Revitalizing Judaism and applying Jewish values to help heal our imperiled planet
by Richard H. Schwartz with Rabbi Yonassan Gershom and Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
Barbara Kay is a public affairs columnist for The National Post, of Toronto, Canada.
Reviewed by Barbara Kay
Richard Schwartz, principal author of Who Stole My Religion?, is a rather odd polemical duck. He has two great passions in life: Judaism and environmentalism, which for him finds its noblest personal expression in vegetarianism.
Judaically, Schwartz is what is known as a “ba’al t’shuvah,” a lapsed or secular Jew who “returns” to the faith of his fathers, taking on traditional practices, as Schwartz did in adulthood. But since observant Jews tend generally to be as happily carnivore at table as they are fervent at prayer, Schwartz’s zealous dedication to a plant-based diet rather isolates him in his institutionally Jewish milieu. Adding to his loneliness, he is an island of political progressivism surrounded by a sea of conservatism.
Political partisanship
Who Stole My Religion? is a treatise on Judaism as it relates – or as Schwartz believes it should relate – to climate change, anti-Semitism, the legacy of the Holocaust, Israel vis à vis her neighbours, animal rights, and the problem (in Schwartz’s eyes) of traditional Jews finding a political home in the Republican Party.
It’s unfortunate that Schwartz introduces political partisanship very early on as a criterion for who “owns” Judaism (not a word Schwartz uses, but certainly implied by the book’s title). For his insistence in the opening pages of this book that only the Democratic Party in America accords with Jewish values is bound to turn away many potential readers.
I do not share Schwartz’s political views, and nor do many other Jews far smarter and more Jewishly knowledgable than I, but we do not consider ourselves compromised as Jews on that account by any means (after all, how is gay marriage, abortion on demand, sexual libertinism, single motherhood and euthanasia, all Democratic preoccupations, consistent with Judaism?). Unless preaching only to the choir of Jewish progressives was Schwartz’s goal, gratuitously alienating a fairly populous constituency of educated and thoughtful Jews at the outset was perhaps not the wisest of writerly strategies.
Richard Schwartz
Judaism & vegetarianism
But that is a quarrel for another day. My remit here, and the issue that drew me to the book, is to look specifically at Schwartz’s understanding of Judaism’s relationship to vegetarianism.
I should here note that although himself a vegan, Schwartz’s history of activism, including high-profile involvement in societies such as Jewish Vegetarians of North America and the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians, indicates comfort at the political level with the promotion of mere vegetarianism for the general population. I hope I am not misrepresenting him in saying that the main thrust of his arguments presses the ethical imperative of a “plant-based” but not necessarily plant-only diet, with abdication from animal flesh the principal objective.
Tzimmis (“for our family” in Yiddish), a traditional Rosh Hashanah dish made from apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, raisins, honey, and cinnamon.
The “K” is a kosher symbol.
Kashrut
Judaism is an ancient religion, and throughout its 3,000 years-plus of history a great deal of ink has been spilled on the intricacies of kashrut, but until the 20th century, flesh-eating as an ethical issue, though perhaps discussed at the margins of Jewish intellectual life after the onset of the Haskalah – the Jewish Enlightenment of the early 19th century, when culturally Jewish secularism became a life choice option – was never up for serious debate amongst mainstream Jewish authorities. I was therefore quite interested to see if Schwartz could persuade me that there was something intrinsically or distinctively Jewish about eschewing animal flesh.
I come to the issue with both experience in observing, and a great deal of prior rumination on, the rules governing kashrut. As a Jew who grew up in a kosher home, and who was therefore continuously aware of what was and what was not permitted to be eaten, I have often brooded over the apparently mysterious laws of kashrut (which means “fit” or “proper”), whose “meaning” nobody has ever been able to explain. Which doesn’t mean nobody has tried. Many have; I googled “the meaning of kashrut” and got 476,000 hits.
Trichinosis?
In my youth I had accepted the commonly believed notion that since the parasitic disease of trichinosis could be transferred to humans who ate pork, kashrut was founded in hygienic principles. Once embarked on actual inquiry, though, I rejected that theory as completely untenable, since it did not account for the majority of forbidden animals that posed no particular danger to health. Eventually I narrowed the field of plausibility down to two motifs I found intellectually attractive.
One is the fact that animals that are, so to speak, ambiguous – neither of one domain or the other – are forbidden, such as frogs that live both in water and on land, and reptiles that live on land, but move like fish. This suggests to me that one intention of kashrut is to reinforce the ambiguity-free binary nature of life the Jewish God seems to approve: male/female; permitted/forbidden; right/wrong. (Transgenderism, the ultimate ambiguity, was not dealt with in the Torah, but given homosexuality’s status as an “abomination,” according to the Torah, it is fair to assume that transgenderism would have been assigned an equally failing moral grade.)
While the ancient Hebrews permitted slavery, it was under conditions much more restricted than they had themselves experienced as slaves in Egypt.
