[Avodah] Is Turkey Kosher?

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 04:25:06AM -0500, david guttmann wrote:
: RZS wrote:
:> Back to Moshe Rabbeinu.  That is the premise of the whole business of
:> requiring a mesorah for birds.

To reply to RZS's point... The Torah lists treif birds. What one would
need a mesorah for back to MRAH would be which birds are treif. See SA YD
82:1 "... ela manah minim temei'im bilvad, ushe'ar minei ha'of mutarim".
Continuing in the next siman, bediqa is needed because of a lack of
expertise in knowing what those 24 minim temei'im include.

: See Rambam Ma'achalot Assurot 1:15 that a Baki Baminin Ubeshmotehen - an
: ornithological expert who can identify the birds as to their names- does
: not require bedika and therefore Simanim and he establishes the Mesora as
: per the end of the Halacha - vene'eman Hatzayad ...

Your name is Guttman, so I assume you come from a family of Ashkenazi
"good people".

Ashkenazim don't hold like the Rambam. It's a machloqes SA and Rama,
see YD 82:3. The Rama says we're noheig to follow the yeish omerim who
say you don't eat any bird without a mesorah, and identifies this as
the shitah of the Arukh. (R' Nasan ben Yechiel, 1030-1106 CE, Italy --
a talmid of R' Hai Gaon and thus sufficiently qualified to be a bar
pelugta of the Rambam.)

In fact, among the shitos RAZZ lists to explain the common eating of
turkey by Ashkenazim is that of the Otzar Yisrael, that eating turkey
either predates the Rama's pesaq, or predates universal acceptance of
that pesaq among Ashkenazim (and is an instance where other poseqim won
out in setting precedent). So, the whole thing might revolve around when
we stopped holding like the Rambam.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             If a person does not recognize one's own worth,
micha at aishdas.org        how can he appreciate the worth of another?
http://www.aishdas.org             - Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye,
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  author of Toldos Yaakov Yosef