kosher

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EU hypocrisy? Foie gras and factory farming continue, but kosher and halal traditions nixed

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EU hypocrisy? Foie gras and factory farming continue, but kosher and halal traditions nixed

My fantasy very best self adheres to a strictly vegan diet. That means consuming no foods from members of the animal kingdom.

No meat, no eggs, no fish, no dairy, and just for consistency’s sake, no honey or even vitamin supplements containing traces of animal products. My fantasy very best self believes a plant-based diet to be best for me based on ethical, environmental, and health considerations (I’ve had serious heart issues).

But as you’ve probably already deduced, my current best self falls way short of my fantasy best self. While I rarely eat red meat (a couple of times a year at most), I regularly eat poultry, fish, eggs and dairy. So I’m by no means there yet.

When I do eat animal flesh, however, I restrict myself to animals in accord with traditional Judaism’s dietary protocols. That means I won’t eat pork or shell fish and won’t mix meat with dairy at the same meal. My wife and I also restrict our consumption to organic, free-range animal products. It also means that the allowed meats I do eat must be slaughtered in accordance with kosher guidelines.

As a theologically liberal Jew, I do not do all this because I believe HaShem — God — has directly commanded me to do so. I do this as a way to sustain my Jewish identity and as a voluntary spiritual discipline.

Which is why recent news out of Europe concerning the outlawing of kosher slaughtering protocols caught my attention. Journalists should note that traditional Muslims, who adhere to a similar slaughtering protocol, are also impacted by the European Union court ruling.

Here’s the gist of the issue, courtesy of a December story from JTA, the international Jewish news service:

(JTA) – The European Union’s highest court has upheld Belgium’s bans on slaughtering animals without first stunning them, a ruling that confirms the prohibition on the production of kosher and halal meat in parts of Belgium and clears a path for additional bans across Europe.

Israel’s ambassador to Belgium called the ruling “a blow to Jewish life in Europe.”


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Making the impossible possible: Can Catholics now eat plant-based 'meat' during Lent?

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Ash Wednesday ushers the start of Lent, a six-week period where Christians prepare for Easter through prayer and reflection. For Catholics, the season also involves fasting on certain days and abstaining from meat on Fridays. The tradition, which started in the early church, is something that Catholics, and many Christians in general, have prescribed to for centuries.

Catholics avoid meat during Lent to show respect for the death of Jesus. There have been exceptions in the past, like dispensations when St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday during the Lenten season.

Fish, on the other hand, is permitted. It’s the reason why fast food chains like McDonald’s have for decades aggressively advertised the Filet-O-Fish, a sandwich invented in 1962 to cater to Catholics looking to avoid meat on Fridays and to make up for sagging burger sales. (Now Arby’s has jumped into this market.)

Thanks to products like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, the dietary restrictions that come with Lent have been turned on their head. Plant-based imitation meat alternatives look and taste like meat — but isn’t. That has unleashed a meaty debate in pews and on message boards over whether plant-based patties can or cannot be eaten during Lent and whether doing so is a sin.

“As someone who eats and craves meat, I see not eating meat as a sacrifice,” wrote one Reddit user. “Though it may be OK to eat, it is a small sacrifice compared to Jesus dying for our sins. I will try the burger, but not on a Friday or Ash Wednesday in Lent.”

Others disagree, saying if it isn’t meat then it’s fair game.

“I would think that it is against the spirit of the requirement, but it wouldn’t be a sin because it is not a violation of the church law,” wrote another user.

The debate isn’t limited to Roman Catholics. Orthodox Christians who belong to Eastern Rite churches also fast and abstain from meat (and dairy) throughout Great Lent and at other times of the year. Jews who keep kosher have also had to face the religious predicaments that these foods now present.


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Kosher sort-of shrimp and cheeseburgers: Do plant-based foods violate spirit of biblical law?

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Back in my Rocky Mountain days, in the 1980s, I heard an Orthodox rabbi give a fascinating talk with a title that went something like this: “The quest for the kosher cheeseburger.”

His thesis: If the result of this quest is a cheeseburger — mixing meat with a milk product — then it’s not kosher. If you end up with something that is kosher, then it isn’t a real cheeseburger. So what’s the point?

The Orthodox rabbi was using the “kosher cheeseburger” as a symbol of the efforts that many Jews make to blur the line between assimilating into what can, at times, be a hostile culture and following the traditions of their ancient faith. Can modern Jewish believers create a golden cheeseburger and eat it, too?

