is easy - either each away party must be accompanied by a masgiach, or no Jews are permitted on away parties. The former solution is preferable, since it will enhance the training and employment opportunities for our traditional communities. And also give them a way to get out of the house now and then. Brilliant! Both in it's solution to the problem, and in its added bonus!
I would argue, however, that if there if the away party contains a minyan, there are enough frumme yidden to make reasonable decisions and choices in many cases - the community, as it were, establishes its minhag.
When there is even the slightest possibility of doubt, don't eat it.
The presence of mashgichim in starfleet ranks, is of course, vastly preferable. Especially if given training in recognition and analysis of alien life forms.
Not everything that looks like a vegetable IS a vegetable, some animal exudates would qualify as milchiks, OR, even worse, treifus gamur!
learned recently that R' Goren pasḳened that halakha doesn't apply if you're not on planet Earth. At all. Crazy, eh? Of course, everyone else vociferously disagreed and threw asteroids at him for saying that... Steg, I too wish to fling asteroids at Rabbi Goren. Halacha defines the Jew - without halacha, there is no such thing as a Jew. So of course halacha applies in outer space! Does the individual who joined Starfleet cease to be Jewish just because they're past Pluto? Does treif become parve in aeroplanes?
I can see, however, an argument that the laws of shabbes are relative to the place where one finds oneself - on planet with sixty hour days, shabbes necessarily must also be sixty hours. I would argue that shabbes, in the absence of a place to which it is relative becomes relative to the natural clock of the observer of shabbes.
So if the native of the planet with sixty hour days and the native of the planet with 24 hour days are on the same ship in between solar systems, and the lighting goes out for several weeks (so that the "artificial" common day cannot be maintained by the observance of light and dark), their internal 'shabbes clocks' would eventually diverge enormously. Assuming, of course, that the sixty hour planet native had either converted to Judaism or was born a Jew. Were he a Gentile, it would not be aza shwerre sach.
and the lighting goes out for several weeks (so that the "artificial" common day cannot be maintained by the observance of light and dark ....
Because, of course, if there is no alternation between light and dark (in other words, if it is perpetual light, or perpetual dark), the boundaries of shabbes become an artificial construct entirely. Six regular, one sacred - but six and one what?
Entirely aside from which, if what comes out of the replicator is meat (IDENTICAL taste, texture, nutritive value, weight, appearance etcetera - then it is meat. Nonsense. When manna could taste like *anything* to an individual person, did that mean it actually BECAME that thing? No, of course not! yet it was nonetheless, food.
I agree that there are kashrut issues with anything one consumes, but something is essentially meat or milk because of its animal origin, not its final appearance, taste, or nutritive value.
You counterargument that tofu CANNOT taste like chicken shows that, in fact, the end result (eaters' perception) says nothing of the food's essence or origin, since two people can in fact differ in identifying the same final product (tofu-pretending-to-be-chicken vs. tofu-that-is-actually-perceived-as-chicken), even though it has the same source.
Now, this introduces another problem. From whence come these original atoms/molecules/etc that are reassembled into food resembling meat, milk, parve, or treif foods? Are they cast out of suns as part of the star-formation prodct? Are they little bits of matter left from the collision of planets which contained ACTUAL animals who may or may not have been kosher?
We therefore need to train space-traveling mashgichim on how to trace the origins of such initial food-stuff matter, so as to ensure they have sufficiently obliterated any former treif-causing substances from the individual molecules.
This new school of pre-food kashrut will doubtless keep kollel yungerleit busy for decades.
I would argue that shabbes, in the absence of a place to which it is relative becomes relative to the natural clock of the observer of shabbes.In point of fact, a close friend now days from receiving smicha published the initial treatises on Shabbat (and other holiday) observances both in space and on foreign planets. I believe his point was that time-periods conform on ship to the standard ship clock, but since those are arbitrary one may also choose a place on Earth (Jerusalem, of course, being preferable) and follow its calendar and clock. But I don't entirely recall - we were well into the second bottle of wine when he started explaining it.
Tzipporah, those are all good points, but I respectfully differ. What I place in my mouth is queither meat, or milk, or parve, or none of the above. Just as growth, birth, semination, germination undsoweiteres have transformed non-food into food, so have the replicators. It becomes a kashrus concern at the moment that it becomes food. Prior to that moment, neither its nature nor its origin were of such concern. So I must still hold by the end result - what it is when I put it into my mouth - as the defining characteristic. But your points could define a different approach to the machlokes - lets say Baal ha Turim versus the Rema.
