I wouldn’t call my friend an avid christian, but when his back is to the wall he is quick on the draw with some scripture. The topics of “works” came up and I described the system of mitzvot and learning. A lifestyle dictated by an uninterrupted tradition thousands of years old.

We were in the midst of a WordPress training, when talk turned to this week’s parsha, which I looked up in his bible. The book was basically Tanach, with a few added chapters at the end, so it was easy to find the 14th chapter of Deuteronomy (wikipedia: “a mistranslation of the Hebrew phrase mishneh ha-torah ha-zoth”) to examine verse 11 where it names the birds forbidden to eat.

The rub was that his Bible had names like Eagle, Vulture, Ostrich and Heron, but my pocket-sized Artscroll Chumash had no translation of the written hebrew names. They were written as they are read; Nesher, Peres, Ozniah… Additionally, the commentaries were silent about what the names meant. I remembered seeing it somewhere and began looking.

Ah ha! There is another source! Since this is Mishna Torah, most everything said has been covered in the previous four books. It wasn’t hard to find it in Vayikra, Pasrhas Shemini. There, the birds names were also transliterated from the Hebrew. Below was an interesting comment that due to our many dispersions and exiles the language of the Torah fell into disuse and the exact translations were lost.

The controversy is great, and so are the players. Names like Rabbeinu Tam, Rashi, Ramban, Ralbag and Ibn Ezra offer varied accounts of the words meanings, but to no avail. Shulchan Aruch rules that only birds with a well-established tradition of being kosher can be eaten.

Nonetheless, there exist characteristics in all the birds being named by Chazal in the lively discourse of the sages. They have clawed feet with a grasping rear toe that can apply an inescapable grip upon its prey. Their beaks tear flesh and they eat blood. They are predators, and we avoid absorbing those characteristics (however that works) by not eating their flesh. If “a man is what he eats” than a man who eats kosher will find blessing from the act.

So, in the end, the which bird was witch question was answered by custom. Thousands of years ago, a chicken became kosher, which is awesome, because I have to get mine in the oven right now! A Gutten!