I saw your reblog+tags and I'm curious: how does one play Minecraft with a Jewish twist? :0
Basically, I'm trying to play in a way that corresponds to Halakha (Jewish law), which for now mainly involves trying to simulate Shekhita (Kosher slaughter). I did a lot of research on the requirements for the type of blade (called Khalaf or Sakin Hashekhita depending on who you ask) as well as how it must be used and concluded that only a diamond or netherite sword with sharpness V was suitable for slaughtering a cow (as they deal 10 and 11 damage respectively and a cow has 10 health and it Must be a one hit kill to be kosher, additionally it cannot be a critical hit as that might count as excessive force which is forbidden).
There is so much fun to be had around Kashrut (the dietary laws) in Minecraft. Did you know you're not allowed to eat fruit from a tree until it is three years old? Thus, I can only eat apples from oaks that have existed for 36 lunar cycles (3*12 months).
I've tried playing with "must keep Shabbat" but honestly it's very annoying to once every 7th ingame day just not be able to do basically anything. Pretty much everything that can be done in Minecraft is prohibited on Shabbat, including Mining and Crafting. You can maybe go explore, but you can't take anything with you or pick up anything, or make plans for what to do after Shabbat with what you find, and you can only go by foot, which I think means you're not breaking the prohibition travel, but I'm not sure, I need to look into it. It's possible that enchanting would be allowed if you reaaally stretch the concept and try to define it as studying, which is encouraged on Shabbat. Anyway I'm currently ignoring the Shabbat part because it's annoying to keep track and there's nothing you can really do. (Not to mention if you want to properly observe Shabbat you do so with meals which in Minecraft means you need to fast all week to be hungry enough to eat several meals.)
Once I get a bit more set up I really hope to create some redstone thing at spawn that will count the days for me so I can incorporate holidays. Maybe. It would be fun to build a Sukka (hut) for Sukkot (holiday when you build and live in a hut for a week) in Minecraft, but I might end up just going by the real world calendar to make sure I have time to really celebrate ingame (especially since lunar cycles are 8 days in Minecraft which means I'll have barely any time between holidays, Sukkot alone would take up a whole month).
It's basically a fun roleplay twist and as a bonus I get to research and learn about different Mitzvot (commandments) and Minhagim (traditions) before I'm able to meet a rabbi and incorporate them into my own real life. I love learning about Halakha and Judaism and I love any excuse to ask all the silly questions about it. Like earlier today a friend and I were arguing about whether a gun that shoots blades could be used for kosher slaughter! Judaism is so great and appealing to my autism like it has probably the world's largest collection of commentary upon commentary about how to interpret the rules and what does it all mean and I could spend the rest of my life learning about it and while there are disagreements there's bound to be some answer to any question I have about an ambiguity of a rule and oh my autistic little heart.
But there's some stuff I don't feel comfortable doing yet, even in game, because they feel too important and exclusive to real Jews, such as Tzitzit (knotted strings that are attached to certain articles of clothing) on my Minecraft skin, though I drew on a kipa (traditionally a round flat little hat worn by men) because it is only a Minhag (tradition) and not a Mitzva (commandment) and I wear one in real life. I've been considering making a Mezuza (little container put on doorposts containing an important prayer and marked with the letter ש, it is a Minhag to kiss it when you pass it) by writing the Shema (the aforementioned prayer) in a book and putting the book in a barrel next to the door and then putting a button on the barrel and pressing it to kiss it and open the door, but it might also fall into this category and might have to wait until I'm further in my conversion.
Anyway thanks for listening to me infodump about Judaism, it will happen again. Also there are 613 Mitzvot in the Torah and countless more in rabbinical texts, just so you don't think I'm even scratching the surface here. This is a brief summary of scratching the surface. In Minecraft.
Ok so I feel like elaborating on the slaughter thing and Kashrut especially since @bookoramaenderteeth and I have added some definitions since I made this post.