Étapism
The other is the theme of what the French call étapism – incrementalism: a program that encourages a forward movement through stages to avoid the shock of great change all at once to primitive minds. The object would be to finally arrive at the stage of truly enlightened behavior God had in mind.
For example, although slaves were allowed to the ancient Hebrews in the Torah, it became a superannuated practice in the Hebrew tradition quite quickly, even though it was practiced by neighbouring cultures. It is possible that because the Torah rules of ownership and treatment of slaves were, unlike in other tribes, so demanding, involving great owner responsibility and many entitlements owed slaves, it made more sense to end the practice, moving on to the simplicity of hiring labor. Was the reason for the complex network of rules around slavery to nudge Jews toward dropping it of their own free will? And similarly with kashrut: are the commandments so constraining because the system was designed to fail upwards, so to speak?
Co-author Yonassan Gershom.
Not only compatible but easier
After all, vegetarianism is not only compatible with Judaism, it makes an observant Jew’s life infinitely easier and cheaper: reducing his cooking utensils, tableware and cutlery by 50%, his food costs probably by 75% (kosher meat is unconscionably costly due to monopoly sourcing). Moreover, it creates a radically more ecumenical social environment, in that one may dine at the homes of vegetarian friends and vegetarian restaurants without contravening any dietary laws whatsoever. (This last point contains its own built-in controversy, in that some Jewish thinkers believe one of the reasons – perhaps the main reason – for kashrut is to ensure that Jews socialize apart from gentiles.)
Shmuly Yanklowitz
Consider too: Apart from fish with fins and scales, the meat animals we Jews are permitted to eat – cows, sheep, goats, deer, bison – are themselves vegetarian (and chew the cud, a strict criterion). We are allowed to eat vegetarian birds like chicken, ducks, geese and turkey, but not birds of prey. To me this otherwise inexplicable system holds the tantalizing possibility that kashrut was conceived as a kind of compromise for people who would find vegetarianism too difficult to embrace in their early days as a people, but would work to sensitize them in preparation for the idea of vegetarianism as a rational next step. Kashrut laws would therefore serve to instill habits of discipline and self-restraint for an evolutionary higher purpose, as a way station on the path to enlightenment, in an era – now – when we were ready to accept a truly enlightened relationship with animals.
Schwartz’s case
These, if I were debating the case for vegetarianism as a Jewish value, would be the arguments I would use. So I was curious to see the case Schwartz would make.
Schwartz begins his chapter on vegetarianism by noting that the Torah commands man to show compassion to animals, as summarized in the commandment not to cause pain to “ba’alei chayim,” living creatures. Animals have general rights, even though man was granted “dominion” over them. God’s Covenant was established with man but also “with every living creature that is with you, the fowl, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you” (Genesis 9:9-10).
Compassion for animals is definitely a Jewish value
And animals also have particular rights. An ox may not be muzzled when the grain is being threshed, because it would be inhumane to prevent it from eating what it can see and smell (Deuteronomy 25:4). A farmer may not yoke an ox and a donkey together, as they are of unequal size and strength, causing an unfair burden to both animals (Deuteronomy 22:10). Animals are also commanded to rest on the Sabbath, a rule considered so important it was included in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:10).
(Schwartz surprisingly does not mention Deuteronomy 14:21, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” interpreted as an injunction against killing a goat’s offspring in the mother’s presence out of compassion for her feelings, and by the way the sole basis for the Talmud’s complex exegesis in creating a strict separation between dairy and meat – hence the double sets of kitchen utensils and dishes, not to mention two extra sets for Passover.)
So far, so good. We are in accord that compassion for animals is definitely a Jewish value.
Six areas of conflict
Schwartz then gets to the nub of his argument, specifying six areas in which “animal-based diets conflict with Jewish values”: Jews are commanded to preserve their health and their lives (Deuteronomy 4:9), but animal-based diets are linked to heart, cancer and other diseases; Animals are raised in factory farms in cramped quarters and denied fresh air, exercise and pleasure in life – i.e. they suffer abuse – before being slaughtered; Livestock cultivation contributes to climate change and many forms of environmental damage; Judaism teaches us not to be wasteful, but animal production is built on a wasteful pyramid of resources – water, land, energy – as compared to plant production; Judaism demands that we feed the hungry, but since most grain is allocated to the production of meat, milk and eggs, millions of people over the world are starving (i.e. by producing more grain as food, we could feed more of the world’s poor); While Judaism exhorts us to seek peace, affordable land shortages due to animal production exacerbates tensions between the haves and have-nots, producing “social unrest, violence and war.”
Humpty Dumpty, Ronald McDonald, & United Poultry Concerns battery cage display.
Not compelling
I am sorry to say that I do not find any of these arguments compelling.
