Thursday, August 09, 2007

Parshat Re’eh 5767: Rabbi, Is this Gazelle kosher?

Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

I’ve been a little intense lately so I thought I’d do something light on its feet, like a gazelle. This week we have a large number of mitzvot. In the middle of all this we have the commandment:

What ever I command you, take care to do it; you shall not add to it, nor diminish from it. [Deut 13:1]

We also have the repetition of the kosher laws. When discussing land animals, which in Leviticus we are only told they are to be animals which chew their cud and have split hoof, here we have a list of species:

4. These are the beasts which you shall eat; the ox, the sheep, and the goat, 5. The deer, and the gazelle, and the fallow deer, and the wild goat, and the adax, and the wild ox, and the wild sheep. 6. And every beast that parts the hoof, and has the hoof cloven into two, and chews the cud among the beasts, that you shall eat. [Deut 14:4]

While domesticated animals, also known as the sacrificial animals, are mentioned in this list there is also the mention of wild game, which are non sacrificial animals. Two of these are the gazelle and deer. They are mentioned twice more in this discussion of kashrut:

15. However you may slaughter animals and eat their meat in all your gates, to your heart’s desire, according to the blessing of the Lord, your God which he has given you; the unclean and the clean may eat of it, as they do of the gazelle and the deer. 16. Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it upon the earth like water. [Deut 12:15-16]

21. If the place which the Lord your God has chosen to put his name there is too far from you, then you shall kill of your herd and of your flock, which the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you shall eat in your gates, to your heart’s desire. 22. Like the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you shall eat them; the unclean and the clean shall eat of them alike. 23. Only be sure that you eat not the blood; for the blood is the life; and you may not eat the life with the flesh. [Deut. 12:21-23]

Non-sacrificial animals like deer and gazelles indicate to us that sacrificial animals can be eaten the same way as wild game by the normal populace. It is only in their sacred role as sacrificial animals and their eating by the priesthood that the issues of spiritual purity of the person eating apply. On the other hand, we are told even with the wild animals, there is a prohibition of eating their blood.

While we are not to add or remove anything from the commandments, there are ways of understanding the commandments we have in terms of the entire text. The gazelle is a good example of this. It is from the gazelle we can determine that ritual slaughter applies to all permitted land animals. Significant qualifications apply to the use of Shechita. In its biblical sense, trefa means meat has not been torn by beasts. By applying ritual slaughter to wild game, it also applied the rules of not allowing any cuts or punctures on the animal prior to slaughter. The animal must be alive at the time of slaughter, and die from the cut. A puncture or a dead animal would render the animal treif.

Unlike a cow, however deer and gazelle are very fast, not found on pastures and not easily herded into slaughter. If a hunter was not Jewish, this presents only minor problems. Projectile weapons such as a rifle or bow and arrow could take down wild game, but by using something that will puncture and might kill the animal renders them treif. This is a big reason there are few card carrying NRA members who are Orthodox Jews. For meat to be kosher Jews can’t hunt with guns. Like the paradoxical secular Jewish revulsion for eating a hamburger with a glass of milk, Jewish thought has continued that ideal even in liberal Judaism. Guns are treif for most Jews, whether they eat kosher or not.

There are however, lines in the text that point to hunting gazelle.

5. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler. [Proverbs 6:5]

Note Proverbs puts gazelles in parallel with birds. Hunters of wild birds like doves and pigeons also need to follow the rules of trefa as they are sacrificial animals. Fowlers, as we learn in other parts of the biblical texts used live traps and nets to catch birds. We can assume any hunter of gazelles would have to use the same strategy to catch gazelles and catch them in nets. Indeed there is a discussion forbidding trapping a gazelle in one’s house during the Sabbath, as that is too close to hunting. The proverb in context reads

2. If you are trapped with the words of your mouth; if you are taken with the words of your mouth. 3. Do this now, my son, and save yourself, when you come into the hand of your neighbor; go, humble yourself, and importune your neighbor. 4. Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. 5. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, and like a bird from the hand of the fowler.

The best way to avoid a trap is to go in the opposite direction. If you engage in Lashon hara go back and apologize and run from that trap the proverbs says.

Outside of this portion on Deuteronomy there is only one other place in the biblical text that has plenty of gazelles. The Song of Songs uses gazelles in several repetitive themes. Yet unlike Deuteronomy’s halakic themes and deriving kosher law from them, the Song is all Aggadah. The first theme uses the comparison of the gazelle’s speed and ability to dart from one place to another:

2:8. The voice of my beloved! Here he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. 9. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart; Behold, he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. [Song of Songs 2:8-9]

Until the day cools, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether. [Song of Songs 2:17]

Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young hart upon the mountains of spices. [Song of Songs 8:14]

The Midrash to the Song of Songs notes that like a gazelle skips and jumps around, so does God. The gazelle is a parable to God’s omnipresence, and God’s seemgly instant disappearance only to show up a second later. [Numbers R. XI:2] Second use of gazelle is a little harder to understand:

4:5. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.

6. Until the day cools, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. 7. You are all beautiful, my love; there is no blemish in you. [S.S. 4:5-7]

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. [7:4]

Comparing breasts to twin gazelles seems a little odd. Here Hebrew helps a little. The word for gazelle in Hebrew is TZVi spelled Tzadi-Veit-Yud. One of the words for beautiful, swelling, or abundant is also TZVi. In a double entendre, breasts are called twin swelling beauties. While the rabbis tried their hardest trying to steer clear of such sexual innuendo in the Song, they pulled a similar double entendre in the third Gazelle theme

7. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field that you stir not up, nor awake my love, until it please. [S.S. 2:7, 3:5]

Why would anyone swear on a deer or gazelle? In the plural, Gazelles are a lot like the Hebrew words for hosts, TZeBaot, implying the heavens. The rabbis playing on this word believe it was not Gazelles and deer one is swearing by but the home of the hosts (heaven) and the home of the beasts (earth). This is swearing by heavewn and earth. Other interpretations follow, this one all playing on the word for gazelles:

R. Hanina b. Papa and R. Judah b. R. Simon gave different explanations of this verse. R. Hanina said: He adjured them by the patriarchs and the matriarchs. BI - ZEBAOTH are the patriarchs who carried out My will (zibyoni) and through whom My will was executed. THE HINDS OF THE FIELD are the tribes, as we read, Naphtali is a hind let loose (Gen. XLIX, 21). R. Judah b. R. Simon said: He adjured them by the circumcision, zebaoth meaning ‘the host (zaba) which bears a sign,; and they are called HINDS OF THE FIELD because they pour out their blood like the blood of the deer and the hind. [Song of Songs R 2:2]

There is a polarity in Jewish thought best described By Abraham Joshua Heschel. There is aggadah and halacha. Both are necessary and both need each other to exist. The rules in which each can be understood are very different. Double entendres don’t work with Halacha which requires verses on top of verses to work, and then in terms of not adding or subtracting, only to further clarify what is already there. But with aggadah an active imagination and a loose set of literary interpretation techniques are in play. Gazelles in their few mentions in the biblical text show this polarity well. From Deuteronomy to the Song of Songs, we have this polarity of halacha that clarifies the prohibition of guns for hunting to the aggadah describing the beauty of the female form as indeed heavenly.

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