Both Judaism and Islam have prohibited eating pork and its products for thousands of years. Scholars have proposed several reasons for the ban to which both religions almost totally adhere. Pork, and the refusal to eat it, possesses powerful cultural baggage for Jews.
Despite Judaism's prohibition on eating pork, pigs are raised, slaughtered and processed as food in Israel.
Prohibition on mixing dairy products with meat
Others associate it with the general prohibition on certain mixtures set out in the Torah, such as that of coupling animals from different species. Yet others see it as symbolic: the refusal to mix life (milk) and death (meat).
Jewish tradition permits controlled alcohol drinking, whereas Muslim tradition prohibits the use of any alcohol.
The Torah forbids the cooking and consumption of any milk with any meat to prevent one from cooking a kid in its mother's milk. According to Kabbalah, meat represents gevurah (the Divine attribute of Judgment) and milk represents chesed (the Divine attribute of Kindness).
Kosher pareve means food that is prepared without meat, milk or their derivatives. Examples of kosher foods are beef, chicken, salmon, tuna and milk. Dark chocolate is considered Kosher since it only contains cocoa beans, vanilla beans, and sugar.
Only eggs from kosher fowl are kosher. These include chicken, Cornish hens, ducks, geese, and turkey. The prohibition of eating blood applies even to the smallest drop of blood, and thus any blood spots found in an egg renders the egg non-kosher.
After the liver has been broiled and kashered, it is considered like any other piece of kosher meat which can be fried or roasted in a kosher meat pot, pan, or roaster, without any reservation. Furthermore, liver does not have to broiled within seventy-two hours of kosher slaughter.
Pork is a food taboo among Jews, Muslims, and some Christian denominations. Swine were prohibited in ancient Syria and Phoenicia, and the pig and its flesh represented a taboo observed, Strabo noted, at Comana in Pontus.
The top consumer of pork in 2021 continued to be China, taking into account its special economic regions Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China, whose consumptions were about 61, 52, and 37 kg/inhabitant respectively.
It is only in Leviticus 11:7 that eating pork is forbidden to God's people for the very first time—“… and the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you.” This is where and when pork in all its forms (including ham, bacon, sausage, etc.)
The only dietary restrictions specified for Christians in the New Testament are to "abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meat of strangled animals" (Acts 15:29), teachings that the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, preached for believers to follow.
But what about lamb? Roast lamb was eaten at Passover until A.D. 70, when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. In memory of this, the eating of roasted lamb was prohibited. But many Jews find lamb acceptable as long as it is not roasted but cooked in a pan with liquid.
Ashkenazi Jews dubbed carrots mehren which sounds much like merin, the word for prosperity. So, to further the symbolism, they sliced the bright orange veggies into rounds to look like gold coins, often drizzled with golden honey. (Many cooks prepare carrot coins also at Hanukkah, as side-dish gelt.)
The Torah prohibits cooking, eating or deriving any benefit from the mixture of meat and milk. Although rennet used to make cheese make be derived from a kosher animal source, the rennet itself is an enzyme and is not considered a meat product so it may be used to make a Kosher Cheese.
(see the Summer 2016 issue of BTUS) And since butter is often made from whey cream or from a blend of sweet cream and whey cream, butter can be non-kosher if it is made with non-kosher whey cream.
Although it is more costly, some yogurt companies opt for special OU-certified gelatin, which comes from fully kosher-processed animals. This has been a terrific solution for some companies. Greek yogurt has been a boon both for the dairy industry as well as for kosher certification.
The very clear answer is that no, ice cream is not prohibited at all. Orthodox Jews love ice cream as much as any other culture, and the sheer number of brands, flavors, and recipes grows by the year — almost every ice cream brand you'll see on shelves boast a kosher symbol.
In its natural form and during the roasting process, coffee is considered kosher because it only comes into contact with water. When coffee is decaffeinated or flavored, it can transform into a non-kosher food.
Are Lindt products Kosher? All of Lindt USA's LINDOR truffles are now certified Kosher (dairy) by Kof-K. There are seven flavors that are always imported and these are not Kosher certified: Almond.
A dairy-free lasagna is perfect for Passover. Keep kosher by using a broth instead of milk in a bechamel, and use pasta sheets made of matzah. Photo by Ray Kachatorian. A proper Italian lasagna mixes meat (sometimes pork) and milk.
Conclusion: Because the Talmud—the 2000-year-old document that serves as the basis for the current Jewish religious legal code (Halacha)—explicitly focuses on the positive values of both breast milk and breastfeeding, it is understandable that Orthodox Jewish women have a deep religious cultural commitment to ...
Jews who observe the traditional dietary laws cannot mix meat and dairy, and so avoid them.