Some Hard-Boiled Shailos

The students cried fowl! The purveyors of these supposedly kosher eggs had been poaching their customers! They scrambled to put K’lal Yisrael on notice. “We hate to kill the goose that lays golden eggs, but these eggs are treif!” Could it be that for years members of K’lal Yisrael were consuming non-kosher eggs? “Yes,” they countered. “We know this won’t go over easy, but we had a bird’s eye view and the problem is real.” In truth, they shouldn’t have counted their chickens before they hatched.

I’m not making light of their concern. It was in fact real and not just for the birds. Yet the problem with these chickens had already been raised. Rav Meir Bransdofer, zt’l, who was a dayan at the Badatz of the Eidah HaChareidis, said that the question was a troubling one and caused some gedolim to tremble. However, upon careful research it was concluded that the natural comfortable stance for a Leghorn chicken when relaxed is with three fingers on one side and one on the other. It only stands with its fingers split with two on each side when it is nervous or chicken. If the chicken would perch on a slippery stick or a crooked branch it would split its fingers in half.

Further testimony to this effect was provided by Rabbi Aaron Pratovin, a Lelover chassid who serves as Sanz Klausenberg rosh yeshiva and directs the farm at the Sanz Klausenberg summer camp in Woodbourne. He said that for the past 12 years he has closely observed his Leghorn chickens and that they ordinarily use the three and one formation. Also, Rabbi Kalman Klein of Kiryas Yoel raises his own chickens. He reported that his Leghorn chickens would generally use the three and one formation. However, when placed on a rope, they initially use a two and two formation.

Unfortunately, those aforementioned students were left with egg on their faces. Of course, they were correct to question the kashrus when they found an apparent violation. But in fact, the shailah had been resolved years ago. To quell the growing controversy, the OU put out an article written by Rabbi Elimelech Leibowitz in their Daf HaKashrus in 2004 reaffirming what those in the field already knew. (That article, together with one written by Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum for the Jewish Press, were very helpful for the compilation of this article.)

To kill two birds with one stone, I wanted to convey a related experience I once had in a kosher cafeteria. I was enjoying a breakfast of scrambled eggs, when an individual rushed out of the kitchen basically declaring that the eggs were treif. “I’m sorry. Breakfast today will be limited. You’ll have to eat like a bird.” The problem: He discovered that the cook had not been checking the eggs.

Well, that seemed reasonable enough. After all, didn’t we learn this week in the daf that a bloodspot found in an egg can cause the whole egg to be considered not kosher? Yet, today’s commercially produced eggs are very different. There is no rooster around the hens. These eggs are certainly not fertilized. Further, the eggs undergo candling, a process where eggs are checked for malformations. If something odd is found in the eggs, they are rejected. Therefore, it is very uncommon to find a bloodspot in our eggs. The number of eggs found with bloodspots amounts to chicken feed. Further, if a blood spot is indeed found in our eggs, it will not cause the entire egg to be treif. As the Gemara clarified, the reason that a bloodspot would cause the entire egg to be considered non-kosher is because it would indicate that an embryo had begun to form. Once again, our eggs are not fertilized, so this is not a concern.

To be sure, we still have a custom to check our eggs in our homes and to discard the entire egg when a bloodspot is found. However, that is still just a minhag. A little bird told me that many commercial bakeries under reliable kashrus supervision do not check their eggs. Certainly, post facto, if eggs were not checked, they may still be eaten. Any possible bloodspot would be nullified in the kosher majority of the eggs. In fact, everyone was as free as a bird to eat those scrambled eggs in the cafeteria. The man who declared the eggs non-kosher was being hard-boiled. Nowadays, checking eggs for bloodspots just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The moral of the above incidents: before deciding halachic questions. you must be well versed in contemporary halachic responsa. Otherwise, your chickens will come home to roost.