Three meals a day at McDonald’s will certainly produce deleterious results, to be sure, just as a vegetarian diet of chocolate bars and Coca-Cola would, but a moderate, healthy diet heavy on fruits and vegetables but incorporating fish, organic chicken and lean beef, coupled with exercise, is considered an optimal lifestyle by most nutritional experts. It is quite a stretch to call such a diet un-Jewish.
Factory farms are an abomination by any feeling person’s standards, be he Jewish, Christian or atheist. Vegetarianism is one response; radical regulations based in humane measures of animal welfare are another. Many meat-eaters I know buy their meat direct from local humane-production farms, and their eggs and chickens from free-range farms. There is nothing un-Jewish about eating animals raised humanely.
(See review Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.)
Climate change
Climate change! This is a non-starter. Schwartz is cherrypicking here. If eating meat is un-Jewish because cows produce climate-changing gases, then it is also un-Jewish to travel by any conveyance producing exhaust fumes. Animals may contribute to climate change, but if they can be shown to be a critical factor in planet warming, then surely it is the government’s job to regulate their numbers. In a global population of seven billion people, a few million flesh-eating Jews can hardly be expected to feel it is their religious duty to become vegetarian, since all civic-minded people share a common concern for the planet – or should. Moreover, since observant Jews don’t eat pigs, of which there are nearly as many as cows, they are already making a “contribution” to a reduction in gases.
(See review Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown.)
As for waste of resources and land shortages, well, North America has a lot of land, enough to feed its own population with as much meat and plant food as they need. If the earth warms even one degree, great swathes of land in Canada – bread basket to the world – and Russia will open up for cultivation (albeit that cultivation in other regions may become more difficult if the water-saving practices already used in Israel and some other arid climates are not soon adopted).
This is a weak hook upon which to change a lifestyle for specifically Jewish reasons.
![(See review Food Security & Farm Animal Welfare by Sofia Parente [WSPA] and Heleen van de Weerd [CIWF].)](https://i0.wp.com/www.animals24-7.org/wp-content/uploads/imgres-47.jpg?resize=188%2C268)
(See review Food Security & Farm Animal Welfare by Sofia Parente [WSPA] and Heleen van de Weerd [CIWF].)
Hunger
Schwartz also treats hunger as a simple matter of scarcity in poor countries, when it is actually a more complex combination of difficult growing conditions, bad governance, political corruption and an uneducated polity mired in cultural stasis. Schwartz only has to look at tiny Israel, a semi-arid nation, and its productivity, enough to feed its seven million citizens all the meat and plant foods they want and with plenty to sell abroad, as compared to many of its Arab and African nations burdened with similar geographic challenges, to see the truth of this observation. Certainly modern Zionists had the advantage of being a highly educated group, and Israelis took to technology like ducks to water, which explains their triumph over adverse conditions. But they have shown that it can be done where there is a will to national betterment.
(See review Factory farming & food security in China, Brazil, & Ethiopia.)
In any case, while it is true that wealthy countries could feed the world’s poor, is such extreme socialism a Jewish value, or even the wise thing to do? The Jewish value in terms of feeding the poor was expressed by our great teacher Maimonides: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Maimonides’ exhortation is precisely Israel’s policy with regard to its poorer neighbors. I was fortunate to be present at one of Ben Gurion University’s biennial international conferences on Drylands, Deserts and Desertification, and it was thrilling to see 500 delegates from 60 arid and semi-arid countries gathered to learn “to fish,” by exposure to the latest advances in making their deserts bloom, with teams of Israeli experts to accompany them home for training.
See Keeping the Horn of Africa impaled on dilemma. Above: Zebu. Domesticated in South Asia circa 4000 BCE, zebus reached the Horn of Africa circa 1000 C.E.
(Beth Clifton photo.)
War
Finally, wars are fought for many reasons, but I cannot come up with one example of a major war in progress or in the past waged over land shortages due to animal production. Wars are often fought because one tribe or nation is desirous of more land than they have and tribal disputes over water rights have occurred since time immemorial and continue to occur today, but a cursory review of geopolitical hostilities since animal production became industrialized – and that is Schwartz’s main gripe – does not produce any examples for me of that particular cause.
An example or two, or supportive statistics on this and Schwartz’s other opinions, would have been helpful. Their absence bolsters my general impression that this book is more an amateur polemicist’s emotional cri du coeur than an intellectually serious argument. I conclude that Schwartz’s real religion is not Judaism, but progressivism. Into progressivism’s ideological round holes, Schwartz pounds (the right word; he is tiresomely repetitive; this book cries out for a competent editor) square Jewish pegs in order to fold his life choices into a seamlessly unitary philosophy for his own personal psychological comfort.
Merritt Clifton & Alex Hershaft.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Afterword, by Merritt Clifton:
Among vegetarians and vegan intellectuals, especially non-Jews, there is often a tendency to conflate the enormous influence of Jewish thinkers and activists within the cause with the mainstream trends within Judaism.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the evolution of animal advocacy over the past two centuries, let alone the growth of vegetarian and vegan advocacy, without the contributions of Jewish leaders.
