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Jewish Myth Information
Debunking some of the most popular misconceptions about Judaism.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Assistant Editor
Jews are buried standing up straight.
W
hat a ghoulish site.
Mourners gathered
around a coffin as it is
placed feet first in the
ground.
Not only ghoulish, but
completely false, according
to Rabbi Lane Steinger of
Temple Emanu-El.
"It is simply not true," he
said.
Rabbi Steinger believes
this misconception may
have started because of the
tendency of some Jewish
cemeteries to be over-
If you don't have a kippah, you can cover your head
with your hand.
W
A rabbi blesses food to make it kosher.
nabbis have countless
riunusual and challeng-
ing responsibilities, but
none of them entail
standing over a chicken and
mumbling, "I bless this
chicken. It is now kosher."
"We make a blessing
over the food (before we eat
it), but this has nothing to
do with kashrut," accor-
ding to Rabbi Avraham
Jacobovitz of Machon
L'Torah.
For the slaughtering pro-
cess, a shochet will make a
blessing thanking God for
showing him how to prop-
erly do his job, Rabbi
22
FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 1992
Jacobovitz said. But what
makes the meat itself
kosher is that it is slaugh-
tered properly.
Laws of kashrut are com-
plex. Some foods, such as
fruits, need no heksher, or
certificate of kashrut.
Kosher meat has countless
requirements, including
that the animal be killed in
a particular fashion and
salted to remove all blood.
But that a rabbi's blessing
somehow affects the
kashrut of any food? "That
is factually untrue," Rabbi
Jacobovitz said.
crowded. Many cities
granted Jews only small
parcels of land to be used
for burying the dead; con-
sequently, Jewish
headstones are often set
close together.
Because of a lack of
space, some Jewish (and
some non-Jewish)
cemeteries in Europe have
even resorted to burying
one corpse atop another,
Rabbi Steinger said. In the
old Jewish cemetery of
Prague, for example, there
are bodies buried 12 deep.
ell, maybe. "If you
were standing in a
cemetery in the middle of a
desert, and all of a sudden a
great wind came by and
blew away your kippah and
you had nothing else, I guess
you could use your hand,"
Rabbi David Nelson of Beth
Shalom said. "But it would
be a weak alternative to a
kippah."
Many Jewish men cover
their heads during re-
ligious services and when
studying Torah. From a
purely practical view, it
would hardly be ap-
propriate for a man to keep
his hand on his head for
such a long period of time,
Rabbi Nelson noted.
Besides, it's not as
though kippot are as elusive
as the Lost Ark.
"With advance planning,
one can easily find a proper
head covering," Rabbi
Nelson said.
Orthodox Jews believe
men must wear kippot dur-
ing all waking hours,
which makes the prospect
of using one's hand even
more incredulous.
Halachah states that
when one is obligated to
cover a part of the body, he
may not use another part of
the body to do it. Sephar-
dim are especially careful
about this. When they
recite the opening line of
the Sh'ma (tradition dic-
tates that one covers the
eyes while saying the
prayer), they use a tallit to
cover their eyes. For after-
noon or evening prayers,
they use a cloth.
Illustrations by Scott Ma ttern
W
ere your eyes bulging out to Mexico and
back when you noticed your usually
sane neighbor burying a couple of forks
in his backyard?
Or how about the time your cousin Ruthie
insisted she couldn't eat the cake you brought
her because it wasn't kosher — a rabbi hadn't
said a blessing over it.
Shocking, but true. Despite years of being
forced to attend Hebrew school, many Jews
hold the craziest notions about Judaism. The
solemn fork burial ceremony and the rabbi
whose words alone will make food kosher are
just two of them.
Below, the truth
about the rabbi's
blessing and other
bits of Jewish
misinformation: