As this episode is all about ‘kashrut’, the act of ‘keeping kosher’, let’s clear up what that actually means. Time to hand over to Little Miss Leviticus himself, Arron Ferster, to chat us through the rules:

Okay, so, the laws of kashrut as laid out in the Torah are the dietary laws that Jews are instructed to live by. Jews of all different shapes and sizes implement these laws differently but the headliners are as follows:

1. Only animals that have both split hooves and chew the cud are edible as kosher - this is where all the pig-based animosity comes from.

2. Only fish or sea-dwellers with both fins and scales are edible as kosher - hence, no shellfish.

3. Poultry is different but chickens, geese, turkeys and ducks are in, birds of prey and those more associated with long-haul flights are out. Seems to be more list based than firm rules.

4. Even though animals such as cows, lambs, chicken etc. are deemed kosher animals, they need to be killed and treated in a very specific way by a trained kosher slaughterer to be edible to observant Jews, hence why many Jews don’t “eat meat out”.

Interesting fact - Kosher is a bit like Halal but stricter, so many Muslims will happily eat kosher meat though Jews wouldn’t eat Halal meat as the requirements aren’t as strict.

5. Meat and Dairy foods cannot be mixed - stems from the old “Thou shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”. As with all Jewish laws, these lines from the bible have been extrapolated out down the centuries by rabbis to the laws we have today.

And here are some other terms thrown about that might be need a little clarification:

• ‘Glatt in the flat’ - Another Ian Tussie-ism (and no, he is not sponsoring the show). ‘Glatt’ is actually the Yiddish word for smooth but colloquially it is used to describe something that is ‘unquestionably kosher’.

• Treif - animals deemed forbidden under Jewish dietary laws.

• Chedar - Jewish sunday school.

• Midrash - rabbinic commentary explaining the teachings of the Torah. 

• Shomer shabbat - a term to describe people who observe the rules of the Jewish sabbath from Friday night until it ends Saturday night. So this means no TV, no driving, no writing, no shopping, no doom scrolling, no pushing buttons to make things work.

• Frum - religious/more observant

• Beth din - Jewish courts. One of their roles to oversee kosher certification of food production, awarding kosher foods with a ‘hechsher’ - a bit like the royal warrant for kosher food.

• Erev Kol Nidrei - ‘erev’ refers to the day before something. So Sunday is technically erev Monday. Kol Nidrei is the night service of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. The big one. The holiest day of the year where Jew fast and ask for forgiveness for their wrongdoing.

• Chazza - slang/abbreviation for ‘chazerai’ which is another term for ‘treif’.

• Mikveh - a Jewish ritual bath used for ‘purification’ and ‘cleansing’. Frum Jewish women go regularly but lightweight Jews (like Abigail) tend to only go once, before marriage.

• Eilat - holiday resort in southern Israel. 

• Vorsht - oh how to describe vosht? It is like a thick, stubby kosher salami of sorts. Yum.

• Kabanos sausages - shrivelled, dry, smoked turkey sausage. Yet another kosher ‘delicacy’.

• Chutzpah - lots of meanings for this word but often used to describe cheek or audacity or gall.

• Pesach - passover, during which we eat no bread…and a lot of matzah (unleavened bread)

• Kosher le pesach - something that is kosher for passover.

• Kippah - skull cap, the thing Jewish men (and some women) wear on their heads all the time if observant and only at shul or religious ceremonies if not. 

• The Portnoy kids - you guessed it, offspring of Rabbi Portnoy

• Shtetl - Yiddish for a small Jewish village in Eastern Europe, prominent in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, before shit went down.

• KD - King David primary school.

• Ein kalehuni adon olam - shorthand for ‘The End’, referring to the last two songs at the end of Shabbat service.