For more info about how Jewish dietary laws become stricter and stricter with each passing generation see David Kraemer's book Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Through-Routledge-Advances-Sociology/dp/0415476402/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1). For a synopsis of the book's final chapter see my article about a talk by Kraemer (http://www.examiner.com/article/david-kraemer-on-the-ultra-orthodox-kashrut-hysteria-of-the-1980s).
Kraemer's view is that were any strictly observant Orthodox Jew living today able to time travel to the home of any of the revered halakhic authorities of previous centuries that contemporary Jew could not eat at the revered earlier sage's table because the earlier standard of kashrut would be too lax. So a time traveling contemporary strictly observant Jew could not eat at the tables of Rabbi Akiba, Rashi, Maimonides, Joseph Caro (author of the legal code Shulkhan Aroch and ancestor of the contemporary American historian/biographer Robert Caro), or for that matter any of the 18th or 19th century ideological founders of ultra-Orthodoxy.
The contemporary standard of super strict kashrut is also a product of affluence. Not even the most devout and halakhically strict turn of the previous century impoverished immigrants living in tenements on Manhattan's Lower East Side could afford separate sets of dishes, pots, ice boxes (before refrigerators), or sinks. Kraemer also holds that women are the driving force behind the ever stricter standards of kashrut, because the kitchen is one of the few areas in which women exercise authority in Orthodox Judaism, and the strictness of a kitchen's kashrut is a source of female status. Rabbis formalize the female driven stricter standards so as not to appear lax.
WRT the highly imaginative multiple and contradictory Jewish views of the afterlife see Simcha Paull Raphael's book Jewish Views of the Afterlife (http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Views-Afterlife-Simcha-Raphael/dp/0742562212). For an oversimplified synopsis of a talk the author gave see my article about Raphael's talk (http://www.examiner.com/article/judaism-101-simcha-raphael-s-talk-on).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-05-06 03:22 pm (UTC)Kraemer's view is that were any strictly observant Orthodox Jew living today able to time travel to the home of any of the revered halakhic authorities of previous centuries that contemporary Jew could not eat at the revered earlier sage's table because the earlier standard of kashrut would be too lax. So a time traveling contemporary strictly observant Jew could not eat at the tables of Rabbi Akiba, Rashi, Maimonides, Joseph Caro (author of the legal code Shulkhan Aroch and ancestor of the contemporary American historian/biographer Robert Caro), or for that matter any of the 18th or 19th century ideological founders of ultra-Orthodoxy.
The contemporary standard of super strict kashrut is also a product of affluence. Not even the most devout and halakhically strict turn of the previous century impoverished immigrants living in tenements on Manhattan's Lower East Side could afford separate sets of dishes, pots, ice boxes (before refrigerators), or sinks.
Kraemer also holds that women are the driving force behind the ever stricter standards of kashrut, because the kitchen is one of the few areas in which women exercise authority in Orthodox Judaism, and the strictness of a kitchen's kashrut is a source of female status. Rabbis formalize the female driven stricter standards so as not to appear lax.
WRT the highly imaginative multiple and contradictory Jewish views of the afterlife see Simcha Paull Raphael's book Jewish Views of the Afterlife (http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Views-Afterlife-Simcha-Raphael/dp/0742562212). For an oversimplified synopsis of a talk the author gave see my article about Raphael's talk (http://www.examiner.com/article/judaism-101-simcha-raphael-s-talk-on).