KASHRUT IN THE GRASS

I’ve always assumed that Jewish people did not choose hunting as a sport. Inflicting pain for recreation is forbidden. And besides, when you punch a hole in an animal and it dies, no question that it’s treife.

All of my assumption went sour when I paid a visit to the Ginsburg’s. Racks upon racks of spiffy-polished shotguns on display in the den, set upon set of antlers tastefully mounted on the living-room walls, booty from family hunting expeditions.

“So, I guess you do a lot of hunting,” I observed like a dumbbell.

“We go out early Saturday mornings so I can teach the boy the finer points of dropping a deer, you know, setting up the platform, making the right kinds of calls, where to spray the urine to attract the young’uns.” No, I didn’t know. “Rabbi Schwartz (the local Lubavitcher) told us that it was OK to hunt on Shabbos so long as we ‘field-kashered’ whatever we shot.”

I admit that I had never, even in Yeshiva, heard the phrase “field-kashered.” “Tell me how you field-kasher a deer?” I didn’t have to feign ignorance.

“Rabbi Schwartz said that so long as we slit the deer with a specially sharpened knife to let the blood drain, it was kosher.”

“I don’t think so,” I mumbled. I didn’t take the issue any further, so as not to impugn the credibility of my Lubavitcher friend.

Naturally, I promptly called Rabbi Schwartz to inform him that he had been cited as the authority that permitted hunting on Shabbos, so long as the prey had been field-kashered. “You’re kidding,” he said. “He may be an incredible sportsman, but an even better pathological liar.”

“How could we take care of this?” we looked at each other. We agreed that first we had to get him back into schule. “Ah,” Schwartz had an epiphany. “Get a spray-bottle, fill it with you-know-what, and give a couple of schpritzes around the doorway; it’s irresistible.”

“But once he gets inside, what do we do to make an impression on him?”

“Don’t worry,” the Lubavitcher averred. “He won’t get too far. Once he gets inside, we’ll just have to field-kasher him. After all, it is Shabbos.”