Two Minute Torah Podcast

Shemini 5768 by Rabbi Morris Allen

Hello, this is Rabbi Morris Allen from Beth Jacob Congregation of Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Welcome to KOACH's Two Minute Torah, a project of the college department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

This week, the Torah portion is Shemini. In Chapter 11 of the Torah portion we are introduced to those animals which are fit for Jewish consumption and those animals which are not. The laws of kashrut are typically understood in a classic ritual way; things either meet the ritual requirements for being eaten or they do not. It is true of fish; it is true of animals. There are fish that are appropriate for us to consume and there are fish that are not; there are animals that are appropriate for us to eat and animals that are not. For most of us, the observance of kashrut has for years been understood only in ritual terms and yet we understand as Jews that it is not enough to see Judaism as only being mitzvot bein adam l’makom, as those commandments between God and a human being, but also as mitzvot bein adam l’havero, as commandments between one person and another.

Indeed Abraham Joshua Heschel years ago remarked that to be a fully observant Jew one needed to be as concerned about ritual observance as one would be about ethical behavior. In fact he wrote that he is “grateful to God that in the official establishments and hotels kashrut is observed but what hurts is the question why is it only required for butcher shops to be under religious supervision? Why not insist that banks, factories and those who deal in real estate require hekhshers and be operated according to religious laws? When a drop of blood is found in an egg, we abhor the idea of eating the egg, but often there is more than one drop of blood in a dollar or a lira and we fail to remind people constantly of the teachings of our tradition.’

Hekhsher Tzedek understood that demand and has begun to transform the way in which we understand and observe kashrut. The corpus of Jewish law concerning our food and the volumes of Jewish laws concerning Jewish dignity cannot continue to live in isolation one from the other. In the Shulchan Aruch, there are laws concerning employment and economic life. These are contained in volumes called Choshen Mishpat. Then there are laws which detail how kashrut is to be understood, how shechita is to be done, what constitutes proper salting, for example. These laws are found in Yoreh De’ah. For too long these two volumes have existed as silos, side by side, but not at all interconnected.

What Hekhsher Tzedek is doing is demonstrating that Choshen Mishpat and Yoreh De’ah are equally important for us to consider when we sit down to our tables. What Hekhsher Tzedek will allow us to understand is that when we eat the food that we are obligated to eat, we can be assured that not only has it been produced in a way that is ritually kosher, but in a way that is ethically kosher, and as a result, we have brought a sense of holiness into this world.

Shalom.