The machine tool inventor Lewis Gompertz, for instance, bailed the London SPCA out of bankruptcy before it won the royal charter that made it the Royal SPCA in 1840, but was later drummed out of the organization for the purported dual offenses of being Jewish and preaching against eating animal flesh.
Others of note include Peter Singer, whose 1975 book Animal Liberation is widely credited with inspiring the modern-day animal rights movement; the Holocaust survivors Henry Spira and Alex Hershaft, whose organizations Animal Rights International and Farm Animal Rights Movement showed the way for generations of other activists; and of course Richard Schwartz, whose book Who Stole My Religion? is reviewed above by Barbara Kay.
Early foundations
Influential early foundations for vegetarian and vegan philosophy may be traced all the way back to the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Noah, and to the prophet Isaiah (some say also Ezekiel.) Keith Akers in The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living & Nonviolence In Early Christianity makes a strong case that Jesus’ life and mission evolved out of a movement against animal sacrifice which had already gathered significant momentum in the several generations before Jesus’ time.
Though kosher slaughter to this day is performed under rabbinical supervision, and Kapporos (“chicken-swinging”) is still practiced by a very few people at the extreme margins of Hassidic Judaism (in itself a minority branch of the faith, including about 3% of all practicing Jews), the movement against animal sacrifice continued to gain influence for several more generations, leading to the abandonment of temple sacrifice by mainstream Judaism after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple circa 70 C.E.
Henry Spira (United Poultry Concerns photo)
Political activism toward rebuilding the Jerusalem temple and resuming animal sacrifice has gained minimal influence since the formation of modern Israel in 1948, and appears to have come at least as much from messianic Christian sects as from factions within Judaism.
Amid all this, however, it is useful to remember that while the issues pertaining to the ethics of animal slaughter and consumption are vitally important to most of us to whom they matter at all, the mainstream of Judaism, like the mainstream of Christianity and the mainstream of every other religion which does not include specific vegetarian teachings, has bumbled on along through the centuries without thinking much about animal slaughter and consumption, outside of economic and practical contexts, and of course the context of trying to avoid thinking about anything unpleasant.
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Interesting and complex thoughts herein. No matter what faith we embrace — or don’t — any who believe that the Supreme Being created all living beings must certainly also be able to accept that that Being also has regard for those living beings. That’s my belief, anyway. And for others, compassion and kindness for one’s own self should be extendable to others, because, after all, the concept of not doing to others what one would not have done to oneself is logical and sensible.
Let’s just simplify the issue. If we can live happy and healthy w/ out harming other living beings …why wouldn’t we.~?
Excellent point and I doubt anyone can refute it, especially since there are so many nutritious, delicious vegan foods today.
Barbara Kay’s belief that rising temperatures in Russia will result in a net increase in food production forgets the immense drought-stroked fires that decimated wheat fields and forests alike. Along with other factors, the resulting global shortage of cereal grains pushed prices higher—and beyond the reach of many people in poverty. Food riots ensued.
Barbara Kay’s dismissive retort about the contribution of animal agriculture towards global warming is simply unfathomable. Comparing air travel (an important contributor to GHGs – 3% if memory serves) to that spewed from farms, and using that to diminish the latter’s importance is illogical. It is the poor who suffer most when their climate-stressed crops fail.
Her implication that a rigorous system of animal welfare would take care of the abuse and violence inherent in the killing of sentient beings shows a lack of understanding of the issues.
Will Anderson, who is author of This is Hope (see review), conflates the short-term effects of drought-stoked fire, also seen recently in the northern parts of the Canadian prairie provinces, with the long-term effects of a longer growing season. To be remembered is that the largest conflagrations in North American recorded history, including the Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin prairie fires of 1871 and 1881, imminently preceded the transition of the northern Midwest from forest to grain belt.
Anderson also mischaracterizes Barbara Kay’s arguments pertaining to global warming and “the abuse and violence inherent in the killing of sentient beings.” Scarcely “dismissive” of either issue, Kay simply points out that it is a stretch for Richard Schwartz to argue that the practice of Judaism, which evolved around animal husbandry and sacrifice in a far hotter climate than most of North America has experienced since human settlement, requires adopting any particular approach to addressing problems which had barely begun to be recognized by Jewish philosophy and scholarship before our own time.
There are many other negative effects of climate change on food production. Rising oceans will destroy cropland. Higher temperatures mean less food productivity. Melting glaciers will soon lead to far less water for irrigation. And there are several studies that show the major impact that animal-based diets have on climate change.
Re your second point, Merritt, the key point, I believe, is that Jews today have a choice in diets, so I argue that Jews should choose the diet most consistent with Jewish teachings on preserving human health, treating animals with compassion, protecting the environment, helping hungry people, and pursuing peace.
