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Maintaining a Jewish Kitchen
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What makes a kitchen Jewish? The traditional way is by observing all the laws pertaining to keeping kosher. These laws mandate separating all objects that come in contact with milk products from those that are used for cooking or eating meat. That is why a kosher kitchen has two sets of everything. Keeping kosher extends holiness to food preparation and eating and makes Jewish women the guardians of this commandment.
Shopping for kosher food
In a kosher home non-kosher
food is strictly forbidden. That means all meat must be bought at a kosher butcher shop to ensure that the animal has been slaughtered correctly. Women who keep kosher must also examine the labels on purchased foods to make sure that they don’t contain forbidden ingredients.
Religious laws classify some foods as kosher (fit to eat) or treyf (unfit to eat). Examples of treyf are meats from animals that don’t have split hooves and don’t chew a cud-pork for example. Sea creatures without fins and scales — lobster, crab, and other shellfish — and birds of prey are also forbidden.
top photo: Cupboards holding kosher dish sets. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
inset photo, middle: A Jewish kitchen of yesteryear. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
inset photo, bottom: Gerr’s Meat Market, St. Paul, 1952. The butcher shop was located in a section of St. Paul that was prone to flooding. Courtesy of Irving Gerr, Centuria, Wisconsin.
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