KOSHER DIETARY LAW PROHIBITS JEWS FROM RIDING CAMELS

Israeli Soldiers Enjoying The New Loot, A poor Camel #3, Oct. 1948 Image and caption are from Palestine Remembered at  www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Dayr-al-Hawa/Picture3082.html

If the logic of contemporary kosher practice were applied consistently, then the Jewish soldier shown mounted on a camel in the accompanying photograph would be considered to be violating Jewish kosher law according to a line of reasoning which begins by noting that Deuteronomy 14:07 forbids the eating of camel:

Nevertheless these ye shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the cloven hoof; as the camel, and the hare, and the coney: for they chew the cud, but divide not the hoof; therefore they are unclean unto you.

The logic of contemporary kosher practice which will be shown below to equate riding camel to eating camel is one that includes within the definition of "eating," the consumption not only of a minute quantity of a forbidden substance, and not only an infinitesimal quantity, but in fact an immeasurable and undetectable quantity, which is in the quotation below what the feed media that nourish an enzyme that produces an ingredient is within the final product � the feed media are immeasurable and undetectable in the final product, and yet, according to the kosher business, important to avoid eating:

In order for the packaged yogurt or marinade to be certified kosher, all its ingredients must be certified kosher; likewise, in order for the ingredients to be certified kosher, the enzymes that have mediated the creation of said ingredients must also be certified kosher.  And in order for an enzyme to be certified kosher, that enzyme must keep kosher.  [...] In order for an enzyme to be certified kosher, the feed media for that enzyme must be "kosherish." And what about the feed media for the feed media?  It is a food chain of microscopic yet divine reticulation, leading back to the mother-of-all proteins, keeping kosherish in an aerated flask. Frederick Kaufman, The secret ingredient: Keeping the world kosher, Harper's Magazine, January 2005, pp. 75-81, p. 80.

The foundation having been laid as above, the logical gap which equates riding a camel with eating camel can now be filled as below.

PEOPLE WITH MISCROSCOPES UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE ALL CANNIBALS

Each person lives within what scientists who study particulate matter call his own "personal cloud" composed primarily of dust that had earlier settled on his clothing, lint from his own clothing, and flakes shed by his own skin.  Each person sheds in the order of 50 million skin flakes per day, and inhales around 700,000 of them back into his own body.  Most of these skin flakes settle, and end up blanketing a person's environment.  Some settle on his own food and drink, and so he ends up eating and drinking some of his own skin flakes as well.

People near each other have overlapping personal clouds, and inhale each other's skin flakes.  People's skin flakes settle inside the mouths of nearby people, or on their food and drink, and so people can be said to eat each other's skin flakes.

At least a billion and a half pieces of dust enter your nose and mouth every day, if you breath exceptionally clean air.  Most people inhale many times that number. Hannah Holmes, The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2001, p. 133.

On a microscopic level, then, we are all cannibals.  As a person sheds one kg of skin flakes a year, the amounts we end up inhaling or eating of those around us can be substantial.  This phenomenon can be demonstrated using no more than an inexpensive microscope.  It can even be demonstrated with nothing more sophisticated than a magnifying glass.  The dandruff of one person ending up in the mouth of another person, or on another person's food, might even be detected with the naked eye, if anybody cared to look.  Thus, to speak of this variety of cannibalism as "microscopic" is to say that it is more easily demonstrated with the help of a microscope, although it is large enough that a microscope is not essential, and neither is a magnifying glass.

It must be acknowledged that this variety of cannibalism is not typically accorded moral or legal or religious standing.  That is, inhaling or eating someone else's skin flakes does not typically lead to prosecution for cannibalism, or to priestly condemnation of cannibalism, simply because legal and religious prohibition of cannibalism does not extend to microscopic events.  Although for the sake of argument in the instant letter I do call it "cannibalism," the scientists who study and write about the phenomenon don't call it that.  Whether logical consistency requires anybody to call it "cannibalism" will be considered below.

