Portal:Judaism

Kashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food that may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law) is termed kosher. Among the numerous laws that form part of kashrut are the prohibitions on the consumption of unclean animals (such as pork, shellfish and most insects, with the exception of certain species of locusts), mixtures of meat and milk, and the commandment to slaughter mammals and birds according to a process known as shechita. There are also laws regarding agricultural produce. Most of these laws are derived from the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Their details and practical application, however, are set down in the Oral Torah (eventually codified in the Mishnah and Talmud) and elaborated on in the later rabbinical literature. While the Torah does not state the rationale for most kashrut laws, many reasons have been suggested, including philosophical, practical and hygienic. Presently, about a sixth of American Jews fully keep kosher, and many more abstain from some non-kosher foods, especially pork. Kashrut is also kept by some non-Jews, often for health reasons. (Read more...)

Did you know...

• ... that the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (pictured), site of Willy Brandt's Warschauer Kniefall in 1970, was made from labradorite intended to be used in monuments in Nazi Germany?
• ... that the Chaim Potok novel The Book of Lights is based on Potok's exposure to non-Jewish religions as a military chaplain in Korea and Japan?
• ... that Polish Jewish resistance fighter Vladka Meed was a central source of the 2001 television movie Uprising?
• ... that most Russian-speakers in the United States are Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union?

Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) was a Jewish-Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter. He studied architecture and was living in Lviv at the outbreak of World War II. After being forced to work as a slave labourer in various Nazi concentration camps during the war, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down fugitive Nazi war criminals. In 1947 he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for war crime trials and helped refugees find lost relatives. He opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna in 1961. He helped in locating Adolf Eichmann and preparing a dossier on Franz Stangl.

In April 1970, when Bruno Kreisky became the Austrian chancellor, Wiesenthal told the press that four cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky called Wiesenthal a "Jewish Nazi" and likened his organisation to the Mafia. He later accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past was revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections, although Wiesenthal had previously cleared him of any wrongdoing.

With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal wrote several memoirs that contain tales that are only loosely based on actual events. He died in Vienna on 20 September 2005, and was buried in Herzliya. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles is named in his honor. (Read more...)

• Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth and member of the House of Lords, dies (7 November 2020)
• The Pittsburgher Rebbe, Mordechai Yissachar Ber Leifer dies of COVID-19
• A peace agreement is reached between Israel and the UAE (13 August 2020)
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz dies, editor of the Steinsaltz Talmud (7 August 2020)

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