Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Benjamin Miller Bar Mitzvah
April 6, 2002
Do Dietary Laws Make Sense?
Without giving any reasons to justify the elaborate Jewish dietary laws, this week’s Torah portion provides a lengthy list of which foods are kosher and which are not. We heard Ben chant and then translate that animals with cloven hooves and which chew their cud are kosher; fish with fins and scales are kosher; birds which eat grain and vegetables and which can fly are kosher; insects, shellfish and reptiles are not kosher.
Since the earliest stages of our history, Jews have understood the patterns of kashrut, dietary laws, to be central to our heritage. Jews have sacrificed their lives rather than desecrate themselves with treif food. Some of the most dramatic stories of Jewish martyrdom, of Jews who preferred to lay down their lives rather than abandon their Judaism, center around the laws of kashrut. As early as the time of the Maccabees, more than two thousand years ago, we have stories of Jews forced to eat pork by their Syrian oppressors. In those stirring tales, Jews chose to die with their integrity intact, to die still obedient to the dictates of God and Torah. They could not conceive of Judaism without kashrut, so central were the dietary laws to the entire rhythm of Jewish living.
Yet if you listened carefully to what Ben read, the Torah really provides no justification for kashrut. Consequently, throughout history, Jews have struggled to understand the reasons underlying the laws of kashrut. One speculation is that the dietary laws were intended to insure the health of the Jewish People. The great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, who also was an outstanding physician, wrote: "God knows that in all foods prohibited to the Chosen People, elements injurious to the body are found. For this reason, God removed us from them . . ."
This view understands kashrut as a medical plan to insure the health of individual Jews. God prohibited foods which were harmful, thus helping Jews keep vigorous and fit. If this did not sound so sacrilegious, I would say that God was the first health food freak – kashrut was the macrobiotics of its time. The problem with such a viewpoint, for example that pigs cause trichinosis and were prohibited for that reason, is that it implies that God does not care about the health of the rest of humanity. After all, kashrut applied only to Jews. If God is the Creator of all humankind, then isn’t it logical to expect God to care about everyone’s health? We just finished reading from the Haggadah a passage where God silences the heavenly hosts who are exulting over the drowning deaths of the Egyptian army. God rebukes them: "My creatures are dying and you are singing praises?". How does that theology fit with the idea that God is only interested in the health of the Jewish People?
Another understanding is that kashrut was an early compensation for unsanitary conditions. If the Jews of the Torah had had refrigerators, they would not have needed dietary laws. People who like this idea say that with modern technology we do not need these outmoded precautions; now that we have homogenized milk and air-tight containers, we do not need kashrut. Such a viewpoint has no basis in either science or religion. No sacred text links the practice of the dietary laws to a fear of an epidemic or to a need to avoid rotting meat. And incidently, friends, unrefrigerated beef was no safer than unrefrigerated pork. This viewpoint also ignores the fact that most of the world’s religions observe some form of dietary laws – Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism among them.
I believe that the dietary laws were similar to all the other mitzvot, commandments, in the Torah. They were given to discipline us. In ancient Alexandria, the scholar and sage Philo taught that these dietary restrictions were intended to teach us to control our bodily appetites. Philo readily admitted that pork was the most delicious of all meats. Therefore, God forbade it to discourage excessive self-indulgence. But why were we allowed to consume the flesh of animals that chew the cud and have divided hooves? Says Philo: "Because a person grows in wisdom only if he repeats and chews over what he has studied and if he learns to divide and distinguish various concepts." Self-control, discipline – that was the purpose of the dietary laws.
My friends, this Reform rabbi is not about to urge that all Jews observe all facets of our traditional dietary laws. What I want to argue this morning is against self-indulgence and in favor of self-control and suggest that, in the past, kashrut – Jewish dietary laws – were one way of teaching Jews, then reminding Jews, then disciplining Jews to have self-control.
My colleague, Rabbi Jack Riemer, serves in south Florida. He writes about an incident which occurred in the aisle of a supermarket. He says: "The people in front of me were a man and his child. My guess is that the child was probably about five or six years old. My guess is that this man and his child were probably Jewish. I can’t say for sure, but I think they were probably Jewish since they were both wearing kippot and they were speaking Hebrew to each other."
"The child said what all little children say when they are in a supermarket: ‘Daddy, can I please have these cookies?’ The father took the cookies, read the ingredients carefully and said: ‘No, they are not kosher’."
"That is not the climax of the story. The climax of the story is what happened next. You know what happened next? Nothing. The kid said: ‘Okay’ and that was the end of it." And Rabbi Riemer says: "I was deeply moved by this brief encounter, because here was a child who at the age of five or six had already learned the meaning of a word of which many grown-ups have not learned the meaning. He had learned, thanks to the fact that his family keeps kosher, the meaning of the word ‘no’."
About a hundred years ago, a famous Russian psychologist, Dr. Ivan Pavlov, performed an interesting experiment. He brought a dog into his laboratory and gave him meat paste in a bowl. Dr. Pavlov noticed that every time he brought the meat paste near the dog, the dog became excited and began to salivate. His tongue would literally hang out of his mouth.
