Parshat Shmini 5768: Tolerance

This week, we have three major parts of our portion; we continue the sacrifices started in last week’s portion. On the eighth day of sacrifices, everything goes so well fire from the Lord devours the sacrifices. But things then turn tragic. Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu offer alien fire and are fatally consumed by the fire of the Lord. The rest of the Leviticus 10 then gives the aftermath of this tragedy and a prohibition against priests making sacrifices while intoxicated. We end with the laws of prohibited and permitted animals for eating, the basis of the kosher laws. Those start in chapter 11 with

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which you shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.

Much of what we’ve read from the book of Leviticus has been mitzvot that has been rather impractical in post temple times. In the next few chapters of Leviticus many mitzvot will deal with public health. This all starts with the backbone of the kosher dietary rules in Leviticus 11. Yet the connection between the sacrifices and what we eat was underlined by the rabbis:

The altar of wood three cubits high . . . . and he said to me, This is the table that is before the Lord(Ezek. 41:22) [Now the verse] opens with ‘altar’ and finishes with ‘table’? R. Johanan and R. Eleazar both explain that as long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned for Israel, but now a man's table atones for him.[Ber. 55a]

When I’m not studying Torah or writing this column, I spend my life as an Environmental Health Professional. Most people would call me a Health Inspector, and I have spent a lot of time walking through many restaurants pointing out all kinds of violations that could make customers sick. Unlike my government colleagues, I’m a private consultant, and people hire me to internally check stuff so the local heath department never finds it wrong. A couple of years ago while working at a large convention center, I was inspecting a glatt kosher food kiosk for a client. The orthodox owner of this kiosk, watched me inspect his neighboring kiosk, a barbecue pork place, and eyed my nervously as I stuck my thermometer into pulled pork. Walking up to him, I referred to my thermometer as a “treif-o-meter” and then asked for his thermometer so I could take the temperature of his hot dogs and make sure they were over 140°F. His initial suspicion of anyone messing with his food relaxed at the quirky comment. We had a wonderful conversation after he noted how much the local kosher certifying agency and I did a lot of the same stuff.

Kashrut and food safety have been interwoven parts of my life for years. In 2006, I gave a presentation at the national meetings of my professional association explaining to a standing room only crowd of Health inspector and public health officials spilling out into the hallway what Kosher is and how to inspect not only a kosher restaurant but also how to deal with many faith-based food issues. It was so popular, and it got recorded at a second presentation two days later, which also brought in a crowd. That video is still on my professional association’s bestseller list as of this writing. I’ve given that talk locally several times and still get calls for it once in a while. Health and Kosher seem to be related.

In his Guide to the Perplexed, Maimonides makes one of the first health claims for kosher. Indeed he claims that everybody knows one shouldn’t eat pork. Even though Maimonides was a royal physician in Islamic Egypt, he may not have been talking as a doctor but as a Jew living in Egypt during the crusades. Eating pork flagged you as a Christian and a possible enemy spy, and that would be unhealthy. I don’t think in terms of health when it comes to Kosher. I’ve always thought what we call today treif is the fourth category of contamination in public health, the other three being biological, chemical and physical. The biblical taamei, changed to Terefa by the Talmudic rabbis was more about our connection to the divine. As such that connection might change and the rules about that connection might change. Islam and Judaism both don’t eat pork, and require a very specific method of slaughter for permitted animals. Yet they differ on the details of the procedure. Kosher requires the process be blessed for an entire day’s work, before the Shochet starts his day of cutting. On the other hand, Halal requires each animal to have a blessing while facing Mecca.

But even among Jews there are debates and even conflicts about what is the proper procedure. In late 18th century one movement took a lot of fire from traditional jews due to its very stringent the slaughter procedures and inspections for meat. Usually thought to be a reforming movement in Eastern Europe, The Hasidic movement was more strict about kosher meat than other movements of the time. There is evidence that the Baal Shem Tov himself was a Shochet at one part of his life, and we do have his request for a responsa he wrote in the name of the village council. He requested a ruling on the issue if one type of lesion is considered kosher, which the local rabbi had permitted. He demanded the use of only extremely sharp knives, which brought the movement a lot of flack from traditional Jews.

