Torah Portion CREATE & PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY MEMORIES The Laws Of Kashrut And The Basis Of Faith and meat, based on the biblical mandate to "not boil a kid in its mother's milk." Laws delineating the proper methods for slaughtering animals also prohibit hunting for food. Animals that have been hunted and killed are by definition no longer kosher. The Torah contains a strict his week's Torah portion prohibition against consuming the contains many of the laws blood of any animal, thus requiring that underlie our system special preparations to drain and salt of kashrut, the standards meat until all traces of blood are of permissible and impermissible removed. foods. These prohibitions seem to The system outlines reflect an abhorrence of which foods are kasher (fit, shedding blood as an over- proper) and which are tere- arching moral principle. fah or treif (originally Some scholars, however, denoting meat that is have suggested that such impermissible because the laws hearken back to a animal was killed by a time when ancient pagan predator and not properly traditions were rejected by slaughtered; now often used the early Israelites. to denote any food that is Regardless of its origin not permitted). or purpose, the kosher RABBI MARLA We often hear explana- dietary system has been a J. FELDMAN tions of these dietary laws mainstay of Jewish tradi- Special to the as being related to health tion, surviving even the Jewish News reasons or the humanitarian harshest of persecutions. treatment of animals. As As far back as the early as the first century, Philo of Maccabean revolt against the Alexandria attempted to explain the Hellenists, Jews chose martyrdom laws of kashrut as a moral code, rather than violate the laws of designed to teach us control over kashrut. During the Roman persecu- our appetites 'and indulgences and to tions, the Crusades, the Inquisition encourage kindness. Hundreds of and other periods of oppression, our years later, Maimonides (the rabbi ancestors preserved this tradition. also known as Rambam) echoed this From the poorest shtetl in the Pale view, declaring that the dietary laws of Settlement to formal stare dinners not only teach self-control, but also at the White House, Jews have promote better health. Maimonides maintained this practice. applied his medical knowledge to Even non-traditional Jews who do determine that prohibited food was not observe Halacha have found also unhealthy. meaning in some, if not all, of the The texts themselves, however, do dietary laws. These laws seem to not bear out these explanations. have a special claim on the Jewish There is no single explanation that psyche that is more powerful than can be applied to all the dietary laws our desire to "fit in" to secular soci- to produce a pattern of what is and ety. is not permitted. Prohibited foods Perhaps the reason kashrut holds include animals that do not have split hooves or chew their cud, meat-eating birds, winged insects, fish that do not have both fins and scales and certain creeping critters, Are there reasons to keep kosher, such as mice and lizards:Later tal- mudic restrictions further clarified even for those who don't strictly follow Halacha? If what we eat the laws of kashrut by outlining the proper methods for slaughtering and makes us holy, does our daily diet fulfill the underlying princi- preparing meat and separating milk ple of the dietary command- ments? Is there food that should Rabbi Marla Feldman is the assistant be declared treif even if it's not director of the Jewish Community listed in the biblical or talmudic Council of Metropolitan Detroit and prohibitions? executive director of the Michigan Shabbat Sh emini: Leviticus 9. .1-11:47; Exodus 12: 1-20; Ezekiel 45: 16-46.18. ir JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER 976escs ", D. Dan & Betty Kahn Building 6600 W. Maple Road, West Bloomfield /\ - on the BUIS - Eldezlihise,,i O k ces ‘ Marcia & Eugene Applebaum ./conn,„. 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