[By the way, Savage Kitten holds that tofu cooked by white people is mamesh treifus gamur, and she insists that that is valid minhag.]
Regarding the original atoms/molecules/etc that are reassembled into food, my question is whether a dog will eat them? This would determine their halachic nature, as all other considerata of kashrus for something so raw and unformed cannot be applied.
Your thoughts?
No doubt tofu cooked by white people is, in fact, an abomination, but as it is usually pareve, we hold that it is muttar.
Regarding the edibility of the source atoms, are we talking about an earthly dog, or a space-dwelling dog-like animal (or animal-like plant/thing)?
Looks like we need to define what a dog is, al pi halacha. Just plain Canis Lupus Familiaris will not do.
One of the dog-like characteristics is that desperate dogs have somewhat lower cannabalism and coprophagic threshold than several other animals.
So the range of substances that a dog will not touch depends upon the health and wellbeing of said canine. I believe there already is precedent for taking dogs into space. It might, in fact, be absolutely essential.
Another defining characteristic of dogs, and therefore doglike beings, is communication / data gathering by taste and smell. Hence the butt-sniffing and face licking.
I believe there already is precedent for taking dogs into space. It might, in fact, be absolutely essential.
I'm pretty sure the only ESSENTIAL thing to take with you is a towel.
I'm pretty sure the only ESSENTIAL thing to take with you is a towel.
Masechte H'etz-chaikrus?
Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.
To which I will respond that if is NOT of a food origin, then it cannot be kosher, whereas if it is parve, hechshering (of the matter of origin) becomes an issue.Where does this come from?
We eat many minerals and food additives that do not come from food origins and which are kosher.
Many minerals are extracted from rocks. Rocks are not food. Others are synthesised in labs.
Many food additives are synthesised from chemicals which, of themselves, are not food or of food origin (having themselves been made in a lab).
Yet, these minerals and additives are given hashgachot. They are kosher, for food consumption, but they are not of food origin.
Replicated foods would have the same status as an artificially created food additive: kosher and pareve.
We eat many minerals and food additives that do not come from food origins and which are kosher.
FOOD (noun). Definition: 1. source of nutrients: material that provides living things with the nutrients they need for energy and growth. 2. solid nourishment: substances, or a particular substance, providing nourishment for people or animals, especially in solid as opposed to liquid form gave them food and water. 3. mental stimulus: something that sustains or stimulates the mind or soul; food for thought.
[Old English fōda< Indo-European]
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/Food.html
Animal or vegetable origin does not define whether it is food or not. If it is edible, it can qualify as food - even if it is of mineral or artificial origin (salt and calcium inter alia in the mineral category, vitamin c and various medicines in the artificial category). Yet not everything edible is kosher.
You are right that kashrus now extends to a much broader range than we would traditionally think - and I had overlooked those additives entirely.
Can we not say, however, that if the original substance is NOT treif, then the resulting substance can be kosher?
Replicated foods would have the same status as an artificially created food additive: kosher and pareve.
Replicated pig cannot conceivably be kosher. I do not accept that possibility.
If it tastes exactly like shrimp, toothes exactly the same as shrimp, and looks exactly like shrimp, it's characteristics make it non-kosher irrespective of whether it came from the sea or out a clever machine. Artificial treif bleibt treif.
(IDENTICAL taste, texture, nutritive value, weight, appearance etcetera - then it is meat. One cannot hold that food is both 'food' and simultaneously 'not food'. Either it is food - which necessitates a concern with kashrus - or it is not food, and therefore why are you eating it?
What it was originally (before it became food) is also a matter of concern - hence the need for mashgichim.You posit that if it looks like meat, tastes like meat, has the same nutritive properties of meat, then it is meat.
Let's go with that for a moment.
Beef is meat from a cow, a kosher animal. But, not all beef is kosher. It depends on how the cow was killed, etc.
Now, if someone replicates a piece of steak - which you contend is meat - then how can it be considered kosher when one of the major determining factors of kashrut - beyond the species of animal - is the slaughtering?
A kosher steak and a non-kosher steak look and taste exactly the same.
If you argue that it doesn't matter, because nothing was slaughtered, then the steak cannot be meat because meat (besari, fleishig) means that it the flesh of an animal or made from animal parts. However, replicator foods are not made from the flesh or parts of animals.
It might look and taste like seomthing, but it's not the exact same thing.
