(a.) To cut off a piece of flesh from a living animal for our food (אבר מן החי “a limb of a living animal”).
(b.) To kill the parent with its young on the same day (Lev. xxii. 28; comp. Deut. xxii. 6).
(c.) To give unnecessary pain to the animal in killing it. The various regulations for the lawful killing of animals, שחיטה, handed down by Tradition as Mosaic, הלכה למשה מסיני, are not only in harmony with this principle, but seem in many instances to have been dictated by it.
(d.) To eat the blood of beasts and birds (Lev. xvii. 12, 14). The blood contained in the meat is removed as far as possible by having the meat soaked in water for half-an-hour, and then kept covered with salt for an hour, the salt being again removed by rinsing. This process is called kasher; that is, preparing the meat so as to make it kasher (כשר “fit for food”).
2. The flesh of beasts and birds that have died from any other cause than having been killed in the manner prescribed is forbidden. The flesh of animals that have been killed in the prescribed manner, but are found to have been affected with some dangerous disease, is also forbidden as t’refah (טרפה).[143]
3. With regard to the distinction between animals allowed for food and those forbidden, all animals are [[460]]divided into בהמה and חיה “cattle and beast,” וף “bird,” דג “fish,” and שרץ “creeping thing.”
(a.) With regard to cattle and beasts, the rule is given, “Whosoever parteth the hoof and is cloven-footed and cheweth the cud, that you may eat” (Lev. xi. 3).—The clean cattle (בהמה טהורה) and the clean beasts (חיה טהורה) are enumerated in Deut. xiv. 4 and 5 respectively.
(b.) A number of birds are enumerated (Lev. xi. 13–19) as forbidden, but no general characteristics of the clean or the unclean birds are given; and as we are uncertain as to the exact meaning of the names of many of the birds, we only use for food such birds as are traditionally known as “clean birds.”
(c.) Fish that have scales and fins are permitted; others—e.g., the eel—are “unclean” (ibid. xi. 9–12).
(d.) “All winged animals that creep (שרץ העוף), going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you. Yet these may ye eat of, every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; even these of them ye may eat; the arbeh with its kind, and the soleam with its kind, the chargol with its kind, and the chagabh with its kind” (ibid. 20–22). These are certain kinds of locusts that satisfy the above condition. (Comp. Maimonides, Mishneh-torah, Hilchoth maachaloth asuroth i. 21–23.)