Bishul Akum: Food Cooked by a Non-Jew

Bishul akum is a rabbinic decree that certain foods cooked entirely by a non-Jew may not be eaten. Nothing non-kosher need be involved — the enactment is about social distance, not about ingredients.

The useful thing to know is how many foods fall outside it.

Two conditions, and both must hold

The decree applies only where a food meets both of these. Fail either, and it does not apply at all.

• It cannot be eaten raw. A food people will eat uncooked is excluded. Foods always pasteurised for safety but otherwise edible raw are treated as edible raw.
• It is fit to be served at an important table — oleh al shulchan melachim. A food nobody would serve as a dish in its own right is excluded.

That second condition does far more work than people expect, and it is decided food by food rather than by category. Beets are exempt, because they are eaten raw in horseradish. Zucchini is exempt, being edible raw. Artichokes, asparagus, butternut squash, aubergine, pumpkin and sweet potato are not exempt.

You could not deduce that list from first principles, which is the point: these are rulings on individual foods, and the right response to an unlisted food is to ask rather than to reason it out.

Further exemptions

• Mixtures whose main components are exempt are generally exempt, even where a minor component would not be.
• Accompaniments — a food served only alongside another, never as a dish of its own — are not considered fit for an important table.
• Bread and bread-like products fall under the separate laws of bread. Deep-fried doughs do not get this.
• Salting and cold smoking are not cooking. Hot smoking is.

What makes food bishul yisroel

Where the decree does apply, Jewish participation in the heat removes it — and the threshold differs by community. Ashkenazi practice, following the Rema, is that a Jew lighting the fire suffices. Sephardi practice, following the Shulchan Aruch, requires the Jew to place the food on the fire.

Two points catch people out, and both were ruled on repeatedly:

An electric element switched on earlier does not carry forward. If the heat goes out and a non-Jew relights it, a heating rod energised at some previous point does not preserve the status. This is the most common way a kitchen believes it is producing bishul yisroel and is not.

Across a relight, the chamber must stay genuinely hot. The Rema permits food cooked after a non-Jew relights, provided usable heat was retained throughout — understood as remaining above roughly 176°F, that being the minimum at which food cooks at all. Below that, the chain is broken. Note that this leniency is regarded by a number of authorities as an after-the-fact allowance rather than something to plan around.

In a home

For most households this surfaces with domestic help, or when eating out. The ordinary solution is that a Jew lights the flame or turns on the element at the start — and having done so, does not let it go out and be restarted by someone else.

Which foods in your kitchen are affected, and what your community's practice requires, is a question for your rav. See also pas yisroel, the parallel rule for bread.