[Avodah] Is Turkey Kosher?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 04:07:28PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> Yes, we know that.  But on what basis did that minhag arise?  It must
> have started in places where they didn't believe a mesorah was necessary,
> or else out of a mistaken belief that a mesorah existed elsewhere.

See RAZZ's article available at http://www.kashrut.com/articles/turkey/
originally published in the Spring 1998 issue of the RJJ Journal.

It would seem that the turkey road in on the coat-tails of the tarnigol
adumah. The MA (79:14) and the MB (79:14), and the latter cites the MA
and Ateres Zeqeinim as quote the Bach in identifying the tarnigol adumah
with the "english hen", and traces it back to talmidei R' Yonah (if I
got TR"Y correct) and the Rashba. The problem, as RAZZ notes, is that
the halakhah in question, that one can't daven near the excrement of a
tarnigol adumah because it is smellier than that of other tarnigolos,
is mentioned in the Y-mi, and where would they have encountered a turkey?

FWIW, I just texted someone who worked in Be'eirot Yitzchaq (a member
of Qibbutz haDati located between Petach Tiqva and the airport) and
he replied that turkey droppings do qualify as particularly less more
odorous than chickens'.

But I think (again, from reading RAZZ) we're meiqil because it's a
machloqes rishonim if a bird with no safeiq about the simanim needs a
mesorah to begin with, and (now guessing) perhaps we didn't pasqen that
way until after turkey got grandfathered in.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
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