You could program it to taste like a grass fed animal from some pristine rural place - and it will replicate the texture and taste which are the result of being raised in that particular locale - but it is, in the end, not meat from that locale. It was fabricated in a machine in a starship traveling the Alpha Quadrant.
Its taste and texture has nothing to do with being raised in a distictive locale - it's just a facsimile of the taste of meat from that place. If the taste and texture are a facsimile, then so is the meat itself.
And, a facsimile is not really the thing that it resembles, no matter how painstaking the detail.
Crap, Atboth, looks like your getting your posterior whupped by the other commenters.
Did you fail the bar many times?
Didn't you mention a while ago that some puskim hold that coconut milk is not kosher? Because of it's remarkable similarity to milk? Personally I have never noted any similarity whatsoever, but white people standardly do. Same with soymilk (liquid garbage). And then there's non-dairy creamer, which is sheerly inedible, and SHOULD be ruled treif.
Keep us posted, dear boy. I like seeing you lose a sparring match.
---Grant Puskintel
Masechte H'etz-chaikrus?Sounds like a Pakistani making a bad wordplay on Hitch hiker. Does 'masechte' mean 'guide to the galacty'?
Bad, dude. I shall bomb your Swat.
---Grant Pakihacker
You are right that kashrus now extends to a much broader range than we would traditionally think - and I had overlooked those additives entirely.Somewhat graceless way of admitting that anonymous shot you out of the water, isn't it?
---Grant Callsaspadeaspoodle
"I'm pretty sure the only ESSENTIAL thing to take with you is a towel."
Agreed. Last years celebration of Lag B'Omer corresponded with National Towel Day. Surely you remember, ATBOTH?
I beg to differ with the view that any replicator must be kashered in order for its produce to be considered kosher. B'dieved, anything created by a replicator is a d'var chadash. It has no relationship whatsoever to a non-kosher animal. Hence -- enjoy your lobster, shrimp, and bacon cheeseburgers aboard the Enterprise. They are actually kosher!
Hah! Marshall decisively torpedoes the Atbothian nonsense!
Cool ha kavood, as they say. Cool ha kavood.
---Grant Patel
B'dieved, anything created by a replicator is a d'var chadash. It has no relationship whatsoever to a non-kosher animal. Hence -- enjoy your lobster, shrimp, and bacon cheeseburgers aboard the Enterprise. They are actually kosher!
But if it is meat, it has to pass muster! Without kosher schechting, it cannot be permitted meat no matter how kosher the presumtion of it's origin (dvar chadash) it's origin. And I will maintain that if it has all the characteristics of meat, it cannot be assumed to be otherwise unless there is a hechsher to that effect.
Yes yes, I know I am changing my argumentation in mid-stream, or leastways pointing the pony of my reasoning in a different direction. I just cannot stand to loose an argument.
Plus if something is, in ALL ways, bacon, I do not think it can be kosher. Replicated "meat", if it is not from its very origin kosher - how can it be considered permissible?
I would suggest, in order to keep anal noodges such as myself AND whatever shtrenge Hareidim flieg into outer space happy, that the replicators for the Gentiles be allowed to produce the end products suitable for their dinner, and replicate whole live cows or goats for the superfrummniks to shecht.
Or live giraffes. The giraffe also is a kosher animal.
If the shochet does not know where to shecht a giraffe he (or she)knows too little about the laws of shechitah, and will need some serious additional study and training before joining starfleet.
And I further refuse to consider the possibility that certain non-standard meat animals be not only permitted to everyone, but actually consumed by people who are shomer mitzvos! The Chabad rabbi on shipboard has NO business eating dog or pangolin!
But said Lubavitcher WILL need to have a huge number of live lambs in the hold, for the various observations of peysach - if, as a majority aver, the replicator-fleish is NOT echte fleish (in which case it can not be used for the shankbone).
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Little side-track: If I am correct, and the replicated meat is as much meat and as truly meat as meat that has experienced life and the blade, then the replicator could surely be set to provide a parah adumah?
In which case, it would be absolutely REQUIRED to build the third Beis haMikdash. Frumme leite maybe should be banned from space travel till that is done. It's a mitzvah. Nichtzo?
BoTH, we keep our shankbone in the freezer in a plastic baggie from year to year. They need only one kosher shankbone per seder plate, regardless of the frequency of warp travel.
Ah, but how many people per seder plate? In theory, one seder plate could serve for an infinite number, but in practise they would all have to be able to see the plate, and hear the maggid - so that would limit it to one shank bone per room.
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