Sirloin , Rump, Fillet steaks : forbidden or not?

Hi All,

The short answer is not.

At least to us Sephardic Jews and maybe this is reflective of the outlook of the two communities of Judaism : Sephardic practical and lenient, Ashkenazi strict and conservative (in a small c risk adverse sense).. You see while animals like sheep and cows are kosher, the practice of Ashkenazi Jews is to not eat Hindquarter meat.

This stems from from the Bible verse Genesis 32:27-33. This is the account of the Angel and Jacob fighting and Jacob injuring himself, in the sciatic nerve. Verse 33:

'Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the thigh-vein which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, even in the sinew of the thigh-vein."

Via this passage the Sages of the Talmud interpreted that even in kosher animals , Halachically, Jews cannot eat the sciatic nerve or anything that contacts it and see it as a biblical , not rabbinic law.

Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic agree with this as part of Jewish law, but it is permissible to remove the nerves and kidneys,but this is extremely skilled and time consuming.

Ashkenazic leaders were less secure regarding the complete removal of such parts and thus implemented a prohibition on consuming the entire hindquarters.

But in the Sephardic tradition, it is okay to eat fillet , sirloin and rump as Sephardic butchers utilize a process called deveining, which carefully and exactingly removes the nerve and the kidney areas (kidneys not being allowed for various reasons) , thus rendering the meat usable for consumption.