[Avodah] Figs and Wasps

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 11:01:40PM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
: To what extent does flurescent and other modern forms of lighting
: provide better abilities to see such bugs that sunlight (which
: presumably our ancestors used)?  Is it just that it is more
: comfortable to use such light, or is there a real difference between
: the size of bugs that can be seen by the (average?) naked eye in
: sunlight and under modern lighting?

Before moving the conversation here, I explored some possibilities on
Areivim:

1- We're wrong to assume the additional bugs found are assur, since our
ancestors couldn't have found them. I do not mean to guess about what
they did do, I'm simply talking about eliminating what they lacked the
technology to try. They didn't have water under pressure, magnifying
lenses (up to the task, available to the common person), lighting, eye
glasses, the nutrition, etc...

Can we actually be banning insects that Rachav could never have gotten
rid of before serving Yehoshua a fig, strawberry, or salad?

2- The metzi'us changed: there are more bugs.

a- As RZSero pointed out, in the case of strawberries, the modern
berry is a hybrid that didn't exist until the 19th cent. In general,
breeding changed to make our fruit sweeter, and thus a better source
of simple carbohydrates accessible to bugs.

b- I also repeated an idea from an LOR that the improvement of
insecticides actually *increased* the number of tiny bugs. For most of
Jewish history, large bugs ate the smaller bugs, keeping the number of
really tiny ones low. Then they came out with harsh insecticides, that
weren't picky about what they killed. Now insecticides are more
focused, which means they kill the larger bugs that even non-kashrus
observant people would avoid, leaving more of these hard-to-see bugs.

3- The metzi'us changed in a way that formerly kosher bugs are now traif.

Invisible bugs have no halachic metzi'us. Perhaps as technology and
eyesight improve (all the things RnCL raises) this actually shifts the
line between kosher and treif bugs.

: Even RSB writes "Hilchot bugs used to be much simpler:
: Soak the vegetable in salt/vinegar water., "

: Is it necesssarily true that vinegar was so easily available that it
: could be used for soaking vegetables in days gone by?

Probably. Before refrigeration, the trick was keeping wine from going
bad. It would make sense to make sure much of it became vinegar rather
than garbage.

But I don't think this is true, because it fails the Kuzari Test. I
asked around, and no one around here heard of their grandmothers
soaking their vegetables in vinegar. With the exception of the romaine
lettuce used for maror. (Which was possibly the only time Ashkenazi
grandparents ate romaine...) So at most I would think it is possible
some qehillos did soak in salt or vinegar water, but it definitely was
not universal.

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your
grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter