26 Oct KASHRUTH QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK

Please explain the word “GLATT”-is it still shayach today?

Very, very much! Not only is it relevant today,
but it probably has more applications today
than it originally did. Glatt is a Yiddish word
for “smooth” which means that whenever you slaughter an animal
in a Kosher way, part of the process is that the lungs are examined to
determine that they’re healthy. Certainly, if the lungs have a perforation or a hole, then it isn’t kosher. Sometimes when the lung is examined, there is not necessarily a hole, but it’ll have lesions attached
to the lung. So it’s not clear what those lesions represent.
Do they have a hole under them or not? Is it healthy? Glatt requires
that the lung be completely smooth, without any lesions. And that’s
why, typically in beef that’s slaughtered in the United States, the percentage of Glatt meat is so low. The reason it’s so low is because
the animal is checked, and by the time we finish all this checking,
they’re going to get a very low percentage of Glatt animals. A very
interesting piece of information is that Glatt for Ashkenazi Jews is a
custom. As far as Halacha is concerned, Ashkenazim don’t require
meat that is Glatt; it’s more of a custom that we keep nowadays. For
Sephardim, it’s not a question of custom, it’s a question of law.
That’s why very often you’ll see Bet Yoseph. It requires that the lung
be very smooth, without any lesions. So that’s what Glatt means and
that’s why Glatt is as relevant today as it ever was.
However glatt actually now has
a wider connotation. It also has
a connotation of a concept in
Halacha called “Basar Shehora
Bachacham,” which means Meat
on which there was a Shaila,
and a Chacham Paskened. Glatt
now means, there was no shaila
from the animal. There was no
need for a loophole to say this animal was Kosher. That’s what Glatt
has come to mean, and that’s why you’ll see Glatt sometimes even
on non-meat products or chicken. We don’t check the lungs of a
chicken so how do you have Glatt chicken? The answer is we’re not
checking the lungs, but we’re making sure that the meat has no Shailos and is completely Kosher. And that’s why Glatt has greater, wider
connotations nowadays in the world of Kashruth than it ever did.