Ok so, let's start with the animal. For terrestrial mammals, the Halakhic requirements of the species are that it must have cloven hooves and chew its cud. Especially the latter is not very transferable to Minecraft, but fortunately, most animals in Minecraft are based off real ones, so any animal traditionally considered kosher in real life can be considered kosher in Minecraft; i.e. cows and sheep/goats (horses, donkeys, and mules lack cloven hooves, pigs only eat once, villagers, illagers, cats, ocelots, and wolves fail on both accounts). Ravagers and other made up beasts who might be mammals (like Endermen and Creepers) would probably not be kosher since there is nothing indicating that they would chew their cud even if one might interpret their textures as displaying cloven hoofs.
For birds (technically flying beasts), Torah only specifies 24 species that are not allowed, rather than defining the features that define a kosher species. However, it is not with certainty known which species these correlate to in our time. Therefore, in practice, only birds that there is an established tradition of eating are considered kosher. In Minecraft, we have many kinds of "bird": chickens, parrots, bats, phantoms, vexes, allays, blazes, ghasts, the dragon, etc. but among them it seems only chickens are well established in Jewish history as edible, most of them don't even exist.
For aquatic life, the requirements are fins and scales that can be easily removed without damaging the skin. Among squids, dolphins, salmon, cod, pufferfish, the various tropical fish, guardians, elder guardians, tadpoles, and axolotls, we can only be sure that salmon and cod are kosher by tradition, as scales are impossible to discern ingame and it is impossible to identify the species of the tropical fish and the rest are established as lacking scales, except for the guardian variants, which do not exist in real life but do not appear to have scales.
Reptiles, amphibians, and bugs are never kosher (well except for one locust but it's debatable whether we know which one and there are no locusts in Minecraft yet) so frogs, bees, spiders, cave spiders, silverfish, and endermites are off the table and the table is thoroughly cleaned to kasher (make kosher) it again.
Undead mobs I would count as being already dead, which makes them carrion by default since there's no way to know they died by kosher slaughter, which makes them not kosher.
You may have noticed that a lot of these mobs don't actually drop any edible items, so why bother with whether they're kosher? Well, it matters because if I used a tool to kill them with, if the mob is not kosher, then the tool won't be either anymore and can't be used for kosher food. So even if I can't accidentally eat a squid, I could accidentally hit it with my Sakin Hashekhita (blade used for kosher slaughter), and that would be bad.
Anyway, to recap, basically the only kosher species are cow, sheep, goat, chicken, salmon, and cod.
But there are, of course, many more requirements of an animal that is to be eaten. If it is a fish, the rules are pretty loose on how it is killed and mostly require that equipment used be clean.
However if the animal is a bird or mammal, it must be healthy and cannot be blemished, and must be slaughtered according to very strict procedures. In real life, the animal is thoroughly checked after slaughter, especially the lungs are examined for any evidence the animal was ever mistreated, but in Minecraft we cannot see this after the fact. The best we can do is try to be sure the animal never goes below full health. A healthbar mod would greatly aid with this but I can't be bothered and I'm starting to pride myself on keeping this strictly vanilla. If there's any doubt an animal is not full health, I will separate them out and slaughter them as non-kosher to ensure they are not lost and mixed with the indistinguishable healthy animals (lowkey wish I was on a server so I could sell them to people who don't keep kosher, that would be fun).
Now, for the fun part. AKA the part with very practical problems that I probably spent way more time figuring out than anything else: the slaughter.
Let's start with the Khalaf or Sakin Hashekhita (the blade for the slaughter). We concluded it must be a sword because the blade must be long (twice the width of the animal's neck according to some sources), cannot chop (no axe), and cannot have a point (no pick). We concluded it must have sharpness V because the blade must be incredibly sharp, with no imperfections. For the same reason, we concluded it cannot be low durability, as any damage to the blade would render it unfit and in need of sharpening. We decided that like with many things in Judaism, the limit of how much damage the blade can take is one sixtieth of its full durability. For a diamond sword, which has 1,561 durability, this means the blade may not be used below 1,535 durability, while a netherite sword has 2031 and may not be used below 1,998 durability. Any other sword is unfit for slaughter of a cow or goat (both have 10 HP), as it would not deal enough damage to kill it in one swift motion, as is required. Sheep (8 HP), however, can also be slaughtered by iron and even stone swords (unfit at 246/250 and 129/131 respectively). Chickens (4 HP) can in theory be slaughtered by any sword, but wood and gold swords both have a durability below 60 and would therefore be considered unfit after less than one blow, rendering them too fragile to be proper, even with unbreaking III since there would still be a chance it would be damaged.
