Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

One of the mysteries of Jewish life is that so many Jews feel the need to diet.  How is it possible that so many of us, me included, are always watching the proverbial waist-line?  Consider a trip to the local supermarket in Chutz La’aretz where there is almost nothing that orthodox Jews can purchase under the extremely restrictive Jewish Dietary Laws.  Look at the meat section, the cheese section, the bread section, the ready-cooked meals, the biscuits, cakes and desserts.  The mouth salivates, but all to no avail – virtually all these foods are off-limits to a religious Jew following the laws of Kashrut.  Of course in Israel it is a completely different story – but here is the irony – so many Israelis with such a wide range of foods to eat stay very trim – it is hard to fathom.  Although some of these rules are mentioned elsewhere in the Torah, they make their first major appearance in this week’s sidra of Shemini.

Kashrut, as prescribed in the week’s sidra, lists a large number of animals that are not to be eaten.  However, any animal that has cloven hooves and chews the cud may be eaten, although most certainly there are hundreds if not thousands of mammals that do not comply.  Equally, a number of fish have the required fins and scales as prescribed in the Torah, but many popular fish and seafood in the Western World remain prohibited under Jewish law.  Then there are the laws of shechita, the only way to kill a creature for food (other than fish) under Jewish Law.  This is done by using a razor sharp knife, held by someone who has been trained for many years: it remains the only method sanctioned under Jewish law.  It is worth noting that many scientists consider it to be among the most humane methods of killing an animal for food.

Among such notable scientists is Dr Stuart Rosen MA, MD, FRCP, author of Physiological Insights into Shechita (published June 12, 2004).  Here is an extract of an article published by Dr Rosen in the London Jewish Chronicle (November 2011):

Jewish law (halacha) ensures that all aspects of an animal’s welfare are protected, not merely the last moment of its life.  The whole point of shechita – the only method of slaughter by which Jews are permitted to eat kosher meat and poultry – is to be fast and humane.

The shochet, who performs shechita, undergoes years of training.  A perfectly clean and swift incision with a surgically sharp instrument (chalaf) severs the structures at the front of the neck – the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries and jugular veins.  The speed and precision of the incision ensures the lack of stimulation of the severed structures and results in the immediate loss of consciousness.  Blood flow to the brain is completely halted.  In addition, blood empties rapidly from the brain.  Irreversible cessation of consciousness and insensibility to pain are achieved, providing the most effective stun.  There is no delay between the shechita stun and subsequent death so the animal cannot regain consciousness, as can happen with conventional slaughter methods.

Conventional methods of stunning in the UK by use of a captive bolt, gassing or electrocution paralyse the animal and it is unable to display outward signs of feeling pain.  However, it is quite impossible to know whether the conventionally stunned animal is feeling pain or not.  We do know, though, that millions of animals each year are mis-stunned through faulty stunning equipment, or its misapplication to the animal.

There is ample scientific evidence that shechita is at least as humane as conventional slaughter.  Research in London and America, including by Dr Temple Grandin – one of the pre-eminent authorities in animal welfare – have supported this view.  In contrast, many of the studies which have suggested that shechita causes unnecessary pain have been agenda-driven and methodologically flawed, stretching data in a distinctly unscientific fashion to unsupported conclusions.  It is unfortunate that some animal welfare organisations in the UK and elsewhere tend to view religious slaughter as incompatible with the principles of humaneness and animal welfare.  Quite the contrary is true – compassion and animal welfare stand at the centre of the entire shechita process.

Beyond shechita we must also engage with the laws prohibiting mixtures of meat and milk products; we cannot cook them together, eat them together or eat them within certain time limits of each other, nor make any profit out of such an admixture.  A whole industry of designing kosher kitchens has evolved over recent years which includes room to store at least two sets of cutlery and crockery, two sets of saucepans and other utensils, not to mention creating room to install two ovens, two dishwashers, and two sinks – the list goes on.  Young people have no concept of earlier times when devout Jews managed quite adequately to keep a kosher kitchen with one sink, one oven, one dishwasher (actually – no dishwasher) and a minimum amount of other kitchenware!  One wonders what Moshe Rabbeinu would have made of it all?

