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What’s the Truth about . . . the Kashrut of New World Birds?

JL;DR SUMMARY Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky explores the complex halachic discourse surrounding the kashrut status of New World birds such as the turkey and Muscovy duck. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish LawTraditionKashrutTurkeyHalachaMesorahKosher StatusNew World BirdsMuscovy DuckDomesticated Birds

Places mentioned

Opatów, West Pomerania, Poland
"Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) was introduced from America to Europe in the early sixteenth century, and its first appearance in the halachic literature seems to have been in 1646 in Damesek Eliezer, a commentary on Chullin by Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, av beit din and rosh metivta of Apta (Opatw), Poland."
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv District, Israel
"In 1907, Rabbi Yosef Aharon Taran turned to the Land of Israel instead of Europe and sent a pair of Muscovy ducks by boat from Argentina to Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the venerated long-time chief rabbi of Yerushalayim (the female Muscovy duck miraculously arrived alive), who permitted it, possibly subsuming it under the mesorah of the Old World duck."
This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 83925
Cairo Source ID 6
Retrieved 2026-06-03 05:31:15 UTC
Curated 2026-06-03 08:31:15 UTC