Long before rising oceans flood or salinate significant amounts of cropland, higher tides will increase evaporation, resulting in more rainfall in some regions, replenishing lakes, streams, rivers, and perhaps even rebuilding glaciers at higher elevations. That global warming will result in more aridity is a widespread presumption, but belied by the reality that some of the hottest parts of the world are tropical rainforest. (The very term “greenhouse effect” implies hothouse-like humidity beneath thick cloud cover.) Deforestation definitely does contribute mightily to aridity, and animal agriculture tends to follow logging, but the logging tends to be done for the logs; animal agriculture follows as often a quicker way to make economic use of the land than waiting for another crop of trees. Animal agriculture, in turn, can contribute to aridity if livestock are heavily grazed on newly cleared land. Conversely, if the cleared land is put into grains and dense fodder crops, it may produce as much biomass as forest. How the land is cultivated is much more important in terms of climatic effect than whether it is cultivated.
Bottom lines I think are that a 2006 UN FAO report indicated that the livestock sector emits more greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) than all means of transportation worldwide combined and a 2009 WorldWatch magazine report by 2 environmentalists associated with the World Bank concluded that the livestock sector emits at least 51% of all human-induced greenhouse gases. With many climate experts warning about the very negative potential effects of climate change, shouldn’t animal-based diets and agriculture be discouraged?
Of course animal-based diets and agriculture should be discouraged; as a lifelong second-generation vegetarian and journalist on animal & environmental news beats for more than 40 years, I have been making those points in my daily life and work for most of six decades. But this, and the data recited above, has nothing to do with the question of whether Judaism requires adopting environmentalist beliefs and practices.
I understand the main debate is about whether or not Judaism is compelled by its history and beliefs to enshrine veganism as a logical conclusion drawn from Judaism’s foundational beliefs. But I think the other aspect Schwartz is advocating is how important veganism is as a logical extension of the deepest held tenets of Abrahamic religions everywhere. That it is a logical extension to many of us should not be a surprise to conservative sectors of the Jewish and other faiths. When religious people deny that veganism is an expression of justice, compassion, and respect towards a sacred place named Earth, perhaps this is the “stealing” of faith that Schwartz laments.
Obviously, the most conservative of Jewish faith believers care about hungry and dying poor people as a reflection of their religious tenets. Given climate-induced droughts are increasing in severity and animal agriculture is driving so much of it, how can one ignore the moral implications of making food choices that do so much harm?
My comment pertains only to the reviewer’s invocation of “humane” production and consumption of animals as an alternative to the so-called industrial model. Let us please quit fooling ourselves about “humane” animal farming. Let us please refuse to debase the word “humane” by invoking it to describe a way of treating chickens, cows, and other creatures that bears no actual relation to what the term humane is meant to describe. I personally (and professionally) am sick and tired of our horrible mistreatment of animals and our delight in shedding their blood. In Genesis, God mandated an animal-free diet for human beings. This mandate is what we should strive to follow. Imagine a world in which no one any longer dares to assert the falsehood that putting a knife blade into the throat of a chicken is “humane.” If we really think so, then let us lobby to be “euthanized” when our time on earth is up by having our throat slit with a cold steel blade. Let us plead to be hung ignominiously upside down as our blood drains out. Why is it that nobody ever does beg to die this way?
The book to follow up or precede Dr. Schwartz’s work is http://www.powerfulbook.com, Charles Patterson’s work called Eternal Treblinka, Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, which examines the behaviors required during the age of domesticating non-human beings as human property, behaviors that unleashed in the human character, still embedded to this day, our posture and hubris as carnist predatory top of the food chain mammals. This led to the caste system and the Pandora’s Box of behaviors that went from enslaving non-humans to doing the same to other humans.
For me, it is as simple as a child’s kinship with nature and animals before the desensitization process begins as adults nurture the predatory side that negates and encapsulates the more humane, tender, often chided as weak( but in NO way weak but courageous and strong)characteristics humans possess. I loved animals but ate them because in my Jewish home, it’s just what we did. At 47, I read Gail Eisnitz book, Slaughterhouse, and that changed my life to a vegan path and allowed the puzzle of violence, abuse, predatory acts against humans, to become reasoned.
I appreciate this review being posted, but I believe the reviewer fails to consider many important points related to my book:
1. Most importantly she fails to address my claim that Judaism is a radical religion, in the best sense of radical, with teachings that can help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path.
2. In critiquing my discussion of vegetarianism, she fails to note that I go into much more detail about vegetarianism and veganism in my other book, “Judaism and Vegetarianism.”
3. She seems unaware of how serious climate threats are and fails to address the major role of animal-based diets in the warming of the planet.
4. Whie she admits that compassion toward animals is a Jewish value, she fails to consider that the horrible mistretament of animals on factory farms is by itself an important reasons for Jews to be vegetarians, and even more so vegans.