Things however, get even more complicated when discussing birds, since the Torah has a list of forbidden birds but offers no categorization.

As a result the list of birds we most commonly eat is somewhat limited – it tends to be chicken, chicken and chicken!  I accept that duck and goose have been accepted since Talmudic days, but turkey, by contrast, took a whole generation of halakhists to determine whether it was permitted or not.

Enter into Google, “Is turkey a kosher bird” and AI answers as follows: “Yes, turkey is generally considered a kosher bird.  While not specifically listed in the Torah, it has gained acceptance through tradition and the application of kosher laws to new species.  To be kosher, a bird must meet specific criteria, including not being a bird of prey and having an ‘extra toe,’ a crop, and a gizzard lined with easily peelable skin.  Turkeys meet these requirements.”

Aish.com as one might have expected provides a more detailed response.

The Mishna (Chullin 3:6) does provide a set of criteria for determining if a bird is kosher.  The rules are that all birds of prey (i.e. those who pounce upon or claw at their prey) are forbidden.  Kosher birds have an extra toe (facing the opposite direction of the others), a crop, and a gizzard which can be easily peeled.

There is much rabbinic discussion regarding the precise meaning of these criteria – especially concerning the definition of a pouncing or clawing bird.

As a result, the accepted practice is not to rely on the criteria at all, but to eat only birds for which we have a חזקה (chazakah) – i.e. a tradition handed down throughout the generations that accepts that a particular bird is kosher (Rema, Shulhan Arukh, Yore Deah 82:3).

If so, the status of turkey comes under question.  Turkeys are native to the New World.  (There was even a proposal to make it the national bird of the United States.)  Although they do appear to have all the signs the Mishna lists, we cannot possibly have a tradition from generations past that it is kosher.  So why do most Jews eat turkey?

Several suggestions have been made.  One is that interestingly, the Jews of Europe almost universally began eating turkey once it became available from the Americas.  After the fact, the question was posed to various rabbis.  Many mistakenly thought it was imported from India – as even today a turkey is known in Hebrew by the name – תַרְנְגוֹל הודו (loosely translated as Indian chicken).  As a result, the Ashkenazi rabbis believed that since Indian Jews had established the principle years earlier that this was a kosher bird, they too could follow that tradition and rule that it may be eaten under the laws of kashrut.  In other words, a tradition is required to permit the forbidden, but the lack of a tradition is not grounds to forbid that which has already been assumed to be permitted (Netziv, Meishiv Davar Yoreh Deah:22).

Some also suggest that Jews began eating turkey before the custom became firmly established in the late 16th century that one required a חזקה (chazakah) over and above the physiological signs to determine the kashrut of a bird.  Thus, the practice not to accept new birds that appeared to comply with the fundamental rules as found in the Talmud unless there was an established tradition, came too late to stop us eating turkey – not such good news for turkeys, but most welcome news for Jewish Americans on Thanksgiving Day!

A final possible justification is that it is possible to cross-breed turkeys and chickens and create a viable hybrid.  This too is a possible means of verifying that a questionable species is considered a “cousin” of an accepted one.  (For more details see the article by Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, in Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, Edition 35.)

One fascinating comment by Rabbi Isaiah Halevi Horowitz former Chief Rabbi of Prague (1555 – 1630) is of deeper significance when one considers some of the underlying ideas beneath the texture of many of these laws.  It is reported that he once saw a turkey behaving like a wild beast.  He declared that he did not want his descendants to eat from such a bird, implying that he did not want his descendants to act in this way.  As a consequence, many of his descendants to this day refrain from eating turkey – if your surname is Horowitz, you should most definitely check with your rabbi whether you should eat turkey since you might just be a descendant of the great man and therefore should apply his rulings to your Torah life!

This final idea is based on a suspicion that we become what we eat.

This idea has perplexed humans for ions, so much so that last year Netflix produced a series entitled You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.  The series was based upon an 8-week study conducted by Stanford University which put 22 sets of genetically identical twins on opposing (but healthy) diets: omnivore and vegan.  The subjects were given their meals for the first four weeks and had to prepare their own meals during the second 4 weeks.  According to the leader of the study, Christopher D. Gardner, the twins on the vegan diet had “a 10% to 15% drop in LDL cholesterol, a 25% drop in insulin, and a 3% drop in body weight in just eight weeks, all by eating real food without animal products.”