PEOPLE WITH MISCROSCOPES UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE ALL OMNIVORES

Animals too shed their skin, in flakes known as dander, and they too move in their own personal clouds of personal particles, and they too deposit a blanket of their personal particles over their environments.  Some of these particles too are inhaled by humans, or settle in their mouths or on their food and drink, and thus on a microscopic level people may be said to both breathe and eat their dogs and their cats and their hamsters and their budgies, and any cow that they might milk, or any gorilla that they might throw peanuts to in a zoo, or any horse or camel that they might ride.  On a microscopic level, therefore, it may be generalized that people are omnivores not only because most of them eat all manner of foods, but because all of them eat some small portion of every living thing around them.

The Jewish soldier shown in the photograph, then, is unquestionably admitting into his body in one way or another substantial amounts of camel.  As a moving camel might generate a large personal cloud, it is possible that his particulate matter also finds its way into the bodies of many or all of the other soldiers shown in the photograph.

Now if Deuteronomy 14:07 explicitly forbids the eating of camel, and if to ride a camel is to eat camel, then it follows that Deuteronomy 14:07 implicitly prohibits the riding of camels.

PARTICULATE MATTER BLOWS IN EASTWARD FROM AS FAR AWAY AS THE GOBI DESERT

Awareness of the circulation of particulate matter around the globe allows the argument to be carried farther.  Below, for example, is shown the haze created in Tucson, Arizona by dust blowing in across the Pacific Ocean from the Gobi Desert:

www.lakepowell.net/impact2001.htm

Mongolian storm pollutes North America April 17, 2001 Web posted at: 10:30 PM EDT (0230 GMT) HONG KONG, China � A dust storm from Mongolia has dispersed dust from the Gobi Desert and industrial pollution from China across a quarter of the mainland United States and Canada, according to atmospheric scientists. The whitish haze has been seen from Calgary, Canada in the north, to Arizona in the south and as far east as the ski-fields of Aspen, Colorado. The weekend levels of particulate � matter that reduces visibility and can cause respiratory problems � quadrupled over the previous weekend.  [...] "This storm is a godsend to pollution researchers.  People are finally realizing that what have been saying for years is true � pollution from Asia is being carried across the oceans," said Russ Schnell, director of observatory operations for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder.  [...] Schnell said the cloud will reach the U.S. East Coast, but should dissipate within the next few days. In late 1998, scientists first claimed to have documented the travel of industrial pollution from China to the U.S., where it spiked some pollution levels as high as two-thirds of federal health standards. It is not the first time such a storm has been tracked all the way to the U.S., but it is unusual for the conditions to be so visible to the naked eye, said Schnell and Feldman.  [...] Health officials are advising people at risk � the elderly, children or those with existing respiratory problems � to stay indoors if they notice any effect from the pollution. CNN  archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04/17/weather.gobi/index.html

PARTICULATE MATTER BLOWS IN WESTWARD FROM AS FAR AWAY AS THE SAHARA DESERT

And it isn't only the Gobi Desert which blankets the Americas with dust moving east, it is also the Sahara Desert which blankets the Americas with dust moving west:

Satellites can track African dust clouds as they migrate across the Atlantic Ocean.  This NASA TOMS aerosol movie, which spans the interval June 13 through 21, 2001, shows such a cloud raining bits of the Sahara Desert over the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. NASA  science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast30aug_1.htm