This is an essentially spiritual question, but it’s a question that takes on a whole new meaning with the explosion of attention now being given to plant-based meat substitutes (note the blitz of ads for Burger King’s new Impossible Whooper).

The Washington Post business team recently covered this trend and did a fine job of digging into these religious questions, starting with the headline: “Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.” It’s rare to see scripture in a business lede, but this one was right on point — focusing on on a symbolic food that is totally out of bounds in Jewish tradition.

You think a kosher cheeseburger is a wild idea? How about kosher shrimp?

Leviticus 11 contains a zoo’s worth of animals. The hyrax and the monitor lizard. The katydid is there, as is the gecko. And it ends: “You must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.”

Dietary restrictions are woven into religious texts, the Old Testament and the New, the Koran, the Vedas and the Upanishads. Some are mercifully practical, as in the law of necessity in Islamic jurisprudence: “That which is necessary makes the forbidden permissible.”

Now, Tyson executives are seeking certification from various agencies declaring their plant-based shrimp both kosher and halal. The team at the Post business desk identified the religion ghost in that equation and produced this solid thesis statement:


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Really old debate is back: Does the Old Testament belong in Christian Bibles?

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Really old debate is back: Does the Old Testament belong in Christian Bibles?

NORMAN’S QUESTION:

Do the Old and New Testaments belong together?

(Commenting from a stance critical toward Christians, Norman adds that ignorance of history underlies their “comfortable view that the Bible is one and that there is no problem between the Old and New Testaments.”)

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

This classic and complex theme is erupting anew thanks to a U.S. Protestant megachurch pastor cited below. Also, churches have long faced strife over the authority and interpretation of the Old Testament due to the now-disputed teaching (that was carried over into the New Testament) against homosexual relations.

In this “Religion Q & A” item (your new postings via the Website always welcome!!), Norman accurately calls attention to some history. The status of the Old Testament became a pressing issue the church needed to decide in the 2nd Century A.D. Marcion of Pontus, among others, drew a radical distinction between what he saw as the problematic Yahweh of the Old Testament versus the loving God and Father of Jesus Christ in writings that were to form the New Testament.

The church declared Marcion a heretic and consolidated for all time that the Old Testament is part of its Bible alongside the New Testament books, authoritative Scripture for Christians as well as Jews.

Norman further observes that influential 20th Century liberal Protestant thinkers in Germany such as Adolf von Harnack and Rudolf Bultmann echoed Marcion by downplaying the spiritual worth of the Old Testament. He says they “unknowingly contributed to the rise” of the so-called German Christians with their “non- and anti-Jewish” version of the faith. This movement pretty much gained control over Protestantism and accommodated the blatantly anti-Semitic Nazi rulers. Theologians like “neo-orthodox” titan Karl Barth courageously defied this unbiblical heresy in the great Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934).


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Washington Post delves deeper into whether Jews will flee France in wake of kosher market attack

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This is a rather huge story.

In a 1,300-word report, The Washington Post delves deeper into whether Jews will flee France in the wake of last month's kosher market attack:

SAINT-MANDÉ, France — For all her 30 years, Jennifer Sebag has lived in a community that embodies everything modern Europe is supposed to be.
Inclusive, integrated, peaceful and prosperous, the elegant city of Saint-Mandé — hard against Paris’s eastern fringe — has been a haven for Jews like Sebag whose parents and grandparents were driven from their native North Africa decades ago by anti-Semitism.
“I’ve always told everyone that here, we are very protected. It’s like a small village,” Sebag said.
But in an instant on the afternoon of Jan. 9, Sebag’s refuge became a target. A gunman who would later say he was acting on behalf of the Islamic State walked into her neighborhood’s kosher market and opened fire, launching a siege that would leave four hostages dead — all of them Jewish.
A month later, the Jews of Saint-Mandé are planning for a possible exodus from what had once appeared to be the promised land.

This piece provides additional insight in an ongoing story.


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Are all Jews preparing for Thanksgivukkah the same way?

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Many years ago, I worked at a newspaper — let’s leave the name out of this discussion — that ran a Hanukkah feature, with lots of art, about an exhibit of menorahs. The interesting wrinkle was that some of these menorahs were quite modern or even postmodern in design, including several that specifically violated ancient Jewish laws about how to make, and how not to make, menorahs.


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