What Makes a Fish Kosher? - Keeping it Kosher Clips

What is the main halacha about fish, in  terms of buying fish and eating fish? Okay, so when I'm giving my presentation, one of  the things, especially when I'm speaking to kids,   I like to ask, "how many people have a short  attention span?" And a lot of kids will raise   their hand, and then I'll ask, "How many people  already forgot the question?" And then a bunch of   other kids will raise their hand. So, okay, for  those of you with a super-short attention span,   here's the takeaway that I really need you to  come home with. The definition of a kosher fish,   practically, when you're trying to figure out  if a fish is kosher, you're looking to check if   the fish has scales that can be removed from the  fish without ripping the skin. That's the Ramban's   definition of a kaskeses (scales), the Rama brings  it down l'halacha. That's the ikkur that we're   focused on. The Gemara in Chulin says,  The Gemara in Chullin says, "כל שיש לו   קשקשת – יש לו סנפיר". Anything which  has kaskeses, a scale, as I defined it,   will have snapir (fins). So we don't  have to check for snapir practically. Which means fins. You don't  have to check for fins. We don't need to check for the fins. What we  do need to check is to make sure that it has   scales that can be removed without ripping  the skin. And there are conditions for that.   And there are things you have to think about.  And what if the scales fall out? What if the   scales were scraped off and I didn't see them  before they were scraped off? And other ways   that we can manage all of those things, but  that is the most important thing. And that,   when you're buying fish, other than salmonid  fish, you have to make sure that it's a dag   tahor (kosher fish) before they take the skin  off. You cannot rely on buying fish based on   the name alone. There's no list that's going  to help you. There's no guy behind the counter   that assures you that all the Jews buy this  or that fish. None of that's going to work.   You have to make sure you're dealing with a  dag tahor before anything else can happen. So, in other words, that's just practical advice,   or there's a gezeira d’Rabbanan that  you cannot buy fish without skin? Yeah. So if the fish has no skin, that puts  it back into the category of kirvei dagim,   which Chazal talk about, is the guts of the fish.  Until, I'm going to guess somewhere around the   1970s or 80s, when refrigeration technology got  improved and we started sending fish fillets,   meaning skinless fish fillets outside of  regional areas, it wasn't really a thing   except for fish guts, which were preserved and  treated and other things. That would have been the   only fish product you would have seen where you  couldn't identify it by looking at the skin. So,   Chazal definitely forbade anything that was  not identifiable. And we understand that to   mean that includes fish by looking  at the meat and not seeing the skin,   it would still be in that category.  And how much skin you have to see,   we could discuss that as well. But the bottom line  is you have to be able to recognize the fish based   on the skin. Other than the exceptions to the  rule, like we mentioned earlier about salmon.