In a small town in Lithuania, a poor Jew came to the rabbi and in tears told him that in the pot he cooked a soup in fell a small piece of pork. What will he eat from now on, has all his food become unfit to eat?
The rabbi took pity on the poor Jew and asked him, “What was the amount of soup and what size was the piece of pork that fell into the soup?”
The Jew told him how big it was. The rabbi calculated and told him that the pork was one-sixtieth of the soup and therefore batel bashishim—the amount was negligible and he was allowed to eat the soup.
Later the rabbi met the same Jew and saw that his face had improved. The rabbi asked him why.
The Jew said: “Rabbi, every day I put in my soup pot a piece of batel bashishim and it adds to my health.”
Discussion of the Story
The storyteller, Raphael Cohen, was born in Siubaiciai (Shubots, in Yiddish), situated in northern Lithuania, 55°55″ N, 23°30″ E. He immigrated to Israel in 1921. At IFA nine tales are registered in his name. His wife, Malka Cohen, recorded all of them. This tale was filed in the archives in 1973.
This is a short anecdote that presents an absurd situation resulting from a permissive interpretation of the laws of kashrut. The use of humor enables discussion of the complex issue of a lenient approach to the law and the danger thereof.
The ruling standing at the plot’s center is called batel bashishim: one-sixtieth is negligible. Its meaning is that if kosher food gets mixed with nonkosher food, in some cases the mixture may be eaten if the amount of kosher food is at least sixty times greater than the quantity of nonkosher food. For example:
“If a drop of milk fell onto a piece of meat and it imparted some flavor unto that piece, it is forbidden. If the pot was stirred, then it [the entire pot] is forbidden only if [the drop of milk] imparted some flavor into [all that was in] the pot.” Raba said: In the past the following was always a difficulty to me. It was taught: In a pot wherein meat had been cooked a person may not boil milk, and if he did boil [milk] therein, it depends whether the pot imparted a flavour [to the milk] or not. (Mishnah Hullin 8:3)
And also:
Raba also said, [In certain cases] the Rabbis ruled that the test whether or not it imparts a flavour applies, and [in other cases] the Rabbis ruled that one may rely upon a [Gentile] cook, and yet [in other cases] the Rabbis ruled that the test is sixty [to one]. Therefore we say, where substances of different kinds, each kind being permitted by itself, were mixed together, the test is whether or not one imparts a flavour to the other; and if one of the substances was forbidden, then we rely upon the opinion of a Gentile cook. Where substances of like kind were mixed together, in which case it is impossible to discern whether one imparts a flavour to the other; or where substances of different kinds, one of which was forbidden, were mixed together, and no [Gentile] cook is available, then the test is sixty [to one]. (Babylonian Talmud Hullin 97a–b)
Relying on this ruling, the rabbi in the tale allows the poor man to eat from the dish. The latter exploits the permit, out of either ignorance or foolishness, and deliberately continues to mix his cooked dishes with pieces of pork equivalent to one-sixtieth according to batel bashishim.
Two strata can be discerned in the tale: On its face, at the beginning of the tale the poor man is in a dire state, and after his encounter with the rabbi his situation improves; he is no longer gaunt and hungry, but satiated and healthy. The audience listening to the tale is clearly aware that the solution the poor man found is inappropriate and that he is abusing the rabbi’s ruling.
The rabbi’s ruling may be understood not only as stemming from Jewish dietary law but from other sources as well. One is the empathy he feels toward the poor of his community, and his recognition of the harsh reality they face: their difficulty in obtaining food and the hunger that frequently afflicts them. Another is a prudent concern to prevent the wasting of expensive products that are hard to obtain, namely the soup mixed with pork, liable to be thrown away for not being kosher. The rabbi must navigate between the obligation to observe the laws of kashrut and the desire to ease the economic distress of the members of his community.
At a deeper level, the question arises: Does adherence to the laws of kashrut worsen the poor man’s condition, or at least keep him in his miserable state? The audience may wonder whether, even though the poor man’s solution is wrong, it has merit for allowing him to overcome the distress caused by strict adherence to the law. Or was the ruling in this case too lenient, allowing it to be interpreted incorrectly? Ultimately it seems like this quandary is resolved by the mere fact that the case involves pork specifically. The prohibition against eating pork is not a postbiblical accretion but directly from the Torah (Leviticus 11:7, Deuteronomy 14:8), where the pig is mentioned among the other forbidden animals. And in postbiblical tradition, pork comes to symbolize the food of the “other.” In Jewish collective memory, it was consumed by people who persecuted the Jews and forced them to eat its meat. The pig became a symbol of an abomination that Jews were so unwilling to eat that they preferred dying as martyrs than to eat it. An example is the story of Eliezer the elder, who chose just that: to die rather than eat pork as ordered by the Romans (2 Maccabees 6:21–38).
Although some humorous tales deal with the amusing attempt to “legalize” pork by kosher slaughter and salting its meat, it is clear that they reinforce the conclusion that it is impossible. Even if in our tale the rabbi, as the representative of Jewish law, “koshers” the soup, in folk consciousness this is an unacceptable act. The restrictions in folk consciousness may be even stricter than those of the established laws of kashrut, from fear, actually verified in this tale, that breaching the borders will eventually lead to a blurring of Jewish identity. This identity is symbolized by a strict abstention from pork.
Taken from: “The Angel and the Cholent: Food Representation from the Israel Folktale Archives.”