5. She dismisses what rabbis and other Jewish scholars can’t deny: Vegan diets are most consistent with Jewish teachings on preserving human health, treating animals with compassion, protecting the environment, conserving natural resources, helping hungry people, and pursuing peace.
I have many more criticisms but will leave it at these for now.
Merritt, you would do a great public service by publishing a dialogue/debate between me and Barbara Kay on, “Should Jews be Vegans?” I hereby respectively challenge her to such a dialogue/debate. Thanks.
Barbara Kay, as her review itself makes clear, is scarcely “unaware of how serious climate threats are.” Neither does she “fail to address the major role of animal-based diets in the warming of the planet.” She points out, however, that observant Judaism does not appear to dictate any specific response to these issues. She also points out that inasmuch as Judaism has historically required humane treatment of animals, but not abstinence from eating them, it is a stretch to argue that Judaism today requires vegetarianism or veganism, laudable though these choices are for a variety of other reasons.
The tens of thousands of rabbis, many of them scholars, who supervise kosher slaughter clearly disagree that “vegan diets are most consistent with Jewish teachings.” We may take another view of the matter, but it is their work, not that of vegan philosophers, which has been most closely associated with the practice of Judaism for the past 3,000 years.
Finally, while Barbara Kay can speak most articulately for herself, I don’t believe she has any objection to anyone becoming vegan. She simply disagrees, from a very well informed perspective, that Judaism dictates what should be an individual conscientious choice.
I do not argue that Judaism requires that Jews must be vegetarians or vegans. I argue that they should be based on basic Jewish teachings. Clearly Jews have a choice as there are chief rabbis who have been or are strict vegetarians or vegans, and I am arguing that the Jewish community is generally ignoring that animal-based diets are inconsistent with basic Jewish mandates to preserve our health, treat animals with compassion, protect the environment, conserve natural resources, help hungry people, and pursue peace. The many moral and halachic (Jewish law) issues related to the production and consumption of meat and other animal foods are being ignored. I hope Ms. Kay’s review helps put the question, “should Jews be vegetarians, or even vegans, on the Jewish agenda. This is especially important at a time when animal-based diets are contributing so significantly to climate change and other environmental threats and to an epidemic of killer diseases.
What could be more cruel to those of us who are sickened and emotionally traumatized at the unmitigated suffering of animals than for our Jewish kin and Rabbis to continue slapping us in the face by remaining part of this perpetual holocaust?
There are many Rabbis who find animal consumption a desecration including Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, also a medical doctor who has written many books including Torah as A Guide To Enlightenment. It’s a travesty to defend religious exploitation and domination of animals as it is the root cause of most every ill human society grapples with. NO religious intent could possibly justify a practice that harms everything in its wake,
I could care less what Rabbis who oversee “kosher” slaughter think.
These Rabbis have no real spiritual connection to the breath of life in ALL that live, and therefore, their ideology seems a bit retarded. If I have a CHOICE to believe Rabbis that say eating animals is just wrong and bad for all concerned, which I KNOW it is, or Rabbis that condone killing and violence to animals, why would I choose the latter. That’s like choosing evil over good.
Each individual in his/her own spiritual pursuits may believe whatever he/she wishes, including in choosing rabbis and other spiritual counsellors; but in departing from central tenets and practices of the mainstream of a religion, one does not get to take the religion itself along for the ride, even if one attracts a substantial number of like-minded people to observe the same departures. Thus new religions form, e.g. Buddhism splitting from Hinduism in rejection of animal sacrifice. It is possible that we are today seeing the rise of a new vegetarian branch of Judaism, perhaps incorporating aspects of the eastern “vegetarian” religions. But this, even if finding some roots in traditional Jewish teachings, is a significant departure from what Judaism has been, has meant, and continues to be and mean for the mainstream of Jewish culture.
Merritt, respectfully, Jewish vegetarians and vegans are not “departing from central tenets and practices of the mainstream of [Judaism],” “[taking] the religion itself along for the ride.” It is Judaism that stresses that Jews should preserve their health, treat animals with compassion, etc, and veganism best puts these basic Jewish teachings into practice.
It is also Judaism which for centuries centered around temple sacrifice, evolved the dietary rules codified in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and after the Diaspora continued to center culturally on kosher slaughter to the extent that many of the most common Jewish surnames, including Cohen, Schecter, and their numerous derivatives, are derived from kosher slaughter practices. No one at ANIMALS 24-7 argues against veganism, which many and perhaps most of our readers and contributors have long practiced, but regardless of your opinion that veganism best puts basic Jewish teachings into practice, it is presumptuous to allege that someone stole your religion when the mainstream of Judaism has not only never shared that belief, but apparently not even considered it since the time of Noah, several generations before Abraham. Since the acknowledged purpose of “Who Stole My Religion?” is to try to transform the traditional practice of Judaism, in a manner, by the way, which we here at ANIMALS 24-7 see as positive and well-intentioned, & I am speaking as a vegan tzimmis eater myself, a more accurate title might have been “I’m Stealing Your Religion.”
