There’s more to it than that. For example, you need to use the proper cooking utensils. Then, depending on how strict you are, food cooked by any non-Jew would not be kosher since “food consecrated to an idol is not kosher”. And so on, and so forth.
I have to wonder… does that mean food cooked by an atheist _could_ be kosher? I mean, it’s not consecrated to an idol, right? Or is it just if you don’t pray over it?
My understanding is that it’s not specific utensils, it’s just that you can’t use the same utensils for meat and milk products. So, for instance, a vegetarian restaurant is likely kosher, because their utensils never touched meat.
Everything has to be inspected, certified, and blessed. If it’s a public or commercial kitchen, it also has to be prepared under the supervision of a rabbi. Very few Jews would consider food cooked by a non-Jew to be treyf, and since Nick as a human didn’t wear a yarmulke or tzitzit on a regular basis, he most likely would not consider that a requirement.
How can you say Nick didn’t wear a yarmulke? The only time we ever saw him as a “human” was actually in VR (he was already a brain in a jar by then), and he was wearing a gaming helmet, so you couldn’t see whether he was wearing a yarmulke.
In fact, as soon as he could get a Rabbi up to Skin Horse, he had a mezuzah installed in his cabin.
(And spoiler that really doesn’t spoil anything: whenever we see him as a human in VR later on, he does have a yarmulke.)
I’d imagine that it would be at least vegetarian — I doubt Nick has two kitchens inside himself, and there’s more stuff you can make that’s milchiks than that’s fleishichs. Plus there’s the milchiks Doritos which reportedly get everywhere.
This brings up a couple of good questions, Nick is Jewish ,If he had a nonkosher kitchen on-board would that count as breaking kosher? Or, since the food is inside of him what simply having non-kosher food on-board count as a violation of the Laws of Kashrut? What about whatever nutrient paste is presumably sustaining his disembodied brain? Do any Rabbis/Torah Scholars read this strip? And if so would you like To weigh in on this?
There’s some evidence that Nick considers the body of the aircraft to be a dwelling placeāhe has at least one mezuzah attachedābut he nevertheless does seem to also view it as his body. However, given that he has humans and all sorts of non-edibles-unless-you’re-UNITY in him on a regular basis, I suspect that he’s not really considering any and all onboard objects “consumed food.” The kosher meals here might be either (a) showing off or (b) a sign of respect for tradition without recognizing any actual religious necessity.
I also suspect that whatever’s sustaining him is likely exempted as an unavoidable medical necessity, and the preservation of life wins in that instance. This is similar to the fact that he can’t shut down certain critical systems when observing Shabbat, which he’s complained about; if those systems include life support, it’s identical.
Maybe you’d like Nick’s own take on a similar issue?
Ā«āOkay, listen, you,ā I say, āācause itās time for Hebrew School. The Shakh suggests that tattooing is forbidden ācause itās a desecration of the perfect human body as HaShem created it.ā I use Violet to give myself a good thump on the fuselage. āThis here body aināt from HaShem. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania. I figure if HaShem was gonna create a perfect helicopter, He woulda made something a little less susceptible to vortex ring state.āĀ»
I just realized how ridiculously similar John and Nick are… That’s a bit terrifying.
They’re both uber-nerds, they both like Con-Air, they’re both highly passionate and likely to get frustrated, neither of them have eaten in the past couple years (at least not on-screen), they both play large amounts of video games… The list goes on and on.
Come to think of it, you could argue that they have the same story: Kid spends his life in a “safe place” (Nick’s room, John’s house) with very little contact to the outside world (Okay, John /does/ have Internet friends, but other than those three characters, he’s completely alone), other than with a mysterious figure with much more power than he realizes (John’s Dad, Nick’s government agent) playing “games” of much more significance than he realizes (John plays SBURB, Nick plays the flight simulators) until some cataclysmic event (John has the meteor, and I can’t remember what caused Nick to wake up) causes him to exit his previous home and find himself in the “real world” (Nick definitely does, but it’s questionable whether the Incipisphere from Homestuck is real) with newfound powers (John with The Windy Thing (eventually), Nick with being a helicopter), and a newfound identity (John as the Heir of Breath, Nick as, well, a helicopter) intrinsically tied to his powers. He then goes on to forge deep and meaningful relationships with the first people he meets outside of his original home (John with his fellow players and the first couple trolls he meets (especially Karkat), Nick with the Skin Horse team), and saves the world (or tries to) with his friends in a series of hilarious escapades.