Even in Talmudic times, there were debates about what was and wasn’t kosher. One of the most interesting is the ruling of R. Jose of the Galilee, who believed the prohibition of dairy and poultry was absurd, since the Torah states “in its mother’s milk” and fowl produces no milk. People in the Galilee who were taught by one of the students of R. Jose would therefore mix milk and poultry. As one should follow the custom of the locality it was permitted. [Shabbat 130a]

Modernity had led us into even more confusion and conflict when comes to Kosher. Since the late 18^th century, not only the Hasidim, but many other observant Jews have taken to intense stringencies, and not just for meat. Two examples include the prohibition of broccoli and raspberries, since it is very difficult to remove tiny insects from them. Similarly, some of the very observant in New York City do not use their tap water, since there is microscopic shellfish called copepods in the reservoir feeding the city which gets into the water supply.

This is not only true of orthodoxy. Some in the liberal side of Judaism are also finicky as to the sources of their food, which they have termed Eco-kosher. For some, that means organic. For others, that might mean the food was produced in places with good labor practices, and for others under environmentally friendly conditions. On some occasions, one can have all three of these, In others those three criteria might contradict each other.

What we are left with is confusion. From the non observant Jew who would drop dead before having a glass of milk with his cheeseburger to the strictly observant who would not even walk into a house that does not follow exactly the same rules they do, Kosher observance has hit a point where it has become a completely personal practice. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. My version of kosher prohibits red meat, allows chicken, and following R. Jose of the Galilee I do allow myself dairy with poultry. I don’t eat any shellfish or fish without scales, only the permitted kosher seafood. I’m not very Eco-kosher. I for one really don’t care where my food is coming from; I’m too cynical and too much a food industry insider to believe anyone’s claim.

Today it is not whether you keep kosher but how you keep kosher. There too many ways to keep kosher. But with Passover approaching, the flip side of that coin is also approaching. While the level of observance of removing and banning Hametz from the house will again be a personal observance, the Passover Seder often is far from a small private event. A lot of people from many different observance levels, and sometimes even differing religions come to the Seder table. The question which has bothered me for quite a time is how does one address the needs of all of them. Since I don’t eat red meat, I have on occasions gone to Orthodox homes, and ate very little, since they were serving meat that meal. On the other hand, my fear of Tuberculosis, E. Coli, Salmonella and a variety of other diseases might keep me from eating at some eco-kosher homes that only drink raw milk.

While I’ve been a Heath inspector for quite a white for the last few months I’ve been more involved with quality control in stuff other than food. And that has gotten me thinking about one of the big issues in quality control: tolerances. Put another way, how stringent or how lenient does one have to be in order to have a successful product? One of the very reputable books I read startled me with a bit of wisdom I hadn’t thought of before: if you have too many defects, one thing to do is broaden your tolerances that a lot of what you are claiming as defects become acceptable product. That sounded rather alarming and a bit seedy at first glance. It definitely went against my Jewish sensibilities of putting fences around Torah, putting as many preventative measures a possible in place to prevent failure. There was more to this story. Much of industry tolerances were set as arbitrary numbers. There was no real reason why those tolerances existed. The product worked fine even at the broader tolerances. The problem is no one knows exactly when the product really did stop working with statistically valid data. Not knowing that they throw away a lot of good product for no reason.

Thinking about that and the stringencies many people put on the rules of Kosher, I’ve done some wondering. Instead of thinking about our personal tolerances, maybe we should think about what tolerances make for valid observance as part of a group, and what is an arbitrary restriction? Maybe another way to frame the question of how to keep kosher as a group is how does the group as a whole experience kosher? What makes this community find sacred in the experience of eating? The rabbis transferred sacrifices to the dining room table. Nowhere is this as apparent as Passover. The question that really needs to be answered before the kosher question is said very early in the Passover Seder – What makes this night different than any other night? What makes our eating into a sacred connection?

