Shrimp kosher in India??? Indian imamothers: verify/refute.

DrMom

Mon, Sep 26 2011, 6:18 am

I have a co-worker who was born into an observant family in India. His family made aliya when he was a baby and he was raised here in E"Y. He told me yesterday that among Indian Jews, shrimp is considered kosher. I asked, "um, what about scales/fins?" He sais that it was open to interpretation and that the segments of a shrimp are interpreted as scales among Indian rabbanim. I am skeptical, as:

1) there are very clear discussions in the Mishna about what constitutes a scale and shrimp body segments do not fit that category. As far as I understood, this is not a "controversial" or "new" halacha. There is no machloket regarding the kashrut status of shrimp in any community (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Temani/Ethiopian/etc.) I have heard of.
2) what about fins?
3) is this community so isolated that they do not know about basic kashrut laws that are considered the norm in almost all other kehilot?
4) this guy is OTD, and often says things that are designed to be subtly anti-religious. ("Everything is interpretation -- there are no absolute standards, so how can any of these rules matter? In India, shrimp is kosher, here, it's not. Which is correct/ It really doesn't matter...") Hence, I am skeptical.

So anyway, I just wanted to know if anyone here grew up in India (his family is from Bombay, observant) and can verify/dispute my co-worker's claim. I hasve asked the two Indian-Jews I know and they both never heard of such a thing.

I Googled, and found nothing to support his claim.

Anyone?

Tamiri

Mon, Sep 26 2011, 6:37 am

It's not a matter of scales and fins if I am not mistaken. It's that they are shratzim who eat from the bottom of the sea. In any event, I worked with Indian Jews when I was a morah Chayelet and never heard that one. What I *did* hear was the in some places, chicken wasn't considered meat but (1) this was a long time ago and I may be mixing things up (2) I am sure that observant Indians adopted the current-day halachot as we observe them, rendering chicken meat even if their ancestors practiced differently.

zaq

Mon, Sep 26 2011, 9:35 am

tamiri, poultry is not meat and not subject to laws of basar bechalav mideoraita because you can't seethe a bird in its mother's milk. However, chachamim decreed thousands of years ago that because the flesh of birds is so similar to the flesh of mammals, the flesh should be treated like meat. No one has answered to my satisfaction why this doesn't apply to fish like tuna, which could easily be mistaken for chicken, but that's a separate issue. Maybe the smell is so distinktive (that's not a typo) that one immediately "nose" it's not chicken!

Mrs Bissli

Sun, Oct 02 2011, 4:52 pm

Definitely no. He's kidding you. Checked with a few Indian friends and they were all Rolling Eyes

There is a good recipe for mock shrimp salad made from poached cod fillet flaked and mixed with mayo and ketchup. Some people casually refer to it as shrimp salad or shrimp cocktail but it's not real.

jerusalem26

Sun, Oct 23 2011, 7:42 am

My father was born in Bombay and comes from a very traditional Indian family. According to the Bombay Jewish community (Bnei Israel) when the Rambans sons arrived and found a group that he recognized as Jewish, because they strictly would not work on Shabbat, were very careful about taharat hamishpacha, and other things. He brought the women down to the river and saw that they knew to take only the kosher fish and throw the others back in the river...shrimp among them.

Don't believe him...