Today, chickens come packaged in neat Styrofoam trays, shrink-wrapped in plastic with a kosher seal on top. All a balabusta has to do is tear the packaging and pour on her favorite sauce. But it wasn’t always like that. What caused the kashrus revolution? And what of the women — in Russia, India, Jerusalem, and beyond — who continue to kasher their own chickens and meat?
Some of us need not dig into our imagination as our mothers or grandmothers still own a kashering board. If they had the luxury they had a separate treif kashering sink. Otherwise they kashered in the bathroom or even in pails on the kitchen floor.
Until well into the twentieth century kashering was standard practice for anyone desiring a piece of meat. A woman would grab a clucking chicken under its wings and bring it to the shochet. In later years the housewife only needed to go to the chicken market where a shochet slaughtered on demand. After examining the lungs and plucking the feathers for use in her pillows the housewife would set out her kashering boards and begin the process. The meals of the second night of Yom Tov were traditionally held past midnight because after nightfall women still had to make a trip to the shochet pluck kasher and cook a fresh bird.
Revolution in the Slaughterhouse
When did this all change?
Interestingly enough it was during the 1950s when the non-Jewish world was painting icons of a perfect housewife (complete with heels and frilly apron) that things began to change. It started as a slow trickle gathering momentum until almost every Jewish family bought ready kashered poultry and meat.
Mr. Mendy Bauman of Glatt Mart tells how butchers kashered a shoulder of meat or a couple of chickens at the back of the store to accommodate a customer’s special request. The woman’s name was scribbled on a piece of butcher paper prepared for her. Most people were reluctant to take advantage of this service if only because of the hitch in price they would incur.
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