Welcome To My Kosher Home

    We all know that mixing milk and meat is prohibited from the Torah. We also know that cooking fowl and meat together is a rabbinic decree. Cooking fish and meat together is entirely different issue. While the rabbis were concerned that a person might mix up meat and foul; either forgetting which was permitted and which was prohibited or just mistakenly placing meat instead of fowl into a dairy food. The issue of cooking and eating meat and fish together is a totally different type of rabbinic decree; it is to safeguard ones health.

    The Gemara tells us that two foods that are baked in the same oven can under certain circumstances transfer taste from one to the other. Small food particles get trapped in the steam and taste and smell is transferred. With this in mind the Gemara concludes that bread that was baked with roasted meat, should not be eaten with fish as that bread has taken on a meat taste and can lead to tzarat or a leprosy type of disease. It is clear from the Gemara that while this bread never touched the roasting meat, and no meat juice dripped on it, it absorbed the steam of the meat. The steam placed the smell and taste of meat into the bread and that taste is enough to be dangerous for one’s health. The halachic authorities then make the logical extension that if just the steam in the bread is dangerous, all the more so, fish cooked with meat or fish eaten with meat. Indeed, the Rishonim took this very seriously as seen by the Tur, Rabbi Yaakov the son of the Rosh (1270-1340) who writes that his father, Rabbeinu Asher, would wash his hands in the middle of a meal between fish and meat just as the halacha prescribes to do when milk in eaten and then meat. He would say that this extreme precaution was needed because of the great danger involved. The severity of this precaution was sealed for the generations when Rabbi Yosef Caro codified this washing in the Shulchan Aruch. Today the custom has been toned down a bit and people are not careful about it. The question is, why? Why do we not take this as seriously as the Rosh and the Shulchan Aruch prescribe.

    The answer to this question is a very fascinating topic in halacha. The Mogen Avraham writes that today the nature of people has changed and what was once a very severe health concern is not such a concern any more. In fact, today we do not find any health problems directly related to eating fish and meat together. However, this does not mean that the prohibition to eat fish and meat has totally fallen away. Just the opposite, we do not eat them together and are very careful to “wash out” our mouths by drinking some liquid, or eating some bread or challah. Only the stringency of washing the hands has fallen away. There are two explanations given for why the halacha still exists. The first is that we do not know for certain that all the health concerns have disappeared. Perhaps there can still be slight health issues that will never be directly linked to eating fish and meat together and for that it is worthwhile that this halacha be kept. The second answer is a fundamental thesis in the way rabbinic decrees were made. While the rabbis might have stated a reason and logic for any particular rabbinic decree, each halacha has other behind the scenes, so to speak, reasons that were not privy to. Therefore, even if the stated logic behind a particular halacha does not apply anymore, it must still be kept.

    It should be noted that the Sephardic tradition not only prohibits eating fish and meat together, but also fish and milk together. Although in the Shulchan Aruch, Rabbi Yosef Caro permits fish and milk, in his Beit Yosef on the Tur he writes that it should not be eaten because of the danger involved. Interestingly, the Shach, Rabbi Shabtai Hakohen Katz (1621-1663) writes that this was a mistake. The source that the Beit Yosef quoted from the word milk does not appear, rather it says meat. However, despite the Shach’s comments many Sephardim are strict about fish with either meat or milk.