[Avodah] Bishul Akum - Playing With Fire OU Kosher

[Prof. L. Levine]

The following is from

https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/playing-with-fire/

Thousands of years ago, the Rabbis of old recognized that Jewish identity is the key to the survival of Klal Yisrael. To this end, they enacted three sets of food laws to limit socialization: bishul akum, pas akum, and stam yainom (cooked food, bread, and wine prepared by gentiles). This was based on the realization that bonds of friendship are established by eating together, and breaking bread with a stranger is the first step to developing a closer relationship. For thousands of years of exile, the biblical and rabbinic laws of kosher have formed a natural fortress that prevented the assimilation of the Jewish people into many different cultures of the world. Today, with spiraling assimilation wreaking havoc at a frightening rate, the prophetic vision of Chazal is all the more apparent. It is significant that even for secularized Jews, a kosher kitchen often remains the last bastion against intermarriage and assimilation.

See the above URL for the entire article.

>From the end of this article


Here is a short quiz of ten questions to test your knowledge of some of the finer points of kosher: All the questions have one answer alluded to by the title of this article.

  1.  What kosher problem may be obviated by using a touch-tone phone?
  2.  Contemporary rabbis dispute the use of a light bulb to solve which kosher concern?
  3.  3. Of what particular interest is it to the Jewish community what the Queen or King of England serves at royal dinners?
  4.  Why is MTBY printed on some cans of OU tuna fish?
  5.  What situation became exacerbated by the introduction of stoves with electronic ignitions?
  6.  How can kosher food be rendered non-kosher without adding a single ingredient?
  7.  What law of kosher was instituted to prevent intermarriage?
  8.  What halacha of kosher is often of greater concern when husband and wife both work?
  9.  Sephardim and Ashkenazim disagree whether a wood chip can be used to resolve what issue?
  10. What relevant law of kosher is unknown to many people?

Yitzchok Levine

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