The ideal Khalaf would be a diamond or netherite sword with sharpness V (required), unbreaking III (reinforcing the blade making it more durable), mending (makes repairing/sharpening the blade much simpler, and can even come from the slaughter itself due to the experience dropped), and looting III (ensuring you can make the most of the animal, perhaps representing a higher skill level at removing the parts of the animal that are not kosher such as blood vessels).
Knockback is pointless for slaughter in general, and would probably in context count as excessive force, which is prohibited. Why are you throwing dead animals around? Fire aspect is a no because there's something about the blade being heated but I can't seem to find a source. Sweeping edge is unnecessary since only one animal should be slaughtered at a time, but if you wanted you could pretend it made the motion more appropriate. I'm not going to though.
Because the process must be humane and because the animal must be calm so as to not hurt itself before it is slaughtered, the animal should feel no fear and have no idea that it is about to die. I have constructed a special slaughterhouse where only one animal may be at a time so that no animal will witness the death of another. I do not let the animal see the blade.
Ideally, the animal should be led in on a lead which is then tied to a fence hanging from the ceiling but the darned wandering trader won't show up stealing and murder are strongly prohibited and are actually among the 7 Noahide Laws which are the only Mitzvot that are applied to gentiles, non-Jews, as well as Jews. Judaism doesn't like to get in anyone's business, these are the 7 exceptions that are applied to all humanity, because they were given to Noah. But anyway, I have no source of slime so leads are not in the budget just yet.
Ok so you've got your 10/10 HP cow and your sharpness V diamond sword with at least 1,536/1,561 durability in your special place where no other animal can see it. What do you do next? Well according to the Shulkhan Arukh (literally "the set table" which is a very important Jewish text detailing all the Mitzvot and I really need to actually read it some day and not just trust this pdf quoting it but not today), there needs to be no interruption, just one continuous swift motion, which I mainly translate to waiting for the cooldown so you're entirely ready to make a full swing at full power. One cut. The blade must not be pressed against the neck, which again rules out chopping weapons like axes. Pressing the edge in isn't how you make a swift, clean cut. The blade must also not be covered by hide/wool/feathers, which excludes stabbing. Again, why the blade should not have a point (I know Minecraft swords technically do in their sprites but shhhhh), which would bury the blade under the skin. Those two are a bit complicated to visualize just from that description so think of it like this: you want to make a valley with your blade. Instead of pressing it into the ground, you sweep it across the land, and you do not want the blade to be underground, even just the tiniest bit, so you don't have an edge that might accidentally poke in under a rock. That's how I read it anyway.
With these things and the fact that excessive force is forbidden in mind, a critical hit probably counts as at least one of the things that would render the meat not kosher because of improper slaughter.
In conclusion, next you take out your blade, wait the cooldown, then strike. Pure and simple. And the animal dies without time to feel pain. Merciful, compassionate, precise.
Congrats! You slaughtered! But you're not done.
In real life, you would now need a long procedure of removing blood, blood vessels, a few tendons, and of course inspecting the meat to really make sure the animal was healthy enough to be kosher. In Minecraft, we don't have those things. But, you should probably rename your meat with an anvil to say that it's kosher instead, that will be your kashering (making kosher) procedure instead, that way you'll know by the label that it's kosher (just like kosher labels on food in stores in modern day), it will never stack with meat that is not labeled kosher (if it did not only would it be contaminated by touching it, but you would also have no way to know which items were originally kosher even if you subscribe to the idea that items in a stack don't touch each other), and just like in real life, you need experience to produce kosher meat and it's expensive and time consuming to do.
Ok NOW you're done, right?
Well, sure, if you wanna eat that meat raw right now and have never drank milk or eaten cake. But if not, there are still a lot of questions to answer.
