In the ever-present desire to find new snacks that are kosher for Passover, there’s one that stands – or leaps – above them all: locusts!
Some people are shocked that locusts are kosher to eat at all, let alone on Passover. But in fact the Torah is explicit about certain species of swarming grasshoppers, known as locusts, being kosher for consumption.
Yet this certainly seems odd. True, there are many countries in Asia where people eat all kinds of bugs and grubs. But the Torah is adamant that all the tens of millions of other species of insects and invertebrates are not kosher. And not only does the Torah prohibit them, it even gives a reason: that eating insects is disgusting and therefore not appropriate for the Chosen People. So why aren’t locusts included – aren’t they also disgusting?
The answer is that locusts are different from all other insects in a very significant way, which is related to the events commemorated on Passover. Locusts come in plagues.
For many people today in the West, the idea of a locust plague sounds more comical than threatening. But for people living in tropical countries, locust plagues are threats of almost unimaginable proportions. The effects of such plagues were catastrophic because locusts consume everything in their path. Following locust plagues, famines were common, and people were at risk of starvation. You had to eat locusts in order to survive.
But there is more to it than that. Disgust is culturally conditioned. Whether something is subjectively disgusting depends on a variety of factors, including health, disease, and economic need. It can also depend on cultural factors. Within the Jewish community, some Jews enjoy eating certain kosher foods that Jews from other cultures see as disgusting, such as p’tcha (calves’ foot jelly), feeselach (chicken feet), gribiness (fried chicken skin), tongue, sweetbreads (pancreas glands), brains (popular in North African Jewish communities), udders, and testicles.
We can now understand why the Torah permitted locust consumption. In places where locusts were life-threatening, people could mitigate their effects by eating the locusts – which themselves are an excellent source of nutrition! In Biblical times and places, eating locusts was simply a matter of life and death. And accordingly, people would have been accustomed to eating them. Eating locusts would not be considered disgusting. As a result, there would simply be no reason for the Torah to prohibit them.
While the Biblical description of locusts as a food item may seem like the relic of a pre-pesticide primitive past, it is actually the harbinger of the future. As the global population increases, insects are likely to become an increasingly common dietary option. Food scientists have discovered that insects are an excellent source of nutrition. Insects are also more environmentally friendly, they convert plant matter into protein far more efficiently than cattle or fowl while using far fewer resources. Locust farming has a much smaller impact on the environment than farming cows or chickens. As a result, there is a new push for Westerners to eat bugs.
Preparing grasshoppers for consumption is very easy. No shechitah is required. And while there is a dispute among the rabbis whether they must be killed before they are eaten, this debate can be easily circumvented by freezing and killing them, ensuring that they die painlessly.
They can be tasty too. Locusts have a mild, neutral flavor, but they can be fried and spiced, baked and covered in chocolate, or served with dips. Being insects and thus possessing exoskeletons, they are naturally crunchy on the outside with a chewy center.
While there were no locust plagues in Ashkenazi lands, the Jews in Morocco, Algeria, and Yemen were subject to regular locust plagues. As a result, they continued to eat these insects through the Middle Ages and beyond. Indeed, when Jews from these communities returned to the Holy Land in the 19th and 20th centuries, they continued this tradition and ate the locusts which occasionally plagued Palestine.
Based on this history, many assume that there is a tradition among Jews of Ashkenazic origin not to eat locusts. But this is incorrect. There was never a tradition against it; there was simply a loss of a tradition for it. And because there was never a tradition against eating locusts, rabbinic specialists permit their consumption today even by Jews who do not have Moroccan, Algerian, or Yemenite ancestry.
The Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh exhibits the animal world of the Bible with a combination of both live and taxidermy exhibits. The Hall of Kosher Classification is home to both a non-live exhibit of the largest kosher creature in the world – the giraffe – and a live exhibit of a colony of the smallest kosher creatures in the world, locusts. And jars of whole dried kosher locusts are a popular item in the gift store!
This is not necessarily because people are buying them to eat them. Grasshoppers are not just kosher to eat on Passover; they are also thematically related to it. And that’s why even people who don’t want to actually eat kosher locusts often want them as a talking point for their seder table. For those in the U.S. who are not able to buy them at the museum, kosher locusts can be purchased on the museum’s website, www.BiblicalNaturalHistory.org, shipped from the museum’s U.S. office. You can also learn about the intricacies of locust kashrut in an article on the Knowledge Base on the museum’s website. (Following Passover, when the Torah portion is Shemini, with the laws of kosher creatures, the museum will be offering a Zoom session with a focused tour of all the creatures and exhibits in its Hall of Kosher Classification.) Bon appétit!
