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Kashroots: Towards an Eco-History of the Kosher Lawsby Rabbi David Seidenberg, neohasid.org, rebduvid86@gmail.com

I. Why do we keep kosher? I want to open up this question by taking a look back

to parshat Noach. Usually when we think of the Noah story, we think about how Noahs

family was given permission to eat animals. But parshat Noach is also the first place where

we (that is, all humanity) are given laws restricting how and what we eat. [1]

Even though the laws about keeping kosher, kashrut, may seem like the mostspecifically Jewish of practices, they have their origins in this Noachide covenant, where

the first restrictions on eating are described. Those restrictions are to not eat a limb from a

living animal, and to not eat the blood of an animal. Both are the basis of many kashrut

rules.

The Noah story is also the first time the distinction between pure and unclean

animals is mentioned (Noah is told to bring seven of the pure ( tahor) animals, which are

the ones we call kosher.) So even the least universal aspect of kashrut, the cloven hoof

and cud-chewing mouth requirement, has its roots in one of the Torahs most universal

stories.

Thats a good jumping off point for searching out the universal meaning of these laws

that appear to be culturally-specific and arguably parochial.

II. Judaism arose in a particular place within a particular ecosystem. While Jews live

everywhere, our rituals are keyed to the seasons and rhythms of the land of Israel. This i snot just true of Judaism. Each culture evolved in an ecosystem that shaped not only its diet

and cuisine, but also its fertility and rain rituals, its pantheons and ways of worship. The

reason why there are different cultures is not primarily political or theological, its thateach society must find a way to teach its generations how to live in harmony with its

unique ecosystem.

The most important way this teaching used to happen was through religion, through its

rituals, rules and stories.[2] This is an obvious part of Judaism if you think about the

relationship between the holidays and the harvests. Kashrutis just as important as theholidays to how Jews express their Judaism. Does this principle apply to kashrutas well?

Is kashrutalso connected to the earth in the intimate way that the holiday cycles are?

III. Before I go more into ecology, it would help to explore a related dimension of kashrut

and eating, taught to us by anthropology. One of the primary ways that a culture expressesits values and its sense of belonging in the world is through eating. (Levi-Strauss The Raw

and the Cookedwas one of the most important works that established this point.)

In fact, one of the primary ways of civilizing ourselves is to separate kill ing fromcooking and eating. For a lion must eat and hunt with one and the same mouth. Only a few

species (e.g., primates with hands) can even theoretically make a separation betweenkilling and eating. Humans, in fact, are the only predators who have the capacity to

completely separate killing (or capturing) from eating. This truth is embodied by the law

given to Noah to not eat a limb from a living animal (ever min hachai).

This civilizing process sounds like something that separates people from Nature. Yet

by emphasizing humanitys uniqueness, such rules can also restrain human power andstrengthen our empathy with all the other animals.

IV. In Judaism, this drive to elevate our human uniqueness through how we eat is deeply

embedded in the powerful rules about how we slaughter animals, the central focus of

kashrut. Separating the blood from the flesh is first described in the Noah story, and then in

other parts of the Torah, as the way we respect an animals soul and l ife in the face of using

it for food: ki hadam hu hanefesh You will not eat the blood because the blood is the

soul.

The imperative to not eat the blood, combined with the imperative to not cause an

animal suffering, allows for only one way of kosher slaughtering, what we callshechitah.

Shechitah is supposed to accomplish both goals (if done properly) by using an

extraordinarily sharp knife to cut the carotid arteries, jugular veins and trachea of an animal

in one cut. Done correctly, its supposed to allow the blood to flow out and the heart tocontinue pumping, while rendering the animal unconscious.

Salting meat to draw out any remaining blood, and most importantly not cooking the

flesh produced by an animals death with the milk that nurtures life (basar vchalav ormilchigand fleishig) are more ways of creating separations between the life of an animal,

the death of an animal, and the act of eating. All these rules and rites sanctify the act of

incorporating another animal into our own life and body. These laws are uniquely a part of

the covenant of the Jewish people, but they are hinted at in the respect for the animals lifeand soul expressed in the Noah story.