I have no real answer here, just a belief as a guy who keeps kosher to some extent. Liberals and conservatives both make my observance frustrating, and I lose the holiness in that frustration. What makes dining room table less sacred is amount of fussing and fighting among people over this. How can we stop the bickering between people over what to eat?

So what does everyone else think?

Parshat Shimini 5767: Of Cows and Love Letters

Leviticus 9:1 - 11:47

This week, we have three major parts of our portion; we continue the sacrifices started in last week’s portion. It is the eighth day of sacrifices, and everything goes so well God performs a wonder and fire from the Lord devours the sacrifices. But things then turn tragic. Two of Aaron's sons offer alien fire and are consumed by the fire of the Lord themselves. The rest of Leviticus 10 then gives the aftermath of this tragedy and a prohibition against priests making sacrifices while intoxicated. We end with the laws of prohibited and permitted animals for eating, the basis of the kosher laws. Those start in chapter 11 with

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, 2. Speak to the people of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which you shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.

While much of what we’ve read from the book of Leviticus has been mitzvot that has been rather impractical in post temple times, in the next few chapters of Leviticus many mitzvot will deal with public health. This all starts with the backbone of the kosher dietary rules in Leviticus 11.

Yet this is not the first time we have heard of the rules of kashrut. Two of its most significant rules were given earlier:

It shall be an everlasting statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that you eat neither fat nor blood.[Lev 4:17]

The first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.[ Ex 23 19]

As a public health and food safety professional I can appreciate those like Maimonides who see health issues in kashrut. But in my religious life I see things very differently. The way I deal with kosher as a Jew has a lot less to do with health and a lot more with the mitzvot. When we look at the mitzvot we can categorize them in many different ways, but one of the easiest is of course as the negative (i.e. don’t) and positive (do) mitzvot. Of course, we have both in this parsha. For example here is the positive mitzvah of eating red meat:

What ever parts the hoof, and is cloven footed, and chews the cud, among the beasts, that you will eat. [Lev 11:3]

Torah then tells us the negative mitzvot of eating red meat, with examples.

4. Nevertheless these shall you not eat of those that chew the cud, or of those that divide the hoof; the camel, because it chews the cud, but its hoof is not parted; it is unclean to you. 5. And the coney, because it chews the cud, but its hoof is not parted; it is unclean to you. 6. And the hare, because it chews the cud, but its hoof is not parted; it is unclean to you. 7. And the swine, though its hoof is parted, and is cloven footed, yet it chews not the cud; it is unclean to you. 8. Of their flesh shall you not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch; they are unclean to you.[Lev 11:1-8]

The examples in verses 4-7 are actually underlining the negative mitzvah. It makes sure we know that if only one of the conditions is true, it is still prohibited. Positive and negative mitzvot in the simplest sense tell us what is permitted and what is prohibited. Yet one might ask if this means I have to eat a steak at every meal. Not quite. There are really three states for a mitzvah instead of just positive and negative. We can split positive into two categories, permitted and obligatory. “Observe the Shabbat” is obligatory for example. Eating red meat is permitted, though only under the obligations of an animal with split hoof and chews its cud. While you have to observe the Sabbath you don’t have to eat red meat, you could eat chicken or tofu. Thus we have three categories of Mitzvot: obligatory, permitted, and prohibited. Much of Jewish law since Sinai has been trying to determine which of these categories any specific act happens to be.

We then take the mitzvot, and find the halakah, the ways we accomplish those mitzvot. And this leaves many schools of thought of how to find the halakah and whether each of the halakah are obligations, permissions or prohibitions.

