Timeline for Are sea sponges kosher?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 3, 2017 at 2:40 | comment | added | user6591 | @Alex why isn't your source about coral a good answer itself? They are considered more animal than sponge and still we call them plants. | |
| Jul 29, 2013 at 18:51 | comment | added | Double AA♦ | Can they be Tevel if in Israeli water? | |
| Jul 19, 2013 at 17:18 | comment | added | A L | @Alex I would remind you that the Gemara often based itself on the science of the time. Fifty years ago, we even thought they were plants. Just because the Gemara said it was a tree as was common knowledge, doesn't necessarily mean that when we've discovered it's an animal (an animal that grows in one spot) that it can still be as kosher as any plant. | |
| Jul 19, 2013 at 13:46 | comment | added | Alex | @AL: we find that the Gemara considers coral to be a kind of tree (Rosh Hashanah 23a), even though it's actually also a type of marine animal (or rather, an accretion of them). So it's conceivable that halachah says the same about sponges; the key difference might be whether they stay in one place (corals and most sponges) or not (some types of sponges). | |
| Jul 19, 2013 at 4:28 | comment | added | A L | @Alex Sponges are 100% animals. Growing back doesn't prove anything (for a more obvious example, pull the lizard off a tail, it'll grow back). It's just sponges are so primitive at the level of their cellular organization that being partially "reaped" doesn't kill them. They have animal cells. They consume food (are not autotrophs like plants). They reproduce like some other marine animal species. Eating them is eating a non-kosher animal, whether or not it seems like a plant. Then again who in their right mind would even eat one, so it probably isn't a practical issue anyway. | |
| May 19, 2013 at 2:51 | comment | added | wfb | The Yerushalmi holds that one who pulls a fish out of the water is חייב משום עוקר דבר מגידולו, so apparently the Yerushalmi holds that something does not have to be a plant for there to be קוצר. | |
| Nov 5, 2010 at 6:56 | vote | accept | Avi | ||
| Nov 4, 2010 at 20:48 | vote | accept | Avi | ||
| Nov 4, 2010 at 20:48 | |||||
| Nov 4, 2010 at 19:44 | history | answered | Alex | CC BY-SA 2.5 |