To American Jews, the cheeseburger epitomizes the combination of meat and dairy prohibited by Jewish law, and new advances in technology for producing artificial meat—as Chaim Saiman discussed in Mosaic a few months ago—may put that forbidden combination in reach. Ari Elias-Bachrach looks at both historical precedents and at rabbinic approaches to emerging possibilities:

Attempts at making an imitation cheeseburger for kosher-keeping Jews are nearly as old as the cheeseburger itself. Until now, most efforts have focused on using either faux-meat or faux-dairy made from alternative food sources like soy. . . . The first evidence we have of someone using legumes deliberately to create an imitation dairy product dates to 1899. Almeda Lambert, a Seventh-day Adventist, published a cookbook entitled Guide for Nut Cookery, which includes recipes for “ice cream” made from almonds, peanut milk, and nut cream.

Indeed, while lab-grown meat has generated more headlines, lab-grown dairy is both more immediately feasible and presents fewer halakhic problems:

Recently, a company called Perfect Day has genetically modified a strain of the Trichoderma reesei fungus to produce milk whey proteins. The modified fungi are put in a tank with sugar. They consume the sugar and produce whey protein—one of the two proteins that are present in milk. The final product is identical to the protein produced by cows, but with one key difference for the kosher consumer—no animals are involved in the production. Perfect Day’s protein is currently certified kosher and pareve by the Star-K, despite being the exact same whey protein that is normally derived from milk.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.