I really must register extreme revulsion at the desecration of the Shoah in this manner. A human holocaust is the expression of extreme hatred for fellow human beings. The killing of animals for food is a radically different phenomenon, having nothing whatsoever to do with hatred or racism, even if the inhumane aspects of battery cages and cattle cars present images that are easy to exploit. I can tell you this: the use of the word and images of the Holocaust (as PETA does) are guaranteed to vitiate any chance of appealing to reasonable minds. If you really want to persuade undecided people with a knowledge of history, you could not pick a more counter-productive word. I tell pro-lifers the same thing.
Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer may have been the first to invoke Holocaust imagery on behalf of animals. The comparison was later made, long before PETA picked up the theme, by Coalition for Nonviolent Food founder Henry Spira, who survived Krystalnacht before escaping from Nazi Germany, and Farm Animal Reform Movement founder Alex Hershaft, who states that he knows what a veal calf feels like, living in tight confinement in the dark, constantly in terror, because he spent much of his childhood living in a closet to hide from the Nazis.
Thank you all for the thoughtful and compelling conversations about Dr. Schwartz’s book and Barbara’s review of it. Merritt and I have talked about this at length.
First I must reveal that I am Jewish, my maiden name being Beth Kleinfeld, which I’ve always been very proud of. My grandparents all came over on a ship to Ellis Island from Germany, Romania, and England. So I am as Jewish as one can be. I suppose that my family from Europe grew up at a time when surviving seemed to trump (no pun intended) practicing being a Jew. I do know that my father went to Hebrew School. They were very poor and lived in Canarsie, NY. My grandpa Max was a sanitation worker. My grandma was a gypsy, I am told from Galati, Romania, and practiced “cups” as she used to tell me. Growing up I received very little formal Jewish education. We celebrated Chanukah for fun and my dad forbade us to have a Christmas tree. However my parents always instilled in us (my sisters and me) to be proud of our heritage and proud to be Jewish. I joke with Merritt about being a bad Jew because he knows more about Judaism than I do. When we married two plus years ago I became a vegetarian for the first time in my life. I gave up eating meat, eggs and some dairy for two reasons that had nothing to do directly with my being Jewish. The main reasons were because of my compassion for animals and because I love Merritt and that was the only way our life together could work. I have no regrets and it took about a year, but I no longer have any thoughts that I miss animal flesh. I don’t know when this happened but the thought of eating meat now is really gross! I understand what Richard is advancing in this book. However I really do understand Barbara’s perspective as well. You have a room filled with 10 Jews and you’ll have 11 opinions. By the way, I am bringing tzimmis to our family’s Thanksgiving dinner. I make a mean tzimmis!
I am pleased that my review generated so much animated discussion. That in itself is a real compliment to any reviewer, and whether or not much of the response is critical is immaterial to me. Richard (if I may), while it is true that I have not read your other books, I do not think the burden of comprehension of your argument should fall on me if you have failed to make your best case in this book as well. It seemed to me that you laid out your points quite confidently, and since you did not warn readers that only additional reading would make your case clear, I make no apology for taking you at your word in this book. I think Merritt has done a magnificent job of defending my perspective, and I won’t add to what he says here (and wow is all I can say about the depth of his knowledge on Jewish history in this area), but I am going to press you a bit more on my last point in the review: Progressivism is in my eyes (and in the eyes of many other conservatives) a religion in itself, even if it does not so identify, since it is utopian in its ideals – in itself, very opposed to Judaism, which is the opposite of utopian (until the Messiah comes anyway). Judaism, like conservatism, is realistic in its appreciation of the limitations of human nature, and is therefore meliorative in its thrust. That is basically what halacha is about: constraining the baser urges and channelling them into disciplined modes of behaviour. As it happens, although I am conservative in temperament, I feel suffocated as a woman in the Orthodox milieu. Fairly agnostic regarding a personal God, I am nevertheless culturally very Jewish and very Zionist. I belong to a Reconstructionist shul. I love my shul, but I sometimes do some quiet eye-rolling when the more progressive members try to force fit progressive values like gay marriage into a “Jewish” mold. It can’t be done theologically. I understand Jewish progressives’ wish not to feel conflicted, but it seems to me more than little hutzpadik to parachute one’s personal philosophical views inside a system that is antithetical to certain tenets. I think Merritt’s suggestion of a new branch of Judaism – “Enviro-Judaism”? – for vegetarian Jews who consider climate change to be a religious game-changer is an idea whose time may have come. As it is, your insistence that Jews like me have somehow “stolen” “your” Judaism is, when I am feeling mellow, merely bemusing, but when I am a bit cranky, offensive. Judaism was never “yours” to be stolen. It is what it is, not what you prefer it to be. As for the idea that Judaism is a “radical” religion: I believe that is true, in the sense that the western idea of morality and justice can be traced to Torah principles, enunciated in an age when it was common practice for people to throw babies into fire to placate their gods. But radical in the sense of the New Left counter-culture? No, Nyet, Nein.
