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CHAPTER 2

In the Fifth book of Moses, it is written: These are the beasts which ye may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat, the hart, and the gazelle, and the roebuck, and the wild goat, and the pygarg, and the antelope, and the mountain-sheep. (5M 14:4-5)
The following mentioned animals meet all three criteria: bovine (beef) cattle *, goats and sheep, and wild animals such as hart (deer), gazelle, roe deer, antelope, etc.
Then the general rule is stated: … every beast that parteth the hoof, and hath the hoof wholly cloven in two, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that ye may eat. (5M 14:6)
Afterwards three species are enumerated that do not meet all of the criteria: Nevertheless, these ye shall not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only have the hoof cloven: the camel, and the hare, and the rock-badger, because they chew the cud but part not the hoof, they are unclean unto you. (5M 14:7)

* Subfamily Bovinae

Finally the pig is mentioned as a representative of the animals that have wholly cloven hooves but do not chew the cud: … the swine, because he parteth the hoof but cheweth not the cud, he is unclean unto you. (5M 14:8)
It is forbidden to eat the pig and to touch his carcass, because it is written: … of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not touch. (5M 14:8)

All of these facts prove the above quoted statement, that it is forbidden to consume animals that do not meet every one of these three criteria.
In the treatise regarding ritual impurity, it will be described in detail what it is our duty what we must do if we were to touch the carcass of an animal belonging to any of the four groups.

According to our tradition, it is not permissible to eat young of animals that meet all three criteria if they are younger than seven days, because till this time they have not fully developed the digestive tract. They suckle the mother’s milk and do not chew the cud.
Milk is not digested the same way as the rest of a ruminant’s diet.
However, we cannot consider young ruminants ritually impure animals.
They do not lack the limiting criterion of rumination; the ruminant digestion is simply not fully developed and used.
As soon as a young ruminant begins to graze or begins to eat a dried fodder, ie begins to ruminate and is able to survive without milk, it meets all three criteria.

We can claim that it is permissible to eat animals that are ruminants and are already able to consume the food that requires rumination.
Allah ** also allows us to eat animals from the water that have fins and scales protecting their bodies, as it is written: These may ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them may ye eat (3M 11:9) and forbids that we eat animals from the water that do not have these two attributes and names them as
שֶׁקֶץ, as it is written: … all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that swarm in the waters, and of all the living creatures that are in the waters, they are a detestable thing unto you. (3M 11:10)

* This work is written in Judeo-Arabic language, and from this reason the author uses the Arabic word الله אללה Allah; he uses the word Allah as the Arab word for the One God, not as the name of the One God - the translator's note.