Can you use swan to write Torah? If you're going to use a feather, it has to be a feather from a kosher bird. So can you use swan? We usually use turkey or goose...swan??

Me, I sort of assumed swan wasn't kosher, and left it at that - I mean, whoever heard of Jews eating swan?

DMV, he who does critical Bible stuff and looks at the world through intelligent Reform eyes, he looks at the Torah's list of non-kosher birds, and notes that the word often translated "swan" really more likely means some kind of owl. So, DMV says, why don't we use swan feathers?

Well, I dunno, cos I always just assumed swan wasn't kosher.

DMV writes to the extraordinary R' Nosson Slifkin. R' Slifkin knows more or less everything there is to know about animals and halakha, I think. He's quite wonderful; his frumkeit is impeccable, his theology is so plausible that the chareidi community excommunicated him, and his erudition is remarkable.

Nosson Slifkin says that a swan is halakhically a duck, more or less, and is therefore as kosher as kosher can be.

Ain't that cool?
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