Desert Dust Kills Florida Fish New research links huge African dust clouds with the "red tides" that kill millions of fish along the Florida coast each year. August 30, 2001: It sounds like a story from the Old Testament: Without warning, the sea turns a shade of reddish brown, killing scores of fish and other marine life � and making the water an unwelcome place for humans. Such "red tides" have, from time to time, plagued coastal communities for centuries.  Now a new study, partially funded by NASA, has revealed a surprising connection between red tides in the Gulf of Mexico and giant dust clouds that blow across the Atlantic Ocean from the distant Sahara Desert.  NOAA and NASA satellites can spot such dust clouds en route from Africa to the Americas, raising hopes that space-based data could help scientists predict when red tides will strike the Gulf coast. "The West Florida shelf is a hot spot for fishing, aquaculture and tourism, all of which can be drastically affected by a surprise visit from a red tide," said Jason Lenes, a graduate student at University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, and the lead author in the study. Red tides, which are actually blooms of toxic algae, have in the past killed huge numbers of fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds.  They can also trigger skin and respiratory problems in humans. Storm activity in the Sahara Desert region kicks up fine particles from the arid topsoil there, generating vast clouds of dust.  Easterly trade winds carry the dust across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico. The new study shows that these clouds fertilize the water off the West Florida coast with iron.  Plant-like bacteria use that iron to set the stage for red tides.  When iron levels go up, these bacteria, called Trichodesmium, fix nitrogen in the water, converting it to a form usable by other marine life.  The addition of biologically usable nitrogen in the water makes the Gulf of Mexico a friendlier environment for toxic algae. NASA  science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast30aug_1.htm

Not only does lifeless dust blow in from distant continents, but also microorganisms capable of starting epidemics.  In the example below, Sahara dust and virus moves northward toward England:

In Focus June 09, 2003 Disease Dustup Dust clouds may carry infectious organisms across oceans By Otto Pohl On February 11, 2001, an enormous cloud of dust whipped out of the Sahara Desert and moved north across the Atlantic, reaching the U.K. two days later.  A few days afterward, counties across the island began reporting simultaneous outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, a viral sickness of livestock (sometimes confused with mad cow disease).  For Eugene Shinn, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Petersburg, Fla., that coincidence suggested an obvious link. The idea that large-scale disease outbreaks could be caused by dust clouds from other continents has been floating around for years.  But it seemed far-fetched.  In the U.S. government, "no one wanted to listen to me," Shinn remembers about his proposal that something as amorphous and uncontrollable as a dust cloud could bring the disease to America. But the theory is now gaining acceptance as scientists find that it may explain many previously mysterious disease outbreaks.  Although the world's dry areas have always shed dust into the atmosphere � wind blows more than a billion tons of dust around the planet every year � the globe's dust girdle has become larger in recent years.  Some of the changes are part of nature's cycles, such as the 30-year drought in northern Africa.  Others, including the draining of the Aral Sea in Central Asia and the overdependence on Lake Chad in Africa, are the result of shortsighted resource management.  Poor farming practices also hasten desertification, creating dust beds polluted with pesticides and laced with diseases from human and animal waste.  [...] The findings on international dust storms have also attracted the attention of those who are concerned about bioterrorism.  "Anthrax will certainly make the trip" in dust from Africa to the U.S., remarks Shinn, who recently completed a terrorism risk assessment for the U.S.  Dust clouds could be considered, in effect, a very dirty bomb. Scientific American  www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000ECFD9-15AB-1EE1-A2D1809EC5880000

PARTICULATE MATTER MAY ORIGINATE LOCALLY

Illumination by a setting sun reveals that Vancouver beaches do not need to be supplied by either the Gobi or Sahara deserts to fill local air with a dust which undoubtedly contains not only mineral matter, but also organic particles originating probably from wood, seaweed, marine animals, dogs, cats, people:

UBIQUITOUS DEUTERONOMY-PROHIBITED PARTICULATE MATTER RENDERS KOSHER OBSERVANCE IMPRACTICABLE

But to return to camels � the Gobi Desert and the Sahara Desert have camels, as do many other places around the globe.  If there are ten million camels in the world, and if each one sheds 50 million skin flakes per day like a person does, that makes for a world-wide shedding of one hundred thousand billion camel-skin flakes daily; and given that the earth's atmosphere circulates everywhere whatever is released into it anywhere � then all of the above together might be taken to signify that the earth's atmosphere is, among other things, one giant camel cloud, and every Jew in the world eats at least a little bit of Deuteronomy-prohibited camel every day.