Let's start with just putting that meat away. You may be familiar with the prohibition on mixing meat and dairy, but basically, it is serious business. So serious, that the Torah repeats it three whole times. You are not allowed to cook them together, eat them together, have them touch, eat one when you recently ate the other, or derive any benefit from them being mixed (as long as both the meat and dairy came from a kosher animal, otherwise you may derive benefit, but not eat because it's not kosher). This also means you should probably have designated meat/dairy/not kosher chests so they're kept separate and clean. If you're not sure a chest is clean or you want to clean it to reuse it for kosher meat or kosher dairy, waterlogging it should probably suffice. Remember you can rename chests and such in anvils and the name will display at the top of its inventory when opened, or you can use signs if you wanna be cheap labeling them.
(Also note that fish doesn't count as meat for the purposes of this rule and can be mixed with dairy.)
Next, you might want to cook it and eat it. You'll need a furnace or smoker, but you'll need a kosher one! It's arguable whether it's possible to kasher Minecraft furnaces and smokers. To kasher an oven in real life you need to clean it incredibly thoroughly inside, but there's no way to get inside in any meaningful way in Minecraft. Luckily, furnaces are really cheap, so it's simple enough to just make a new one if you're not sure you never put something not kosher in it. Same deal, you can rename it or put a sign on it. There's no way to use dairy in a furnace so there's no reason to make a specific meat one, just make sure it's kosher. This should go without saying too but a smoker crafted from a non-kosher furnace is probably not kosher either.
Ok! So, ready to dig in? Just a sec though, did you drink milk or eat cake? Since cake is crafted with milk, it is dairy and cannot be mixed with meat and the two should not be eaten in close succession. Opinions vary on the amount of time one should wait between eating dairy and meat, and some argue one need not wait as long for meat after dairy as vice versa, but just to be safe, I'm going to be working off the opinion that in both cases one needs to wait 6 hours. But what does that mean in Minecraft? Well, the wiki has a handy chart for this actually: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Daylight_cycle#Conversions. It states that one hour (i.e. one twenty-fourth of a full rotation) is equal to 50 seconds, therefore 6 Minecraft hours are 5 minutes for you. Did you do those things in the last 5 minutes? No? Then go for it.
However I want to provide an alternative interpretation. According to Chabad (a Jewish organization with some questionable teachings, but also an enormous collection of resources for anything Jewish), the source of the rule to wait 6 hours is the Talmud (an enormous collection of commentaries on Torah and Halakha and on itself, full of arguments between rabbis and stories, consisting of two parts: The Mishna and the Gemara, the latter being way way longer and usually what people really mean when they say "Talmud"), where it is stated one should wait until the next meal, which was understood as meaning 6 hours because at the time that would be the average time between meals for the people who wrote it. But in Minecraft, you don't really eat several meals a day, unless you're really running around and getting beat up all day. I feel like it's a perfectly valid reading to instead say the required time is a full day, but that's just me.
Regardless of how long you wait, there's one thing to be considered: sleep. When someone sleeps the night away, time passes in a way that won't be accounted for if you set a timer in real life to keep track, and the amount of time that skips away varies with how early in the night the sleep occurs. According to the aforementioned wiki page, sleep in clear weather can begin 10 minutes 27.1 seconds after the time in the morning at which sleep ends, leaving 9 minutes 32.9 seconds at most which can be skipped. Meaning if you ate cake then slept a whole night and you follow the 5 minute version, you're fine. Additionally, as long as you ate before midnight (check a clock or the moon), you should be fine by the time you wake up. If you subscribe to the one day rule, I recommend just remembering when in the day you ate and then not waiting until it's a little past that time the next day to be safe. This might seem like a lot to keep track of but a) welcome to being observantly Jewish, it's a full-time job, it's constantly a part of everything you do, and it's not for everyone and that's ok! And b) you probably won't be drinking/eating dairy very often. And until you have any sort of efficiency in your Shekhita project, you probably aren't eating a lot of meat either.