The Jewish tradition has a way of finding the halakah, by deriving it from the biblical text, and from other halakot. But at its core, it isn’t the result of the mitzvah which is important but the deed, the act of doing it. As part of Jewish thinking we are searching for God, and as Heschel points out, God is in a search for us. When God asked Adam “where are you?” in the Garden of Eden, he was not asking Adam, he was asking Humanity. Like the protagonists of the Song of Songs, Jews and God are unrequited lovers searching and pining for each other. They might find each other for moment, then the moment is gone. It is like a princess who is kept hidden in a castle, except for a little crack in the castle wall. Her lover, who she can rarely see, tries to slip love notes through the crack in the wall, just saying “I love you” to let her know he is still there. But she might not be at the crack at that time so she only sees the love note on the ground in front of the hole. If he can slip enough love notes at one time the two lovers can know each other are there and peer at each other through the crack, a tiny glimpse of each other. So too we try to slip love notes to God. Those notes are the mitzvot. We do the mitzvot because they are like a list of the things that we know please our partner.

In orthodoxy, the halakah of those mitzvah are set, primarily in the codification by Joseph Caro and Moses Isserles. The rules are rigid and all must conform. Yet we all write love letters differently. Circumstance changes as do people. While it does create simplicity in following halakah, I do not agree with codification. Until the arrogance of Maimonides to codify the Talmud, there really was no codification. The rabbis declared that only in dire emergencies could a prophet declare a new mitzvah. Halakah was fluid, agreed on by a teacher and a community, which is why the Talmud wrote the minority opinion alongside the majority ones. Several places in the Talmud we are told to follow the custom of the local community, which then give the minority practice of eating chicken with milk of R. Yosi of the Gallilee, who reckoned that hens have no milk and are thus permitted [Shabbat 130a]. Yet later codification would take the majority view as immutable law, and Chicken with cheese was banned forever.

Fundamentalism often takes a stringent ossified view of the Law, while there may be a lenient fluid view of halakah as well. For me however, I think the halakah should remain fluid, but should be based on the works of the past. Our ancestors put a lot of thought effort and experience into their innovations of halakah, one I do not think should be ignored. While we may not come to the same conclusions, we must use the same methods.

As an example we can once again take the issue of eating red meat. I am not a vegetarian, nor do I have any social action or environmental agenda to my diet. I also never want one, because it would diminish what I am doing. I do not eat red meat purely as a love note to God. I did in essence prohibit it, but not from an ethical standpoint but a stringent use of the following negative mitzvah:

17. It shall be an everlasting statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that you eat neither fat nor blood.[Lev 4:17]

While the traditional Jew is slightly more lenient in their halakah, I am more stringent, prohibiting red meat on the basis I cannot remove fat and blood to the extent there would be none in the food and still keep it edible. So I simply skip red meat from my diet. It was with such a strict interpretation of the requirement for two witnesses in a capital punishment case that the rabbis pretty much minimized the death penalty to non-existence. On the other hand, I do eat poultry, and in accordance to R. Yosi’s lenient halakah will allow dairy with my chicken. In most of my love notes to God, my performance of the mitzvot, I have done the same kind of finding my own halakah. Even if I derive it from classical sources, what I end up with may not be anything near conventional.

Yet in some I do not derive my own. When I am in my prayer community I follow the communal halakah. My own halakah and traditions can be strongly unconventional. When praying alone, I pick the tunes and the liturgy. When praying together I use the communal liturgy and the communal halakah. There is stability and continuity to the communal setting, a very stable foundation for the rest of my practice, which may disagree in fundamental ways with the communal. The foundation may be used by more than me, and to build other personal halakot, yet tying all of us down to a place where it remains authentically Jewish.

I often wish that foundation, that religious community was also more of the meeting and study place to exchange ideas about halakah, but I’ve yet to find such a place. Some may have the knowledge but ossify the halakah, some are fluid with the halakah, but are either ignorant or reject the knowledge. I’ve never found somewhere with both.

I do not fully know what God intended with the mitzvot, how we really got them or even if they should all be followed. All I can do is follow as many as I can for no other reason than following a single mitzvah I try (but don’t always succeed) in reciting every morning: V’ahavta et Hashem b’kol l’vavcha…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might. I do this because I love God and desire to be close to God, and know that a paradoxically transcendent but lonely God feels the same for me. The more Mitzvot I do means the more love notes I send. When I say the Shema, or decline a hot dog, I am really saying the same thing.

God, I love you.