And of course ubiquitous and inescapable Jewish kosher-violation goes far beyond eating camel.  Thus, Deuteronomy 14 lists some twenty bird varieties that Jews are forbidden to eat, and all these bird varieties are continuously shedding their dander into the air, some of them within North America (as for example eagles, hawks, owls, ravens, pelicans, and storks), and this bird dander from Deuteronomy-prohibited birds is being circulated around the globe as well, and therefore is also being eaten by Jews.

Pig particles are circulated and consumed the same way, as is attested to by the reference to "flecks of pigskin" below:

Pig dust, for instance, contains everything from mists of manure droplets to dry dung dust, infectious germs, bits of bedding and feed, flecks of pigskin, and a hefty dose of endotoxins.  [...]  Heber recalls meeting some farmers in the 1980s who were so allergic to pig dust that they couldn't spend fifteen minutes in their own barns.  (p. 156) One of his studies found that so many bacteria were escaping from a pig barn that a plume of them could be measured more than two hundred yards downwind.  [...]  Bacteria aside, the pig dust itself can be thick enough to stink a mile downwind.  (p. 158) Hannah Holmes, The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2001.

During the immature "nymph" stage, the follicle mite Demodex folliculorum has only six legs www.polesine.com/pagine/salute/altre/a002.htm

And no point even trying to separate meat consumption from milk, as skin flakes are meat and people ingest human or animal skin flakes from the air continuously, such that every drink of milk is necessarily accompanied by an inadvertent and inescapable eating of meat.  Oh, and Deuteronomy forbids the eating of insects, too, and insects too shed particulate matter into the air, and insects are really ubiquitous.  Actually, the Deuteronomy prohibition appears to extend to all arthropods, which only compounds the impossibility of keeping kosher because of the inadvertent eating of spider and mite and isopod particles floating in the air.  And the Vancouver beach scenes above suggest that dust clouds can contain Deuteronomy-forbidden crab, lobster, and shellfish particles, in addition to still more dog and cat particles.

Taking seriously the kosher business's avoidance of ingesting infinitesimal quantities of forbidden organic matter, then, implies that kosher-observant Jews would have to lock themselves into a sealed vault within which they were self-sufficient, as the only way of winning protection from a world irredeemably contaminated � and one might even say saturated � with Deuteronomy-prohibited particles.  But even this radical solution would not solve the problem of microscopic contamination, for if eight-legged mites are among the creatures that are Deuteronomy-forbidden to admit into one's body, then it poses a unique and unexplored dilemma that just about every adult has two species of them living in his pores � the "follicle mites," which include the larger Demodex folliculorum (which, reaching 0.4 mm in length, can be discerned with the naked eye), and its smaller cousin Demodex brevis (which might be visible to the naked eye as at least a speck).

THREE SOLUTIONS

Three exits can be imagined from the theological morass into which pondering the implications of contemporary kosher practice leads.

(1) Complete the Abandonment of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy is already mostly abandoned.  Abandoned is its sanction of slavery and of polygamy, of stoning to death heretics, adulterers, and disobedient children.  Abandoned is its glorying in past genocide and its intoxication at the prospect of future genocide.  Abandoned is its recommendation of feeding tainted meat to non-Jews and of cutting off a woman's hand for too energetically coming to the aid of her husband when he is attacked.  Abandoned is the male prerogative of arbitrary divorce.  And so Deuteronomy's dietary rules can be considered as inapplicable to modern life as those just enumerated, and can be abandoned with the same absence of qualms.  Given that much of Deuteronomy is repugnant and is rejected, no part of Deuteronomy can be held sacred and to command obedience.

