WILTIMS #34: The Yankees and Kosher Psoas

First of all, I realized that in my sleepy stupor last night I slipped into serious medical jargon for one of my stories in yesterday's post. I do try to keep things as accessible as possible to the less medically inclined, but on occasion I slip-up. Feel free to comment or email me if you ever need clarification.

Anyway, we had a fun New York moment in class today when our professor showed us an x-ray of a liver with many lesions and asked us what we thought was wrong. She decided to pick on a Yankee fan in the audience by asking him what the best baseball team in NYC is. He got the answer purposefully wrong, as the radiograph was of metastatic tumors (aka mets). For the rest of the lecture, whenever metastases were the correct answer, she continued to call on him and he defiantly answered Yankees every time to much
laughter.

TIL: People that maintain a strict kosher diet can't eat your average filet mignon.

The radiologist member of our anatomy faculty, being militantly vegetarian, loves to point out where each cut of meat can be found in the human body. When we had her for the thorax block, she pointed out that the next time we eat ribs we'll be able to identify the three muscle layers, the connective tissue and probably blood vessels and nerves. Yummy!

Today she pointed out that filet mignon is cut from the psoas muscle which connects the lumbar (lower) spine to the femur in the upper leg and is responsible for various hip movements. She then explained with the help of one of the many yarmulke-wearing gentlemen in my class that this muscle technically isn't kosher because some nerve/tendon runs through/near it. The details were confusing and my follow-up research (seen below) didn't help.

Translation of Genesis 32:32 - I asked for another translation, only to be more confused.

Another classmate then explained to a couple of us the reason for this seemingly random kosher rule. According to the Bible, Jacob fought an angel at the Jabbok River and suffered an injury to his hip that gave him a limp for the rest of his life. Somehow this injury was blamed on part of the psoas muscle, for reasons that aren't readily apparent. Now to remember this story, they don't eat that cut of meat, unless they can find a really good butcher who can cut out... whatever it is that makes it non-kosher.

To the Jewish folk I know out there: if you can clarify anything in this post, please comment!