I appreciate all your comments, Barbara, and because I have long believed that there should be respectful dialogues on vegetarianism/veganism, and other issues in the Jewish communities, I would like to respectfully respond.
First, as you know I have a chapter in my book, “Is Judaism a Radical Religion?” I wonder if you have any disagreements re my arguments that from the first Jew Abraham through the biblical prophets, and including some modern day thinkers like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel, Jews have often challenged the status quo or if you any disagreement with my arguments that Judaism have very strong teachings on peace and justice (the only two values that Jews are to pursue), and on compassion, sharing, love of neighbors, kindness to strangers, environmental sustainability, and more. Yes, you are right that there are also conservative aspects as well. But why not stress and apply Judaism’s radical ideas at a time when they are needed more than ever before?
Re vegetarianism (and veganism, which I do practice and argue is the ideal Jewish diet), I do make a complete case by pointing out, among other things, (1) that producing and eating meat and other animal products violate Jewish mandates to preserve our health, treat animals with compassion, protect the environment, conserve natural resources, help hungry people, and pursue peace, (2) that a vegan world would be healthier, better environmentally, more compassionate, and more peaceful, and (3) that there is far less chance of averting an environmental catastrophe if there is no major societal shift toward vegan diets. I recognize that you reject my arguments, and that is why I very much welcome respectful dialogue on, “Should Jews be vegetarians?” Please note, “should” not “must.”
I appreciate all the thoughtful comments above. I hope the questions and answers below from the 3rd edition of my book, Judaism and Vegetarianism,” help respond to some of the comments .
12. By putting vegetarian values ahead of Jewish teachings, aren’t vegetarians, in effect, creating a new religion, with values contrary to Jewish teachings?
Most Jewish vegetarians do not place so-called “vegetarian values” above Torah principles. They are saying that Jewish mandates to treat animals with compassion, guard our health, share with hungry people, protect the environment, conserve resources, and seek peace make vegetarianism the ideal diet for Jews today, especially in view of the many problems related to modern methods of raising animals on factory farms. Rather than rejecting Torah values, Jewish vegetarians are challenging the Jewish community to apply Torah values to their diets in a daily meaningful way. They are respectfully challenging Jews to live up to Judaism’s splendid teachings. They are arguing that vegetarianism is a fulfillment of Judaism, not a deviation.
10. Isn’t a movement toward vegetarianism a movement away from Jewish traditions with regard to diet? Isn’t there a danger that once some traditions are changed, others may readily follow, and little will be left of Judaism as we have known it?
A move toward vegetarianism is actually a return to Jewish traditions, to taking Jewish values seriously. A movement toward vegetarianism can help revitalize Judaism. It can show that Jewish values can be applied to help
solve current world problems related to hunger, waste, and pollution. Hence, rather than a movement away from Jewish traditions, it would have the opposite effect.
11. Weren’t the Jewish sages aware of the evils related to eating meat? If so, why does so much of Talmudic literature discuss laws and customs related to the consumption of meat? Are you suggesting that Judaism has been morally wrong in not advocating vegetarianism?
Conditions today differ greatly from those in biblical times and throughout most of Jewish history. Only recently has strong medical evidence linked animal-centered diets to many types of disease. Modern intensive livestock agriculture results in conditions quite different from those that prevailed previously. To produce meat today, animals are treated very cruelly, they are fed tremendous amounts of grain (and chemicals) while millions of people starve, and pollution and misuse of resources result. When it was felt that eating meat was necessary for health and the many problems related to modern intensive livestock agriculture did not exist, the sages were not morally wrong in not advocating vegetarianism. Also, people did not eat meat so frequently then.
Richard, you are repeating your talking points without actually responding to my criticisms of your talking points. You offer no evidence that people who eat a balanced diet including lean meat suffer health deficits as compared to a control group of vegetarians. Assertion is not enough in a debate. One needs some attempt at an actual proof. You say, “A move toward vegetarianism is actually a return to Jewish traditions, to taking Jewish values seriously..” This is nonsense. What “traditions” is a vegetarian Jew “return[ing] to?” Again, you offer no evidence that vegetarianism was ever a Jewish “tradition” at all (Adam and Eve were not Jews). “Taking Jewish values seriously?” Do you even realize what a tremendous insult this is to all the great Jewish scholars of our history? You are saying that 99% of our spiritual and intellectual leadership did not “take Jewish values seriously.” It is intellectually feckless to say such a thing. Really, I suggest you start fund-raising for the building fund of Beth Schwartz, because that is the only shul you will ever feel comfortable in. Jews for Jesus are at least more forthright about their appropriation of Judaism for their own ends. This will be my last post, as I see no point in further (non) dialogue on the subject.