Then Dr. Pavlov did something different. He rang a bell and then a second later he brought in the meat paste. After a while, he noticed that the dog had become conditioned to salivate as soon as he heard the bell – even before the meat paste had arrived. The sound of the bell indicated to the dog that a good meal was not far off. Dr. Pavlov had conditioned his dog to act in a certain way, and he concluded that humans, too, could be conditioned to act in a certain way.
My friends, I am suggesting this morning that the dietary laws were conditioning devices, techniques to teach us personal discipline, strategies to help us say "no" when the temptation to say "yes" was very great.
Rabbi Jack Segal of Houston was asked to meet with four boys and girls from his congregation who had taken a watch from one of the stores in a large Houston mall. The Rabbi asked them: "Didn’t you know it was wrong to take the watch?" Their reply was that it was only a joke and, besides, it was an inexpensive watch.
Another time, he writes that the owner of a department store said to him: "Rabbi, you don’t realize that one of the reasons prices have skyrocketed is because we have so many added expenses in our store today which we did not have years ago. Young girls come into the store, take three bikini bathing suits into the dressing room, only return two, buy none and then leave the store with one bikini on under their dress. We have to have security people who must check and re-check. We can’t trust people any longer and the trouble is – they don’t think they have done anything wrong. Their excuse is ‘it’s an inexpensive item and, besides, this company makes a fortune, they won’t miss a $20 suit which the store only paid $10 for anyway’."
This executive concluded his story by saying: "The word ‘no’ does not seem to be in our dictionaries or vocabularies any longer. Children and adults only seem to know the word ‘yes’, ‘take what you want’, ‘do what you want’."
I remember reading a Jules Pfeiffer cartoon years ago. The educators in the congregation this morning will understand it and will wince at its truth. In the first panel, Pfeiffer says: "The teachers are afraid of the principal." The second panel, he says: "The principal is afraid of the school board." In the third panel, he says: "The school board is afraid of the parents." The fourth panel says: "The parents are afraid of the children." In the last panel, Pfeiffer says: "And the children are not afraid of anyone."
That is what it is like to live in a permissive society, a society in which parents are so afraid of injuring or lowering a child’s self-esteem that they are afraid to say "no" to whatever their children want. We live in a society in which the old aprons that mothers used to wear no longer exist – "Because I’m your mother, that’s why!"
One of the major problems today is that so many of us only infrequently hear the word "no". Therefore, when we have to make a moral decision and say "no", we cannot do it. Our tongues become tied, our jaws become locked, our minds refuse to act.
I think that at least one important reason the Jewish dietary laws were formulated was to teach us the world "no". No must exist not just in our dictionaries, but in our regular vocabularies, especially in our personal lives. There are times when we must say "no", even though all our friends tell us to say "yes".
The dietary laws were a conditioning tool to help Jews instinctively utter the word "no" when it is necessary in regard to moral issues, just as we say "no" to those tempting foods. "No, I will not steal that bikini", "no, I will not take that watch", no, I will not cheat on that test", "no, I will not lie for you".
You remember the story about the son of a Hollywood star? One day the star approached his eight-year-old son and said: "I’m sorry, Sammy, but tomorrow I have to use the limousine and chauffeur for business."
"But Dad!" Sammy began to shout, "How will I get to school?"
The father angrily shouted back: "Like every other school kid in the United States! Take a cab!"
My friends, I think there are too many Sammys in this country, youngsters who have never heard the world "no" said to them and consequently have never learned to say "no" to anything. Their vocabularies contain the words "take", "enjoy", "don’t ask questions", "have a good time".
A by-product of the Jewish dietary laws — whether it was intended or not — was that they taught self-control. They produced a family in which even a five-year-old is able to make his peace with not getting the cookies that he wants because he understands that there are rules which are older than he is, rules which transcend his desires — "gimme", "let me have it", "I want it", "I want it NOW".
There is an old joke about kashrut which I think contains a profound truth. There are really two versions of this joke. In one a priest says to his friend, the rabbi: "When are you going to start eating ham already? It is really so good." And the rabbi says: "At your wedding."
In the other version, the priest offers the rabbi a plate of forbidden foods and says: "Won’t you please serve yourself?" And the rabbi says: "No, thank you. I master myself."
The two versions make the same point. Human beings, if they are to be civilized, if they are to be truly human, if they are to be menchim, have to learn to master themselves; we have to learn how to say "no" to ourselves. Kashrut was character training. Someone who had to control himself every time he sat down at the table, every time she looked at a menu, every time he was offered a forbidden food, was doing character training.
I’m not calling for a return to kashrut. I am suggesting that we desperately need to return to character training. Self-indulgence or self-control? Permissiveness or discipline? Treif or kosher, unfit or fit — these are the choices we all have to make in life. May our religious faith guide and inspire us to make the right choices. Amen.
In preparing this message, I have utilized the work of
Rabbis Bradley Artson, Edward Cohn, Jack Riemer, and Jack Segal.