As awesome as Nick is, he doesn’t have jet engines. Propellor powered aircraft, even turbo-props, can’t pull anywhere near the kind of speeds you’d need to make that trip in five hours.
Mainstream commercial propeller powered aircraft no, but Nick is a secret government prototype chock-full of formally mad science he is bound to exceed the normal limitations of other whirlybirds. Plus we don’t know that he doesn’t have the Jets for boosters. He’s a VTL after all
Pssh. He’s a friggen V-22 Osprey. Not even mad science can make one of those old clunkers fast enough. XP
No, I tells ya, the mad science all went into the cyborgy stuff. It’s hard enough getting an Osprey to behave with a normal pilot, imagine how twitchy it’d be if it was hotwired into your noggin! š
There is a major technical problem. Those 38′ diameter rotors have a maximum rotational speed, limited by the need to keep the rotor tips from exceeding the speed of sound.
The stresses involved when one part of the rotor is transonic and the rest isn’t exceeds any known or theoretical material.
Five hours? Impressive. Last time I traveled by air in the US it felt like it took that long just to get through the darned security checkpoints.
…..wait, how did Nick make the drinks menu?
He can make it smell like Doritos despite being a brain in a jar. Alcohol is probably pretty easy by this point.
Or he had it done by the DoI. I mean, weird as it is Nick has friends now.
I kind of suspect that any checkpoints Nick would establish would turn into insecurity checkpoints.
What, no mimosas?
*checks menu*
Oh! There they are…
Nick beats the snot out of those Syndrome AI posers.
I’m calling it now, the Water Girl Bot is the flight attendant on Air Nick.
That is simply too perfect. Service with a smile and an announcement of “joy”. Might be the perfect job for Ms. Cooler, actually.
Only the kosher meal? No vegan option? š
Maybe vegan kosher? That’s a thing.
Well, vegetarian food is almost automatically kosher (it just needs to be clean and free of vermin). If there’s milk in it, it’s not pareve, though.
There’s more to it than that. For example, you need to use the proper cooking utensils. Then, depending on how strict you are, food cooked by any non-Jew would not be kosher since “food consecrated to an idol is not kosher”. And so on, and so forth.
I have to wonder… does that mean food cooked by an atheist _could_ be kosher? I mean, it’s not consecrated to an idol, right? Or is it just if you don’t pray over it?
My understanding is that it’s not specific utensils, it’s just that you can’t use the same utensils for meat and milk products. So, for instance, a vegetarian restaurant is likely kosher, because their utensils never touched meat.
Everything has to be inspected, certified, and blessed. If it’s a public or commercial kitchen, it also has to be prepared under the supervision of a rabbi. Very few Jews would consider food cooked by a non-Jew to be treyf, and since Nick as a human didn’t wear a yarmulke or tzitzit on a regular basis, he most likely would not consider that a requirement.
How can you say Nick didn’t wear a yarmulke? The only time we ever saw him as a “human” was actually in VR (he was already a brain in a jar by then), and he was wearing a gaming helmet, so you couldn’t see whether he was wearing a yarmulke.
In fact, as soon as he could get a Rabbi up to Skin Horse, he had a mezuzah installed in his cabin.
(And spoiler that really doesn’t spoil anything: whenever we see him as a human in VR later on, he does have a yarmulke.)
I’d imagine that it would be at least vegetarian — I doubt Nick has two kitchens inside himself, and there’s more stuff you can make that’s milchiks than that’s fleishichs. Plus there’s the milchiks Doritos which reportedly get everywhere.
(TUNE: “Maria” from West Side Story, Bernstein & Sondheim)
Sangria …
Sit back, have a glass of sangria …
Not just for Doctor Lee,
It’s complimentary
For each!
Sangria …
It’s really first class, this sangria!
A nice Lambrusco wine,
With orange, lemon, lime,
And peach!
Sangria!
It’s the best drink you’ve ever tasted!
(Three or four, and you’re totally wasted)
Sangria …
This drink is on me, a sangria!
This brings up a couple of good questions, Nick is Jewish ,If he had a nonkosher kitchen on-board would that count as breaking kosher? Or, since the food is inside of him what simply having non-kosher food on-board count as a violation of the Laws of Kashrut? What about whatever nutrient paste is presumably sustaining his disembodied brain? Do any Rabbis/Torah Scholars read this strip? And if so would you like To weigh in on this?