Just as rules about how we kill and prepare meat distinguish human beings from other

animals, rules about the way people harvest plants, which separate farming from foraging,

are also a civilizing force found in most cultures. In Judaism, laws about peah (not

harvesting the field corners), leket(leaving the gleanings), and kilayim (not interspersing

species in a certain kinds of fields), not only underline our humanity; they also add adimension of holiness and restraint to the act of taking from the earth.

All of these ritual laws, even those that begin in some sense as universal principles,create both a separation between humanity and other species, and between Jewish culture

and other cultures. Along with this comes a sense felt by many Jews that Jewish culture issomehow more civilized. That sense of election, so to speak, is a strictly anthropological

dimension, without any direct ecological benefit. But the other anthropological meaningsdiscussed above, to the extent that they create a heightened sensitivity to the lives and

species that we use and eat, as well as an awareness of death and life itself, are universal in

scope and have a clear ecological benefit.

V. Returning to the main point: every religion arises or is shaped by a place and teacheshow to live in that place. Though every ritual has many levels interpretation, e.g. historical,

theological and personal, the ecological meaning may be the soil in which all else grows.

The depth of this meaning is not in generalities, but in the details.In the case ofkashrut, for example, the rule about not eating blood makes it almost

impossible to eat hunted game. In an ecosystem where humans depended on large herds of

wild animals like buffalo, as we find in the North American plains, this rule would be

almost impossible to follow. But in an ecosystem where wild herds and habitats are less

productive, a hunting culture is unsustainable. A culture where humans can carefully

control the size of domesticated herds to fit the limits of the ecosystem and the needs of the

population is whats called for. That was the ecosystem which shaped the religion of our

ancestors.

This brings us to that most puzzling of categorical rules: which animals we can and

cannot eat. Almost everyone knows the rule: mammals that chew their cud and have split

hooves are kosher; all other land animals are not.[3] What do these two characteristics of

hoof and mouth mean? Anthropologically, there are many interpretations, some of which

can be found in Mary Douglas Purity and Danger. But ecologically, there is a specific

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meaning, which goes far beyond any hygienic or other rationalistic or symbolic

interpretation.

That meaning practically speaking is straightforward: any animal that chews its cud

can eat grasses and plants that are inedible to human beings, and any animal that has split

hooves can walk (and graze) on land that is too rocky to farm with a plow. These

characteristics together mean one very clear thing: the only land animals that we can eat

according to the laws ofkashrutare animals that do not compete with human beings for

food.

VI. The rules we still follow in Judaism would in their original context in the ancientMideast have allowed a civilization to thrive, without destroying the ecosystem it depended

upon. In an ecosystem which is in some ways marginal, that is, an ecosystem which

depends on intensive human input (agriculture and herding), as well as upon intensive

divine input (i.e., rain, as it was understood by our ancestors), there was no room for

devoting good farming land to livestock.

Embedded in this wisdom about locale is another truth: any culture which allows

domesticated herds to compete with humans for food also pits farmers against herders.

More importantly, it pits the poor who have no land against owners who control both land

and herds.

We can easily see the dynamics of this problem in the modern world, where rising

world food prices endanger the poor in many countries. Those prices are driven up in part

by the industrial practice of feeding grain to cattle, instead of giving them their natural diet

of diverse grasses and other pasture plants, and they are also driven up more recently bythe use of grain to make ethanol fuel. Instead of competition between herders and farmers,we have competition between feeding our SUVs and cattle, and feeding other people.

In order to have justice, which may be the most important value within Judaisms

culture, there needs to be a way for farming and animal husbandry to produce enough for

all people, poor and rich. The way to achieve this value in different ecosystems might be

different, but any culture founded on justice will always find a way to bring this value intoalignment with its ecosystem.

