The Secret Life of the Strawberry (and its Eight-Legged Guests)

For many of us, strawberries are a sign that summer has arrived and the luscious red fruit seems to be just begging to be tasted. Imagine if strawberries weren't kosher! What a loss that would be...

Fortunately, strawberries are kosher, as are all fruits and vegetables. The problem is that bugs are not. In fact, bugs are so "not kosher" that eating even a single bug constitutes not just one aveirah (transgression) but many. 

Many types of bugs are easy to spot and remove. But if you're not familiar with the types of bugs that commonly infest certain foods, you might not realize that the "little black specks" you can see actually have legs.

While the halachah does not require us to examine food under a microscope in order to ensure that it is one-hundred-percent bug-free, very often the tiny specks can be seen to be moving even with the naked eye. It's just that we weren't expecting something like that, so we didn't look out for it.

And now, with that introduction, welcome to the secret life of the strawberry.

This video accompanied an article in the New York Post, under a warning: "Sorry we're about to ruin your day." The millions of views and hundreds of comments revealed that it did ruin quite a few people's days, but for us as Jews it's more serious than that. Just one strawberry can be chock-full of transgressions and the Torah teaches us that ingesting non-kosher food dulls our spiritual sensitivity (which also means that we don't take the idea of eating bugs as seriously as we should).

There are effective methods of cleaning strawberries thoroughly and removing all the bugs. These methods are very time-consuming and involve not only soaking in soapy water but also filtering the water through a fine-mesh cloth to ensure that the insects really are all gone.

A simpler alternative is to buy frozen strawberries with kosher certification and to follow the instructions on the package or consult your own rabbi on how to proceed.