But for the rabbis, as important as these health markers are, they focused more on how diet might change the character of a person.  There is some evidence that certain diets have a significant impact on one’s mental state, perhaps even tendencies towards violent behaviour.  For example, the documentary film Super Size Me released in 2004, followed Morgan Spurlock, an independent filmmaker, as he embarked on a quest to eat a fast-food diet, three times a day for 30 days.  Besides putting on over 10 kilos in weight, he also developed a host of other physiological and most disturbingly – mental health issues – and all this just after 30 days of poor eating.  I also recall hearing some years ago that heavyweight boxing champions in preparation for a big fight would indulge in diets rich in meat and blood so as to increase their level of aggression.  This may be an urban myth but research discovered that those with a higher consumption of animal parts were both more physically and psychologically aggressive towards their partners.  This may relate in part to the fact that serotonin is an important neurotransmitter in the role of anger and aggression regulation in the hypothalamus.  When serotonin levels in the brain are low, caused at times by eating meat or other high protein meals, scientists argue that one might become more sensitive to aggression-provoking stimuli.

All this reminds me of a passage written by Dayan Isidor Grunfeld z”l in his classic two volume work: The Jewish Dietary Laws (Soncino 1972).  In the opening chapter, he acknowledges that Kashrut is part of a larger system of mitzvot which serve as divine rules of life for the people of God, eternal and inviolable; that the commandments of the Torah represent divine thoughts implanted into man through symbolic action.  In his words, “They are religious power-stations for the creation of holiness among the people of Israel.”

So what is the symbolic value of these commandments when it comes to the particular groups of animals that are prohibited and the injunction even with regard to those that are permitted to remove all the blood?

In answering this question, Grunfeld begins by reminding the reader that originally man was not to consume meat at all; only after Noah’s Flood was dispensation offered (Genesis 9:3).  It must be assumed therefore, that after the Flood man’s nature changed.  In the post-deluge era, with humans living much shorter lives, they needed food more vitalizing than vegetables.  “At the same time,” wrote Grunfeld, “safeguards were necessary to avoid an undue strengthening of the ‘animal nature’ in man resulting from the consumption of meat, that is, of animal substance.”

For general humanity, the law of אֵבֶר מִן הַחַי (ever min ha-hai) not eating the limb from a living animal sufficed, this being one of the Seven Noachide Laws – but the Jewish people required additional safeguards, due to their role as a priestly nation.  So the Torah warns Israel continually not to devour blood for example, for blood is akin to the very soul of the animal and at all costs we have to avoid replicating the animal instinct within ourselves as we strive to become ever more angelic in character.

Along similar lines, Grunfeld explains that carnivorous animals, birds and fish – known for their natural cruelty towards other species might corrupt the Jewish spirit.  Therefore domestic species with feet designed to stand relatively still for long periods of time and either peck laboriously at their food or chew it slowly using a number of stomachs in the case of mammals so as to extract the goodness from their humble diet of grasses, grains, seeds and shrubs are less likely, so thought our sages, to transmit into human beings an animalistic predisposition for savagery. 

This most certainly was the view of Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch (Germany 19^th century) who believed that the more passive and submissive the body is – the more it will yield to the dictates of the soul as man’s higher nature.  Any food, therefore that makes the body too active in a carnal direction, makes man the more indifferent or less sensitive to the loftier impulses of moral life and is to be avoided. 

Many reasons have been proposed for the Jewish Dietary Laws and given that that they cover every aspect of food production and food consumption, that in itself is not surprising – but if we only retained this simple idea, that “we are what we eat” and therefore applied our diet to the concept of refining both body and soul – that would surely be reason enough to commend these laws to our fellow Jews.

These laws, rituals and customs have stood by us for millennia; they have helped shape our psyche and have provided us with a direct route to holiness and transcendence – they are a gift from God to be cherished and protected, and then communicated faithfully to the next generation of our people so that they will live on as part of the bedrock of Judaism as long as the Jewish people exist.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi David Freedman