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...to decide to keep kosher is to choose to make an essential Jewish act an important part of your life. Lessons for Today
Of everything that lives in water, this you may eat: anything in water, whether in the seas or streams, that has fins and scales - these you may eat. But anything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales, among all the swarming things of the water and among all the other living creatures that are in the water - they are an abomination for you. (Leviticus 11:9-10)
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Lawrence Kushner comments:
In other words, fish are okay, but anything else that doesn’t appear by its very physiology to be "naturally" of the sea or the stream is forbidden. The whole idea seems to be that we too must learn to be naturally of this world and that we accomplish this by restricting our diets to food that is natural to its world. You eat weird stuff - creatures that do not fit naturally into their environments, then you too will cease to feel at home in your world. Will this food take me home?
From Kushner and Mamet, Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (New York: Schoken Books,2003), p. 85.
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Pinchas Peli writes:
One of the pragmatic explanations for the dietary laws has it that they were ordained in order to separate the Jews from their gentile environment. Whether this was intended or not, phenomenologically the laws of Kashrut did indeed serve as a powerful social factor in guarding Jewish survival against assimilation. To this day, it provides an effective meeting ground for Jews, at home or when travelling on the road. Kosher restaurants everywhere are a place where one Jew meets another to find some familiarity and warmth in this big and alien world.
From Pinchas H. Peli, Torah Today - A Renewed Encounter with Scripture (Washington: B’nai B’rith Books, 1987), p.117.
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This week we have two modern commentators speculating on possible reasons for the existence of the laws of kashrut. However, this is by no means a new endeavour or a preoccupation of contemporary Torah scholars. Peli and Kushner both follow in the footsteps of Philo, Maimonides and many others since who sought to uncover the meaning behind the strict Jewish dietary laws, determine their purpose, and discern why the preoccupation with permitted and prohibited foods occupies so much space in the Torah and has become such a chief cornerstone of Jewish life.
Maimonides, a physician as well as a rabbi, famously tried to demonstrate that keeping kosher was a healthier way of eating, a myth that persists to today. But, as Peli notes elsewhere in his commentary, Rabbi Isaac Arama (1420-1494) disputed this view quite directly: "The dietary laws are not, as some have suggested, motivated by therapeutic considerations, God forbid! Were that so, the Torah would be denigrated to the status of a minor medical treatise and worse." In the end, the generally accepted consensus from a religious perspective is that God has reasons for commanding kashrut that we humans simply cannot comprehend.
Nonetheless, we still struggle to draw meaning from these laws for our current experiences. Our modern commentators, in their efforts to do so, look at particular laws to suggest meanings that appear almost contradictory. Kushner, looking at the laws that dictate what we may eat among the creatures that swim, sees in the text a distinction between that which fits "naturally" into its environment and that which does not seem to fit naturally into its environment. Creatures with "fins and scale" appear natural to the water, while those without are somehow alien. Based on the "you are what you eat" theory of diet, the Torah only allows Jews to eat that which is natural, so that we too will feel at home in our world. It is what we eat which helps us fit in to our own natural environment.
Peli, on the other hand, seems to suggest that Jews living in diaspora are never at home, never in their own natural environment, and eating kosher helps us to survive living in alien lands. Kashrut actually serves to separate Jews from all others, preventing them from assimilating into the gentile environment. The need for kosher food draws Jews together wherever they are, providing a point of connection, while at the same time keeping Jews from feeling too comfortable in the social environments of others, since food plays such a key role in bringing people together.
Lessons for Today
Each hypothesis has its merit, each strives to make sense of that which may not, ultimately, be comprehensible. While appearing to contradict, I think that Kushner and Peli’s propositions both have one thing in common: both commentators suggest that eating kosher helps us to feel authentically Jewish. For Kushner, feeling Jewish is feeling at home; feeling at one with our identity and our indigenous environment. It is about "fitting in" our Jewish community and Jewish tradition, which we carry with us wherever we go. While Jews in diaspora may perpetually be "fish out of water," eating fish that fit naturally into their environment help us to feel naturally part of our Jewish environment, which is not defined by space or geography, but by community and identity. This point resonates with Peli. Further, for Peli, avoiding that which is prohibited to us helps reinforce that sense of self and community by preventing us from being a part of that which we are not.
In the end, as creatures endowed with free will, we will each decide whether or not we will keep kosher, and to what extent. Each of us will do so for reasons that make sense to us, whether it is to reinforce our Jewish identity for its own inherent reasons, or whether it is to create some form of dietary barrier around ourselves to help prevent us from simply blending in with all others. In any case, to decide to keep kosher is to chose to make an essential Jewish act an important part of your life. Make that decision for yourself and make it a thoughtful decision. Make it a Jewish decision.
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