In last week’s Torah portion, Moses anointed Aaron and his sons as priests. He admonished them, “You shall not go outside the entrance of the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the day that your period of ordination is completed – lest you die. “Lest you die” gives us the impression that this is pretty serious stuff that they’re doing. This week’s Torah portion, Shemini, starts out, “On the eighth day.”
Chapter 9 has Aaron and his sons preparing and making sin offerings, burnt offerings, offerings of well-being and meal offerings both for themselves and for the community. Chapter 10 has two of Aaron’s sons offering an alien fire, which motivates God to send down a fire which consumes the two brothers. Aaron and his two remaining sons are told not to mourn, lest they die. Finally, Chapter 11 details the kosher laws listing those foods we may eat and those we may not because they “are unclean for us.”
I believe the theme of this week’s Torah portion is found in Chapter 10, Verses 9 and 10, where the Lord tells Aaron, “This is a law for all time throughout the ages, for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean.” What a horrendous responsibility we have, to distinguish between the sacred and the profane and between the clean and the unclean, lest we die. Where do we go to find the definition of these things? Is there only one definition or many? Is the definition fixed for all time or does it change with each generation?
In 1885, the framers of the Reform Judaism Pittsburgh Platform stated this position in no uncertain terms: “We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”
Almost a hundred years later, in 1979, Gates of Mitzvah – A Guide to the Jewish Life Cycle, edited by Simeon J. Maslin with an introduction by W. Gunther Plaut, was the first official Reform rabbinic document suggesting that Reform Jews ought to think positively about the observance of kashrut or consider adopting it into their religious lives. Rabbi Mark Washofsky in his book Jewish Living – A Guide to Contemporary Reform Practice and published in 2010, says, “It no longer makes sense to declare, by dint of “reason” or “enlightenment,” that the dietary laws cannot be a source of spiritual fulfillment to the Reform Jew. On the contrary: it is more reasonable for a movement that sees itself as an authentic expression of Jewish religiosity to urge its members to think about kashrut as an authentic mode of Jewish observance and to consider the value of bringing its practice into their homes and lives.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi first suggested and Rabbi Arthur Waskow has since popularized an important concern about these laws: If what we eat helps make us holy, shouldn’t ethical considerations have a role in deciding what is kosher (literally: fit) to eat? Is an egg from a chicken living its entire life in a 61-square-inch cage as good for our souls (to say nothing of our bodies) as an egg from a cage-free animal? Is meat processed in a plant where workers are underpaid and work in unsafe conditions equivalent to meat where animals are treated humanely and workers are treated fairly? And can pâté de fois gras, made by force-feeding a goose through a tube shoved down its throat, possibly be kosher?
In response, Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi coined the term “eco-kashrut” – meaning eating in a way that is mindful of both ecological concerns and ritual concerns (or more properly: of the way that ecological concerns affect ritual concerns. (Rabbi Waskow suggests that the category of eco-kashrut could be expanded beyond food items to other products and services such as paper, energy, etc.).
For Reform Jews, the issue of Kashrut is not an all-or-nothing option. Many of us choose a form of kashrut that makes sense to us both from a religious and practical standpoint. A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to study with Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi at the University of Pennsylvania. In a small meeting with the Rabbi and his wife and a few of us newcomers, a young lady asked him if she should become kosher. He told her to be completely kosher for one year. After that year she should keep what was meaningful to her and discard the rest.
Rabbi Lawrence Kotok, from Temple Br’ith Kodesh in Rochester, New York, would talk of how Reform Jews have the right and the authority to decide for themselves. “And,” he would remind us, “that right carries with it the responsibility to make informed and knowledgeable decisions. For you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean.”
When I became a Jew, I decided to eliminate pork from my diet. I was pretty much raised on pork and I really loved all the pork dishes my mother would make for us, so this was a big deal for me. Looking forward, I could probably give up eating whales, hawks, camels, and maybe even shrimp. But could I really give up eating escargots? Why is it that it’s OK to eat four different types of locust but not escargots? Turns out, that whatever approach to kashrut you take, it’s nobody’s business but yours and whatever higher power you answer to.
I think it’s a good thing, for each of us, to take a more sacred approach to the decisions we make regarding the food we eat and the impact that those decisions have on our home, we call the Earth, and on those others that we share this home with.
Shabbat Shalom.
George Gazarek gave this d’var on Friday, April 1, 2016