Sparrow, dove and pigeon broth, cow udder in saffron, guinea fowl pastry, and fried locusts. Not your standard restaurant menu, but that didn’t stop 250 curious Jews from participating in the most recent “Mesorah Dinner”
For the fourth time in the past few years the Ari duo has organized what they call the “Mesorah Dinner” an occasion for brave souls to sup on flesh and fowl which although absent in regular Jewish cuisine have traditions of kashrus going back hundreds if not thousands of years. The Mesorah seudah has only one rule — any food without a halachic or historic culture would have no access to the tables tonight.
The story of these dinners goes back nearly three decades when Drs. Greenspan and Zivotofsky were in yeshiva together studying the practical laws of shechitah. At the time someone asked if they could slaughter a pheasant. The first question was whether indeed the pheasant is a kosher bird. The Torah lists just twenty-four birds that are not kosher implying that all the rest are. However because of the uncertainty of the identity of these birds the only birds treated as kosher today are those for which a reliable tradition a mesorah exists. Each community maintained its own mesorah regarding the kashrus of local birds.
Greenspan and Zivotofsky realized that in an age of industrial food production and centralized slaughterhouses the old rabbis and shochtim who remembered their local mesorah were dying out. The two have spent years traveling the world searching for clues and information about animals that are no longer eaten but are actually kosher. This was the fourth public feast of its kind to make sure the chains of these traditions don’t disappear. The first was held in Jerusalem in 2002 followed by mesorah meals co-sponsored by the Orthodox Union in 2004 in New York and 2007 in Los Angeles.
Ari Greenspan approached the microphone with a pheasant which was squawking for help and making a valiant attempt to escape. Raising it triumphantly aloft Greenspan explained how his and Zivotofsky’s interest in the dying mesorah was kindled by this very species. As the Ari duo have explained untold times this hapless bird was indeed the impetus for their lifelong mission.
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