The 21 days of Bein Ha’Meitzarim (between the straights), from Tammuz 17, the day when the wall of Jerusalem was breached by the Romans, and Tisha B’av, when both Holy Temples were destroyed, are associated with times of trouble and distress that including the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the expulsion from Gush Katif in 2005. Among many mourning customs during this period is abstaining from eating meat, especially during the nine days leading to Tisha B’Av (except on Shabbat).
Rabbi Oren Duvdevani, the head of the Tzohar rabbinical organization’s kashrut system abroad, the head of the kashrut organization India kosher supervision, who promotes the development and consumption of cultured meat, was asked this week by Kipa whether it would be permissible to eat cultured meat on the nine days.
Cultured meat is produced using tissue engineering techniques pioneered in regenerative medicine. Popularized by Jason Matheny in the early 2000s, 2013 saw the first hamburger patty made from tissue grown outside of an animal. Since then, other cultured meat prototypes have gained media attention: SuperMeat opened a farm-to-fork restaurant called “The Chicken” in Tel Aviv, and the “world’s first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat” was recorded in December 2020 at a restaurant in Singapore.
So, is cultured meat considered meat in the context of the nine days?
Rabbi Duvdevani believes the question hovers between the recognition of cultured meat as kosher meat and the solemn atmosphere which is appropriate for the nine days. He notes that the Shulchan Aruch only prohibits eating meat and drinking wine on the meal before the start of the Tisha B’Av fast. Over the years, many communities expanded the prohibition to the point where some abstain from meat for the entire three weeks, and some only on the final nine days – but everyone eats meat and drinks wine on Shabbat.
Rabbi Duvdevani suggests that in the context of expressing our mourning in the days before Tisha B’Av, we should treat cultured meat as meat and abstain from it.
“It is precisely the adherence to abstaining from eating meat and drinking wine which emphasizes the character of these days,” he says, “Therefore, although I strongly support the consumption of cultured meat, I think that during the nine days, it is prohibited to eat cultured meat.”
The ruling boosts the status of cultured meat as meat, regardless of whether or not it comes from a slaughtered animal. It also means, by extension, that the same restrictions on meat and milk apply for lab-produced meat – such as counting the number of hours between meat and dairy and avoiding cheeseburgers.