(2) Abandon the Extrapolation of Deuteronomy Dietary Rules into the Microscopic Realm

If, however, Deuteronomy dietary rules are to be respected and observed, then the above discussion demonstrates that their extrapolation into the microscopic realm is untenable.  The ancients who wrote Deuteronomy did not have microscopes, were unconcerned with infinitesimal quantities, and were unaware of biological life that was invisible to the naked eye.  They did not use soap, were short of water, did not sneeze into Kleenex or dab their lips with serviettes or napkins as they ate, did not use disposable diapers or menstrual napkins or tampons, and were unacquainted with the use of toilet paper.  Even the fleas and lice which they were aware infested them were too insignificant to be mentioned in Deuteronomy; of follicle mites they were entirely unconscious.  For them, washing either themselves or their clothing or their culinary equipment would by modern standards be considered both infrequent and equivalent to rinsing in contaminated water.

Thus the ancients were unconcerned with the microscopic realm and with trace quantities, and did not create a religion in which microscopic events or trace quantities were noticed.  Extrapolation of Deuteronomy to the microscopic realm is a tool of the criminal conspiracy which is the modern kosher business, has no basis in religion, and leads to preposterous and fantastic conclusions if attempted systematically.  What specifically cannot be condoned is the kosher business pretending concern over the intake of Deuteronomy-prohibited substances in situations where the amount of those substances is immeasurable and undetectable while at the same time turning a blind eye to the measurable and detectable � and sometimes palpable � intake of those same Deuteronomy-prohibited substances by other routes.

A religion that forbids cannibalism does not forbid approaching another person close enough to inhale his skin scales.  A religion that forbids the eating of camel does not forbid the riding of a camel, even though this does involve a measurable entry of camel dander into the rider's lungs and into his eyes and into his mouth, and thus into his stomach.  All the more, a religion that forbids the eating of camel cannot condone a phobic avoidance of contact with a camel residue which can be imagined by the suggestible but is in fact undetectable by scientific instruments.  Such phobic avoidence can be seen to have a basis in neither religion nor science, but only in unscrupulous profit.

(3) Project the Appearance of Logical Consistency by Kosher-Certifying Air

What Canadians can reasonably anticipate and fear is that the theological quandary posed in the instant letter will be resolved not by either of the two above means, but by the further metastasis of the kosher tax to air.  As kosher certification does not depend on the presence or absence of measurable quantities of prohibited substances, rabbinical inability to actually deliver pure air is irrelevant; what matters is the rabbinical ability to certify air kosher, thus giving that air the appearance of freedom from particles of Deuteronomy-prohibited matter.

Such kosher certification can be imposed first on tanks of skindiving air and on tanks of hospital oxygen, where at least the requisite purity is achievable.  From that springboard, though, kosher certification can extend to municipal air.  The inducement to municipal authorities to purchase kosher certification for their air would be that in the absence of such certification, any product manufactured within that municipality would be denied kosher certification, and thus would be denied entry into the kosher cartel.  For Oreo Cookies to be kosher certified, then, would require not only that all ingredients placed into Oreo batter be kosher certified, but that the air in the Oreo plant and in the offices and in the parking lot be kosher-certified as well.

And why not?  As that air is laden with Deuteronomy-prohibited particles, some for example carrying camel dander from as far away as the Gobi or the Sahara deserts, which prohibited particles can fall into and contaminate the Oreo batter or the Oreo packaging, then something needs to be done, and the municipality paying for the waving of a rabbinical wand which decrees municipal air kosher will be that something.

Put simply, if a product can be kosher-certified only when all its ingredients are kosher-certified, then particles borne by air must be recognized as always being among its ingredients, and so that air must always be kosher-certified as well.  Kosher-certifying air will not be any radical innovation, but only a small expansion of modern kosher-certification practice.





Lubomyr Prytulak

cc:

Irving ABELLA, National Honourary President, CJC, Department of History, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto ON  M3J 1P3
John J CHAMBERLIN, Manager Investigations, CHRC, 344 Slater Street, Ottawa ON  K1A 1E1
Hon. Irwin COTLER, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, 284 Wellington Street, Ottawa ON  K1A 0H8
Mary M GUSELLA, Chief Commissioner, CHRC, 344 Slater Street, Ottawa ON  K1A 1E1
Ed MORGAN, National President, Canadian Jewish Congress, 100 Sparks Street, Ottawa ON  K1P 5B7