Going from animal husbandry back to agricultural rituals, it is obvious how the farmers

took care of the poor: enough was always left over for people to glean and harvest, and inevery seventh year, when the land was treated as ownerless, everyone (including every

animal, wild or domestic) had the right to take from any of the produce of the land.(Rabbinic interpretations of the law even require fences to be removed or breached to make

that easier.) In the fiftieth year, the land was redistributed according to a plan that gaveeach family an equal share.

With respect to animal herds, the way that wealth was recalibrated was more subtle: the

products of the sacrificial system, which combined offerings and tithes of domesticatedanimals (including all first-born and most other male animals) with plants (first-fruits and

tithes of produce and grain), went not only to the priest and Levite, but in many cases alsoto the poor and disenfranchised. The Priestly class, who had exclusive rights to parts of the

sacrifices, werent allowed to own land and didnt need land. But this privileged class

received a significant portion of their wealth alongside the lowest class, those who didnt

own and who were entitled by need.

I think this system would have had the potential to eliminate a lot of the stigma

associated with receiving charity and to minimize class differences. In combination with all

the agricultural rituals and rules mentioned above, we can see the plan for a society that

was both socially and ecologically sustainable for many generations.

Ecologically, the sacrificial system also had a very specific lesson: the l ife and soul of

the animal, found in the blood, remained holy, even after the animal was slaughtered, and

the only suitable use for this lifeblood was as an offering to God.

The kind of industrial meat-production we see in our time would have been impossible,

because it would fly in the face of every ecological, humane, and health consideration that

underlies kashrut. Yet somehow this system remains the way that most Jews get there

kosher meat today.[4] The sacrificial system also fits into a broader pattern of rituals and

rules related to animals and to the land, a pattern that gives us a unique model for how to

create a sustainable civilization.VII. My hypothesis for why animals must have cloven hoofs and chew their cud is just

that: a hypothesis. It fits into a broader understanding of how the Jewish relationship to

food is structured by the Torah, with its emphasis on equity and the sanctity of both human

life and all life. If this theory could be proven wrong, kashrutwould still have its other

meanings. But in a time when all of the worlds religions need to help us steer towards

sustainability, it is worth so much to know that Judaism, from its earliest time and earlieststories, has an ecological underpinning that we can all listen to and search for.

Looking at the way Jews stereotypically eat and feel about kashrut, I think we may

have a little work to do in order to listen better. But we need to hear this call to

sustainability, if Judaism is going to be relevant in humanitys next century. If the eco-

psychologists and philosophers and theologians are right, this search is also a way tobecome more fully human, and, I would say, more deeply Jewish.

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This article was first published on The Jew and the Carrotblog in 2008. An earlier version of thisarticle was published under the title, The Earth On Your Fork in the Journal of the Coalition for the

Advancement of Jewish Education (Summer 2008).

[1] You might say, what about the law forbidding Adam and Chava from eating the fruit of the

tree of knowledge? At least according to some interpretations, God wasnt setting a law but sharinginformation, just as we might point to a mushroom and say, Dont eat it because it could kill you.

More importantly, that instruction applied only to those two people in that one garden; its not thebasis for any of our dietary restrictions. But the two laws given to Noah are still included among therules of kashrut.

[2] Heres one example of how religious practices are shaped by the ecosystem in which theyevolve: Ecologically, the Tibetans lived in a high-altitude ecosystem which did not allow sufficient

protein-rich food to be produced through farming alone, so in order to survive they had to eat somemeat. Even though Buddhism historically demanded vegetarianism, Tibetan Buddhism found a way toallow its followers (even its priests) to eat meat, creating rituals and rules that would make this to fit

into Buddhist practice.

[3] I dont explore the meaning of the rules for kosher sea animals here, and Im not even sure of a

good interpretation. However, one possible meaning of the prohibition against eating shellfish may bethat we dont eat animals where it would be hard to separate killing from cooking , e.g. lobsters, or

killing from eating, e.g. oysters.

[4] While the kashrutrules embody a worthy goal, they are not sufficient in an age of industrialmeat production, in which even the right kind of animal, raised the wrong way, can deplete and

destroy ecosystems. Our generation is fixing this by reinstituting small-scale, socially responsibleanimal husbandry and slaughter.