Oh right, but there's more! What if you're in the Nether or the End, there's no sun or moon and clocks don't work! And what if you're in multiplayer and someone sleeps while you're there! How does that work?! There's no real world equivalent to entering a dimension that doesn't abide by the same flow of time. There's traveling between time zones, but wherever you go on Earth, it's some time of day or night there. It might be most comparable to people trying to keep Shabbat (which begins with sunset and ends when stars come out the next night) while in space! Or at the poles of the Earth where the sun is up for months in summer and down for months in winter. The general consensus seems to be to follow the time of the last place you were where time behaved normally. In our case, that means just go by whatever time is in the Overworld, but what if you don't know? What if you're alone and stuck and you forgot to set a timer or you don't have one? You have no way to know what time it is in the Overworld! Well, assuming you can afford it, there's a convenient way to make sure you wait long enough! After an item drops, it takes it exactly 5 minutes to despawn! Take something from your inventory you can do without and drop it on the ground and wait for it to despawn. If you want to wait a whole day, repeat and watch a total of four items despawn one at a time. Boring just staring at a netherrack block hovering for 5 or 20 minutes straight? Well no one said you couldn't do other stuff while you wait, just make sure you don't pick it up because you'll have to start over. I don't know why you're stuck in the Nether trying to eat a cake but you do you and that's how to be sure you waited long enough. If you're afraid of losing count of your four whole worthless items to despawn, I'd recommend separating them from the stack or wherever they are ahead of time, so you know when you run out that you did all four.
"But Maws!" you interrupt in a panic, "I'm being chased by blazes and wither skeletons!!! I drank the milk to get the wither effect off but all the food I have on me is meat and if I don't heal soon, I'll die!! Am I just supposed to accept my fate?"
You're in luck! Judaism is a religion for life. Life is sacred and important. And there is a rule called Pikuakh Nefesh which states that (almost) every prohibition can be broken to save a life. Eat. You are actively encouraged to eat. You must eat. Your life is more precious than the Mitzva.
Ok so. I think that's all I have to say on meat for now.
A few extra sidenotes:
You may need to kasher your tools at some point. The best way to do this would be to boil them (you'd wash and boil them in real life too). For example, you may place a magma block under a water block and throw the item in, or place a full cauldron over a fire and throw the items into that. However, the best way to kasher netherite is by throwing it into lava, which Guarantees that all but the tool will be burnt away without a trace.
Something I completely forgot to observe when I switched to a bread diet is that you're supposed to wash your hands before you eat bread. Not just between eating something else and eating bread, between doing anything and eating bread. You wash your hands with the intention of eating bread and then you keep in mind your intention to eat bread until you do and generally, you do not speak between washing your hands and eating the bread either, except for saying the Brakha (blessing) before you eat of course. Brakhot (blessings) are a huge topic of their own and I might cover them in another post, but right now I'm not really wanting to incorporate them since you are not supposed to say them unless you are actually doing the thing you should say it before doing, you should never say them in vein, and Minecraft roleplay doesn't really count, but in real life, you would follow an intricate system of what Brakha to say on what meal both before and after eating, which oh boy I could definitely talk about that for hours but it's outside the scope of this post. Anyway, wash your hands by punching some water right before you eat. If water is not available, you can clean your hands by robbing them on clothing, a rock, or some grass. this would translate to punching (but not necessarily breaking) any rock or the top of a grass block. So you can still eat bread in the Nether if you must.
This might be the longest post I have ever made on this website in the nine years I've been on it. And again, like the first one, I'm holding back. The first part was a brief summary of scratching the surface in Minecraft. This part is scratching the surface in Minecraft. I love Judaism so much I'll literally never in my lifetime be done learning about it or talking about it. It is so old and intricate and absolutely stuffed with defined rules and trivia and my little autism heart I'm like a child in an infinite candy shop. And I'm building the shop in Minecraft.
Also. I haven't touched the game in days I've just been obsessing over these details and plans. I got sidetracked.
This post has been proofread and approved by @bookoramaenderteeth who is a real Orthodox Jew outside of Minecraft and the best boyfriend in the universe just in general.
Thanks for reading.
End of post... for now...
Aaaaaaaaa!! How could I forget! Since eggs are only kosher if there's no blood when you crack them, Minecraft cake is not kosher because you can't check the eggs for blood! Bucket of milk is the only kosher dairy.
