You can hear them pretty much everywhere you go around Missouri — the loud, constant buzzing sound of the cicadas. Not only are we hearing them in St. Louis, but we’re also seeing them and talking about them.
Last week, the Jewish Light published an article about the “Secret Jewish History of Cicadas.” Many of you commented via social media and emails about hearing that people around the country were eating them. Many of you wondered if cicadas happen to be kosher.
Here is what we found out.
This “brood” of cicadas
Missouri is one of 17 states experiencing cicada emergence this year, part of a rare double brood event. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, the 13-year Brood XIX, which appears every 13 years, will be seen in more states, including Missouri, than the 17-year Brood XIII. Both broods are also expected to emerge in Illinois and Iowa.
Now that we know what we’re dealing with, are people really eating them?
The answer is yes. In fact, this Friday, the bug experts of the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House are putting on their chefs’ hats to cook up some cicada-centric dishes and educate the public on entomophagy – the practice of eating insects.
“The Bug Chef” will educate guests about the cicadas emerging in St. Louis and demonstrate how to incorporate them into two culinary dishes: cicada scampi and spicy deep-fried cicada. Due to high demand, the Butterfly House will not offer cicada tastings during the public demonstrations, but adventurous guests can sample other insect-based snacks and take-home cicada recipe cards to try on their own.
But before you head out to Chesterfield to grab a recipe card, are cicadas kosher?
No, cicadas are not kosher
In a 2021 interview with our partners at JTA, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom – the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., said, “No Jew should be eating cicadas. If you put them in your cholent pot, your cholent pot is treif.”
According to Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, a neuroscience professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who explores exotic kosher food on the side, locusts are kosher (despite their starring role in the Ten Plagues), but cicadas are not.
“You’re not going to find anybody who says that cicadas are kosher,” said Zivotofsky to the JTA in the same interview. “There are kosher insects, but they’re all species of grasshoppers and locusts. There are no kosher cicadas.”
Zivotofsky said that before World War II, the tradition of eating locusts was confined to Jews in Yemen, where the insect was more prevalent. The custom has since expanded, including to the Zivotofsky home.
“I find it gross, but I let my kids eat locusts,” he said.
For an animal to be kosher in Judaism, it needs to fit the rules set out in the Torah, and there needs to be an established community tradition of eating the animal. Herzfeld said cicadas are never kosher, but there is also no tradition among Ashkenazim of eating locusts. Therefore, locusts are not kosher for Ashkenazim, either.
“But if somebody was invited to a Yemenite Jew’s home for Shabbos dinner and they served locusts, then they could eat them,” Herzfeld said. “But an Ashkenazi Jew is not allowed to cook them up and serve them on their own.”
As for cicadas, they’re off the menu.
