Date: Day 27, Month 11, Year 2729 of Our Exile (February 3, 2008)
From: Jacob Fronczak
To: Ted Walther
Subject: Pesach lamb gutsTed,
We're doing the Pesach lamb this year. The Scriptures say to roast the entrails... The "tradition" says to clean out the entrails and put them back in, so you're not roasting sheep shit in with the meat. This sounds good to me. My grandpa got sick from deer meat that was contaminated from the entrails. How do you guys do it?
Jake, that is a great question. A lot of people who are killing the lamb are confronting the same issue. Sadly, most of them are stopping short of full obedience to our God because of fear. There is a lot of misinformation in our society, designed to stop people from doing things God's way.
George Gordon for twenty years, Brian Mohr for five years, and myself for three years, have roasted the lamb with the guts in, and never had a problem with contamination. When you cut the throat, the sheep empties its bowels and bladder, so there is no waste remaining to contaminate the meat. Similar things happens when you hang a man to death; he empties his bowels and bladder.
This is an act of faith; if you trust God, give it a go. If you are worried about contamination, do what your heart says.
The entrails, which contain grass, will burst during the roasting. Most people who see the burst belly give up at that point and assume the meat is bad without eating the parts that haven't been touched by the fermented belly grass.
The burst gut won't contaminate the real meat. The stomach area isn't really an area noted for producing lots of meat. The shoulders and legs will give you plenty of delicious meat. You could pierce the belly ahead of time with a knife.
If you listen to George Gordon's seven hour series on Circumcision, aired June 2004, a couple hours in he switches gears and explains, in detail, exactly how to roast the lamb and exactly what to expect. It was that series on Circumcision that tipped me over the edge to total Torah observance, including the full observance of Passover, with the lamb. I recommend it for anyone who is new to Torah.
Here is the link to an MP3 file of George's radio broadcast on Circumcision: http://db.georgegordon.com/index.php?yr=2004
For the sped up version, so you can listen to it in 5 hours instead of 7, here is the link: http://reactor-core.org/georgegordon/0001 Circumcision 1 of 07.ogg
Yah bless!
Note on keeping up the lamb: This didn't make it into my original reply to Jake, but it is worth knowing. Regina Hynes, from the Philippines, reported that they would "keep it up", referring to the animal to be slaughtered, for three or four days before the fiesta (feast). My wife, also from the countryside of the Philippines, confirmed this. Both ladies were surprised that people here did not practice such an obvious and natural thing in preparing our meat. Keeping the lamb up means to keep it tied up without food for the three days from the tenth of the month to the fourteenth of the month. Give it water though; it shouldn't die of dehydration. This gaurantees its gut is empty. I believe the reason George Gordon, Brian Mohr, and myself experience burst guts is that we have not (yet) practiced keeping up the lamb properly. I only learnt this myself a month ago. This coming passover I will definitely be doing it.
Note on the bitter herbs: Last year I speculated that the "bitter herbs" eaten with the lamb at Passover, was actually the grass that was in the sheeps gut. I no longer believe this. Last Passover I ate a little bit of the roasted grass from the sheeps belly. It wasn't edible. The whole train of reasoning came the writings of Weston A. Price. Joshua Lee Caulkins, a Ph.D. student mentioned that the Sioux hunters would eat the fermented grass from the guts of a buffalo they had just killed. I speculated that the bitter herbs may have referred to a similar thing with the guts of the lamb. Now that I know what it means to keep up the lamb, I no longer believe so. The Bible itself does not say "bitter herbs", it says "bitter". And the word that is translated as bitter is only found one time in the entire Bible. Until YHWH reveals to us what he means, I will let that part go for now. Specifying any particular herb to go along with the lamb as being Biblical, is not Biblical.
Date: June 27, 2006
From: Joshua Lee Caulkins
To: Ted WaltherI found the website of the guy who described the diets of Native Americans. His name is Dr. Weston A. Price:
The specific page with the Native America stuff on it is here: http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html
The specific passage is quoted on that page, about 1/3 of the way down, next to the photo of Sitting Bull, and copied here: "According to John (Fire) Lame Deer, the eating of guts had evolved into a contest. 'In the old days we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a contest of it, two fellows getting hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite ends, starting chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first; that's eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented, half-digested grass and herbs, you didn't need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed those.'"
In any event, I hope you the website and information useful! and please correct me if either of the emails above are wrong...I had to look these up on the internet!
From the page Joshua Lee quoted, I found another interesting tit-bit:
Boiled tongue was an ancient delicacy, served as the food of communion
at the Sun Dance.
The tongue was the part given to the Levites as
their portion of every sacrifice and offering. The tongue is indeed a
delicacy, very fatty and low in gristle.