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It's the oldest diet in the world that we know about.
It began with the first humans, Adam and Eve, who ate a vegetarian diet of
grains, fruits, and vegetables.
A millennium passed, a forty-day rainstorm drowned a corrupt mankind and
their animals, excepting one pious family of eight, and pairs of each
specie they brought upon their ark.
After a year, upon setting foot on dry land, seven colors of a rainbow
appeared heralding a heavenly gift of "Seven Commandments," mankind's
first universal religion to usher in the dawn of an era of peace and
happiness.
One of the "Seven Commandments" forbade cruelty to animals, specifically
the practice of wrenching a limb off a living animal for food, though
permitting killing of an animal in a humane manner for eating its meat,
but forbidding ingestion of its blood, whose components would then comingle animal with human life streams.
Settling in the Promised Land, Abraham and Sarah, patriarch and matriarch
of the Hebrew nation, observed the divinely revealed dietary code. By
their tent nearby Hebron, under the shade of a giant tamarisk, they
established a kosher restaurant, Aishel, Hebrew acronym spelling food,
drink, hospitality. Wayfarers, upon being warmly welcomed, were bidden to
wash their hands and feet in a nearby spring before the meal, and after
the meal were taught to thank the Creator for His bounty.
Their descendants, the Israelites, upon liberation from enslavement by
Pharoahs who scoffed at the "Seven Commandments" ordained at Mount Ararat,
welcomed 613 commandments ordained at Mount Sinai; among them a heavenly
dietary code.
Typical of laws set in the Kosher Code are regulations prohibiting insects
in leafy vegetables, combinations of fish and meat harmful to health,
rules and regulations, for purity in processing of foods, and the highest
temperatures in cleansing of utensils and kettles, thereby totally
eliminating transmission of food particles from product to another; even
lubricating oils and packaging coating may not contain contaminating
substances.
In modern times, the Kosher Code has become universally acknowledged. Even
in the USA, where excellent government standards regulate production of
foods and related products, they are exceeded by the exacting stringencies
of the Kosher standard.
Living in an age of contaminated earth, polluted air and impure water,
purity of foods are of concern to consumers everywhere who the world over
demand as never before, Kosher supervision and Certification.
– Rabbi Dr. I. Harold Sharfman (of Blessed Memory)
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