TB Khullin 61 The turkey wasn't always a kosher bird

The Torah never delineates the signs (simanim-סימנים) of a kosher bird. Nevertheless, the Sages taught that a kosher bird needs these four traits. 1, It can’t be a predatory bird; 2, It has to have an additional finger; 3, It has to have a crop; 4, One must be able to peel away the outer membrane of the stomach.

Two different parshiot in the Torah, Shemini and  Reah, the Torah collectively lists 24 nonkosher birds. The eagle has none of the four above traits of a kosher bird. The vulture and the kite each has one trait, but they don’t share the same trait. The Raven has two traits and the rest of the 20 birds have three traits. Because the Torah uses the eagle as the prototype nonkosher bird, “Rabbi Ḥiyya teaches: A bird that comes before a person with one sign of a kosher bird, and which is not listed in the Torah as non-kosher, is kosher, since it is unlike a nesher.” (Sefaria.org translation) If this is the case, why does the Torah enumerate the 23 other birds? These birds are the exception to the rule.

Now let’s turn our attention to the turkey. Turkeys are species native to North America. Following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, turkeys were imported to Europe and the Middle East. Because the Torah does not name the turkey, some early rabbis were hesitant to allow it, as Jewish law generally requires a historical tradition (a mesorah) that a bird has been eaten safely by Jews. Eventually rabbis declared that the turkey is a kosher bird because it has all four. Now almost everybody eats turkey and it’s the most consumed poultry Israel.

My very first JTS Hebrew teacher Dr. Anne Lerner once told us that she doesn’t eat turkey on halakhic grounds. She explained why in a devar Torah on parashat Shemini.

“ But a number of rabbis, particularly in the 17th century, did rule that turkey was not kosher because there was no tradition of it being that way.

“One rabbi who apparently so ruled was Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579–1654). Heller was a leading rabbinic figure of the period when turkey was rapidly advancing across Europe. He was, for example, the author of the Mishnah commentary Tosefot Yom Tov and is commonly referred to by its name. Although Joseph M. Davis states in his recent study of Heller, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi, that he found no extant written evidence of Heller’s decision that turkey is not kosher, it is a well-known tradition attested—and even followed— by some of Heller’s many descendants.

“As a Heller descendant, I observe his legendary ruling that because turkey is not kosher his descendants may not eat it. Do I really think that turkey is kosher? By the book, probably not kosher; by the culture, I have to concede that it is widely accepted and has been for more than half a millennium. (Is that “a tradition?”).

“Thus, I will, for example, eat off plates that have had hot turkey on them. I don’t rail against the practice of considering turkey kosher, but I maintain the custom that it is not, as do my sister, my daughter, and my nephew. It’s a challenge in Israel, which has the highest per capita turkey consumption in the world, and annoying in November when people ask me about my menu.

“But there are reasons to maintain it. First, it reminds me of a special heritage. Because unlike the special Heller Purim (for another time), it is a burden so it testifies to the authenticity of the lineage. Second, in my family it has come through a female line that goes back to my great-grandmother before she inherited it from her father. In talking to Zivotofsky a few years ago, I realized how unusual it is for a minhag (custom) to be passed down through women. Women, he maintained, take on their husband’s minhag. In addition, it reminds me that the greatest halakhic minds of any era may be wrong—I’m just not sure which ones. Besides, given the trend toward increasing prohibitions in a significant faction of contemporary Orthodoxy, turkey may yet become unkosher, liberating it from the threat of the shoḥet the ritual slaughterer. If that should happen, my family may find itself unexpectedly in the vanguard.” (https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/the-liberated-bird-lets-talk-turkey/)

I don’t think we have to worry about turkeys no longer being kosher. Rabbi Joel Roth once said to me in a conversation that once the rabbis permit something, it is nearly impossible to retract it.