Tag #151776 - Interview #84041 (Yacob Hollander)

We followed kashrut strictly at home. My mother had special crockery, utensils and tableware for meat and milk products. One could not even imagine having a glass of milk after a meat dish before 6 hours passed while it was allowed to have meat one our after a milk dish. Meat was bought only from shochet. When a Jew was going to slaughter a cow, a rabbi came to inspect the cow and recite a prayer. Then a shochet came and conducted quite a ritual to make the meat kosher. Only after a prayer and begging pardon for sins he slaughtered the cow. Jews were only allowed to eat the front part of the cow. The rear part was not kosher and the meat was sold to Christians. Shochet had a special facility where he slaughtered chicken. It was always overcrowded and there was a lot of noise: the chickens cackled and their owners spoke loudly to one another. The shochet also identified whether a chicken was kosher or not. If he said that the chicken was not kosher, it had to be given to non-Jews. Not even the poorest Jew would have eaten this chicken.