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**Robert** · 06-09-2009, 12:53 PM

It looks as though eating bread from the gutters was not only unhygienic but irreligious too.

Do Jewish people eat bread and if they do can they eat white and black bread? - Answers

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_bread_kosher

Yes -- IF all the ingredients used in making the bread are kosher, and none of the utensils or ovens have been used for non-kosher foods (or they have been ritually purified by a competent rabbi after such use), and the bread was not baked on the Sabbath or one of the Biblically-ordained Holy Days, the bread would be kosher. However, since it is common to use animal fats and other non-kosher ingredients in baking, and violation of the Sabbath is rampant, there must be reliable rabbinical supervision to certify the bread as kosher. Additionally, pious Jews refrain from eating bread which was not baked by an observant Jewish person.

**Christine** · 06-09-2009, 04:56 PM

There's nothing I know of in kosher laws that prohibits drinking water as non-kosher. All the sources I looked at say that all plain water is automatically kosher, and you can drink it anytime--the exceptions are water that has been used to cook food and water that has been used in religious ritual (i.e., holy water).

Jewish laws are not mainly about health, they're about not following other people's religion and customs and avoiding things that seem not to fit, i.e. bats are prohibited because they fly like birds but have fur like mice. The things prohibited are as a group not less healthy than the things allowed. Everyone points to pork because (in the LV ear certainly) pork was so dangerous because people fed garbage to their pigs. But in ancient times wild pig would not have been noticeably more dangerous than other foods.

Random pieces of bread, certainly, would not be kosher, and even if it were, I don't think you could find enough bread in the gutters to live on. I've assumed that the bread was just one of the various random foods Kosminski ate off the street, but it's at least possible that he had some sort of internal permission to eat bread but not meat because he thought the bread was "more kosher" than the meat.

What's more, I don't think keeping kosher was all that common by 1888, although I'm not aware of any figures. Trollope's novels are full of Jews eating with gentiles.

**Rosey O'Ryan** · 06-09-2009, 06:10 PM

Hi all,
Perhaps having contacted the Russian Consul and receiving information that Aaron was delusional with regard to his claims at Colney Hatch, this statement was 'deleted'.
So, Aaron could well be the source in Russian Imperial circles for the existence of a Bolshevik-Jewish plot to overthrow the world order...by means of magical powers! [Gulp] Or, a cunning plan to cover up his royal Russian lineage! It all fits!
Rosey :-)

**Jeff Leahy** · 06-10-2009, 01:00 AM

Following this train of thought I contacted the Russian embassy a few tears ago to see if they had any record of Aaron contacting them..

There would appear to be no surviving records from the period.

Pirate

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Kosminski, Aaron (recovered thread)

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