[Avodah] Chalav Yisrael: Required or recommended

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 03:21:06PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: As I understand it, eggs have a great deal in common with milk: Eggs
: are kosher if and only if the source animal was kosher, and this is
: impossible to determine simply by looking at it...

Well, actually, Chullin 64a and YD 86:1 give simanim for eggs. If it
is round on both ends, pointy on both ends, or the white doesn't fully
surround the yolk, the egg is from a non-kosher species. If it is round
on one end, pointy on the other, and the white fully surrounds the yolk,
bring the egg to someone who hunts birds/eggs and he can recognize
the breed.

An advantage to working with a solid rather than a liquid.

:                                                  And yet, I never hear
: of anyone nowadays who insists on a mashgiach to certify that his eggs
: are from a kosher bird.

Because we recognize chicken eggs, and would indeed ask a rav if you
opened a carton and found something abnormal?

: I'm just guessing, but perhaps the gezera on milk was never on "milk"
: to begin with. Maybe it was a general law about foods where the
: kashrus problems had risen to a certain level...

Except it never gets phrased that way. R ZP Frank was so sure it was
specifically milk that he rules milk *powder* was never included!

In any case, it's hard to know which risks get covered with a geziera
and which not. It seems that some gezeiros deal with things far less
likely than other cases that aren't addressed.

I proposed the guess that it's historical accident. A mistake that
happened to get frequently made got a gezeira. And therefore there
is no way to reverse engineer a rule. But it's a guess made out
of whole cloth.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For a mitzvah is a lamp,
micha at aishdas.org        And the Torah, its light.
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