Why shouldn’t we eat catfish?

 

Who are “we” to say?

Firstly, that depends who “we”” are.

If “we” are vegans, it is because catfish are not vegetables.

If “we” are Jews, it is because Siluroides do not have scales, but either naked skin or bony plates. Therefore they are not kosher. Not kosher is not kosher, don’t ask me to justify it biologically. If you want to be frum, eat kosher, that’s all.

If “we” are anyone else, then the question turns on what do we mean by “catfish”.

The huge biodiversity of catfishes

There are over 3000 species of catfish in the world and they demonstrate vast diversity. From the candirù of South America which swims up people’s urethra if they urinate in the water, all the way up to giant Pangasias or Siluris species among the largest freshwater fishes of the world. Plus various marine species also.

“My name is Vandellia / They call me Candiru / It won’t be you be eating me / It’s me be eating you.”

Just to be clear about how astonishing that fact is, it means that 1 in 20 of the vertebrate species in the world is a species of catfish, in Siluriformes. There’s no other order of vertebrates like that. And the cladists have been trying to break it down until they were looking like clado-masochists, and the geneticists have been getting frenetic and still the Siluriformes is reckoned to be all the product of a single putative common ancestor.

Some species of catfish deliver toxins, some electric shocks, some like Corydoras or Otocinclus are too tiny to be of use as food, but are very popular in aquaria. Some species makes sounds, some get out of the water and walk about, some are transparent and you can see right through them.

There is one catfish fossil despite all of this, its name is Corydoras revelatus and the author has held it in the palm of his hand in the non-public area of the British Museum of Natural History thanks to the kindness of the late Dr Gordon Howes, ichthyologist.

Catfishes which are regularly eaten

The catfishes most commonly farmed as food are European catfish, Silurus glanis. As long as you have got one from sustainable sources they make good eating. I recommend “som fri”” in Russia or the Ukraine. Clearly they are a sports fish too, and in these cases we put them back, we don’t take them and eat them.

In the US it is channel cats, the Ictalurus and Ameiurus species which the song “Walking in Memphis”” references in the words “they got catfish on the table””. These are also fine eating as long as they are fished from sustainable and legitimate sources.

In the Amazon region they eat large Loricariids like Plecos. If you should be there as a tourist and are not a Vegan or kosher Jew, you might want to try one.

A lot of tropical rivers though are home to parasites that can transfer to people. And here I come onto the kind of catfish which has become more popular in supermarkets in recent years, namely Panga.

These can be farmed in particularly polluted parts of the Mekong river. I suggest you don’t make these a part of your menu, although trying them once might be ok.

 

Continue reading “Why shouldn’t we eat catfish?”

Pdfcast: 2011 Report of the Moses Schorr Foundation

English: Moses Schorr (Mojżesza Schorr, 1874 -...
English: Moses Schorr (Mojżesza Schorr, 1874 – d. in 1941) Jewish rabbi and historian, born in Przemysl, died in Soviet forced labour camp in Uzbekistan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a guest pdf-cast, I am making the topic of today’s post here on Huliganov TV  the Prof. Moses Schorr Foundation, a unique non-profit organization in Poland, which runs an educational centre for secular and religious Jewish studies and the country’s largest Hebrew language school.

Using a wide range of professional tools, as well as social media, they educate both Jews and Poles about the enormous presence of Jews in the Polish society before the Holocaust, their contribution to culture, political thought and community life, all in a contemporary context, but respectful of tradition. What makes them distinctive is their flexible programming, which allows them to participate in the public debate in Poland, while remaining inclusive for students of all backgrounds and viewpoints.

Their overarching objective is to support the development of an open society in Poland and help counter the rise of xenophobia and isolationism in Europe by using documentary material and scholarly work to re-create the past and bring back to life links between communities that were brutally destroyed by the Holocaust.

Here is the annual report of the Foundation. Hopefully it will spark the interest of some of my readers.

Report 2011 Moses Schorr

Yom Kippur 2010

This is a Reformed Judaism service, in full. It would not have been permitted to record in an Orthodox setting. It’s the Friday Night Yom Kippur service in the Warsaw Beit.

In order to protect the privacy of worshippers, the image is obscured.

These tunes and prayers are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old, unchanged, enjoy.

Don’t miss the enlightening explanations and sermons by the Rabbis. They tell a few fine stories in this service!

Calling Rebbe Piper

I received today a comment on the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiYRheI9aQM from Rebbe Piper. He has seven uploads on his channel including his beautiful performance of the song “Sandals” and some pieces by another person relating to the need to understand Hebrew in order to get a perspective on biblical teleology. Since I have not seen everything that Rebbe Piper has posted a you tube, neither have I have any conversations with him at length on what he believes, I don’t want to come to this debate making any assumptions as to where he is coming from ideologically. There seems to be a lot about Judaism in what he’s posted up, and clearly also, he seems to be interested in Jesus Christ. Whether or not he is a messianic Jewish believer is not 100% clear to me.  From what I’ve seen from him, it seems most likely, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and hopefully in the course of this debate he will be more forthcoming on what he does think on a variety of matters.  My apologies if he has made this clear, and I simply haven’t watched or read that far yet.

In any event, I will simply for the purposes of this post just addressed the words that he says in his quote below

Perhaps a reading of the early church fathers would serve to educate the ignorant: Church Canon XXXVII: “It is not lawful to receive portions sent from the feasts off Jews or heretics, nor to feast together with them.” Masons have no problem with Jewish fellowship in Lodges, apparently some of the Church does. How odd, in the model prayer, Jesus ended it not with his own name, but rather..for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever and ever RebbePiper 18 hours ago

Since there is an awful lot to talk about just in answering what he says here, I thought it was pointless to start to discuss it on you tube, where there is barely any space for debate at all because of the limit of characters on each comment. So I obtained Rebbe Piper’s permission to take this discussion here, and in hand.  I hope that he will read what I have to say now about his comment above. Continue reading “Calling Rebbe Piper”