There’s some evidence that Nick considers the body of the aircraft to be a dwelling placeāhe has at least one mezuzah attachedābut he nevertheless does seem to also view it as his body. However, given that he has humans and all sorts of non-edibles-unless-you’re-UNITY in him on a regular basis, I suspect that he’s not really considering any and all onboard objects “consumed food.” The kosher meals here might be either (a) showing off or (b) a sign of respect for tradition without recognizing any actual religious necessity.
I also suspect that whatever’s sustaining him is likely exempted as an unavoidable medical necessity, and the preservation of life wins in that instance. This is similar to the fact that he can’t shut down certain critical systems when observing Shabbat, which he’s complained about; if those systems include life support, it’s identical.
Thanks! My knowledge of Judaism gives me just enough rope to hang myself with, and this was too interesting a debate to pass up .
This is exactly why I love this comic.
Maybe you’d like Nick’s own take on a similar issue?
Ā«āOkay, listen, you,ā I say, āācause itās time for Hebrew School. The Shakh suggests that tattooing is forbidden ācause itās a desecration of the perfect human body as HaShem created it.ā I use Violet to give myself a good thump on the fuselage. āThis here body aināt from HaShem. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania. I figure if HaShem was gonna create a perfect helicopter, He woulda made something a little less susceptible to vortex ring state.āĀ»
(from here)
And whatever he needs for his brain to stay alive goes into the heading of pikuach nefesh, so it’s no concern.
And what mother wouldn’t like her Daughter to meet a nice Jewish Helicopter?
It’s nice to see Nick enjoying himself.
Nick enjoying himself is so rare…
“Con Air” is exactly what I want to be watching when the plane I’m in is on approach to landing. Particularly Vegas, but any airport will do.
What about “Airplane”, “Broken Arrow” (terrible flick), or any other movie with aircraft skidding on the runway or hitting something hard?
SFO? I have this sudden urge to drive down there right now to wait in the terminal, holding up a sign reading “Skin Horse”…
I’m now enjoying my mental image of Nick as a Homestuck.
I just realized how ridiculously similar John and Nick are… That’s a bit terrifying.
They’re both uber-nerds, they both like Con-Air, they’re both highly passionate and likely to get frustrated, neither of them have eaten in the past couple years (at least not on-screen), they both play large amounts of video games… The list goes on and on.
Come to think of it, you could argue that they have the same story: Kid spends his life in a “safe place” (Nick’s room, John’s house) with very little contact to the outside world (Okay, John /does/ have Internet friends, but other than those three characters, he’s completely alone), other than with a mysterious figure with much more power than he realizes (John’s Dad, Nick’s government agent) playing “games” of much more significance than he realizes (John plays SBURB, Nick plays the flight simulators) until some cataclysmic event (John has the meteor, and I can’t remember what caused Nick to wake up) causes him to exit his previous home and find himself in the “real world” (Nick definitely does, but it’s questionable whether the Incipisphere from Homestuck is real) with newfound powers (John with The Windy Thing (eventually), Nick with being a helicopter), and a newfound identity (John as the Heir of Breath, Nick as, well, a helicopter) intrinsically tied to his powers. He then goes on to forge deep and meaningful relationships with the first people he meets outside of his original home (John with his fellow players and the first couple trolls he meets (especially Karkat), Nick with the Skin Horse team), and saves the world (or tries to) with his friends in a series of hilarious escapades.
Okay, I guess Nick swears more. Or tries to.
… Honestly, Nick reminds me a lot more of Karkat.
As awesome as Nick is, he doesn’t have jet engines. Propellor powered aircraft, even turbo-props, can’t pull anywhere near the kind of speeds you’d need to make that trip in five hours.
š
Mainstream commercial propeller powered aircraft no, but Nick is a secret government prototype chock-full of formally mad science he is bound to exceed the normal limitations of other whirlybirds. Plus we don’t know that he doesn’t have the Jets for boosters. He’s a VTL after all
Pssh. He’s a friggen V-22 Osprey. Not even mad science can make one of those old clunkers fast enough. XP
No, I tells ya, the mad science all went into the cyborgy stuff. It’s hard enough getting an Osprey to behave with a normal pilot, imagine how twitchy it’d be if it was hotwired into your noggin! š
There is a major technical problem. Those 38′ diameter rotors have a maximum rotational speed, limited by the need to keep the rotor tips from exceeding the speed of sound.
The stresses involved when one part of the rotor is transonic and the rest isn’t exceeds any known or theoretical material.
His character sheet Clearly states otherwise. VTL/Sotl tiltrotor Prototype.
More like 10 hours flight time, plus two stops for refueling, one stop if equipped with wing tanks and internal auxiliary fuel tanks.
“Drinks are…. *sigh* on me.”