Tazria | The Laws of Kashrut (2)

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Last time, we considered the laws of Kashrut from the point of view of the Rambam (12^th century, Egypt).  Recall that the Torah in Parashat Shemini had spelled out the criteria concerning those animals, fish, birds and insects fit for consumption, but had nowhere provided an explicit rationale for its injunctions.  While our commitment to the laws of the Torah is nowhere taken to be predicated upon our comprehension of their "reasonableness," Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have nonetheless strived to provide an understanding for many of the Torah's commands.  This is because they believed that the defining quality of the human being and his Divinely inspired soul was the intelligence, wisdom and understanding with which God had endowed him, and only the person who fully utilized these gifts in order to comprehend God and His works had truly realized his potential.  In the eloquent words of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah:

 

…the foundation of everything is the exercise of reason, for the Torah was not given to one who does not possess intelligence.  The emissary between a man and his Lord is his intellect…(Introduction to the Torah, "The third way").

 

RECALLING RAMBAM

 

Recall that for the Rambam, the all-encompassing rational principle that could explain why the Torah prohibited certain species for consumption as well as particular elements of even permitted creatures (such as their blood or certain fats) was that all of these things have an injurious effect upon the body's health and well-being.  As the 14^th century Sefer Ha-Chinukh developed the thought, one's physical vigor is essential for one's spiritual development, for the typical person whose body is ailing or ill is necessarily too preoccupied with their corporeal suffering to be devoted to the nurture of their spirit and to the fostering of their relationship with God.  A healthy body is thus not an end in itself but only the necessary vehicle for the human spirit to accomplish its objective.  Or, as Rambam himself, in a different context, indicates: "when a person is preoccupied in this world by sickness, warfare or famine, then he cannot engage in either the acquisition of wisdom or the mitzvot by which we merit life everlasting in the world to come" (Sefer Ha-Mada, Hilkhot Teshuva, 9:1).

 

Of course, Rambam's words concerning the rationale for Kashrut contained a pitfall, for if the essence of Kashrut was physical health, then one would have expected that the matter could be studied empirically, and then demonstrated conclusively to in fact be true according to accepted statistical models.  Once again, it was the Sefer Ha-Chinukh who came to the assistance of Rambam's opinion by remarking that scientists and doctors cannot know everything, that medical advice adapts in accordance with new data, and that in contrast one could always rely upon the word of the Absolute Healer, for His knowledge was perfect and complete.

 

THE EXPLANATION OF THE ABARBANEL

 

Many were the thinkers who took the Rambam's thesis to task, attacking it upon textual as well as philosophic grounds.  The most outspoken of these critics was the Abarbanel (15^th century, Spain) who refused to accept that the Torah was a repository of medical lore (commentary to Parashat Shemini):

 

…God forbid that I should believe such a thing!  If that were the case then the Torah of the Lord would be no more than an insignificant and overly concise medical treatise.  This is not the way of the Torah of the Lord or of its profound objectives.  Besides, with our own eyes we see how the nations that consume the flesh of the pig, detestable things, the mouse as well as the other impure birds, land animals and fish, are all alive and well, strong and not at all feeble or frail…All of this is a clear indication that the Divine Torah did not come to heal the body or to promote physical health but rather to foster the health of the soul and to heal its afflictions.  Therefore, the Torah forbade these foods because they have a deleterious effect on the pure and intelligent soul, breeding insensitivity in the human soul and corrupting its desires.  This causes the formation of an evil nature that breeds a spirit of "tuma" and banishes the spirit of "tahara" and holiness, concerning which David implored: "Do not take Your spirit of holiness from me!" (Tehillim 51:13).

 

In the above passage, the Abarbanel offers two distinct refutations of the health rationale.  The first of these is "theoretical," the second "clinical."  Concerning the first, Abarbanel avers that books of medicine deal with the physical body, how to maintain it in good health or else heal it when it is ill.  Books that contain more information and research are more useful, while books that are concise and uninformative are almost useless.  Clearly, the Torah's "medical advice" consists of no more than a few short directives or lists, hardly enough to warrant its inclusion among the great works of medical literature.  On the other hand, since the Torah is the word of God then it must necessarily be comprehensive as well as profound.  Yet such is not the case if we understand that its commands on the subject of consumption are health-related.

 

Concerning the "clinical" side, the Abarbanel points out that the positive effects on physical health that Kashrut supposedly confers should be obvious and overt.  In other words, those that do not abide by these laws should suffer health problems to a proportionately higher degree than the law's adherents, but such is clearly not the case!

 

THE HEALTH OF THE SOUL AND THE MEANING OF "TUMA"

 

The Abarbanel therefore concludes that the real purpose of Kashrut does not relate to the health of the body at all but rather to the health of the SOUL.  The consumption of forbidden foods (or is it rather the abrogation of God's command necessarily associated with that consumption?) harms the soul of the human being, the abstract essence that is bound up with our convictions concerning immortality and with all that is Divine.  While the mechanisms of physical consumption, absorption and excretion are definable and well documented, there are many other more subtle processes at work when human beings ingest and then digest physical matter.  There is, apparently, an aspect to eating that addresses not only physical sustenance and the metabolic activity of the body, but also spiritual well-being and the processes of the soul.  Just as the body is sustained by the intake of nutrients and calories, so too the soul is sustained by the food's corresponding "heavenly" value.  And those things deemed by the Torah to be fit for Jewish consumption are the very things that are most beneficial for the maintenance and growth of the soul.

 

Significantly, the Abarbanel detects confirmation of his commentary in the very text of the Torah:

 

The Blessed One said: "Do not make your souls abominable by consuming all manner of creeping things, do not become impure through them, for they shall desensitize you.  I am God your Lord and you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy.  Do not therefore make your souls impure by consuming all of the things that creep upon the earth…"(Vayikra 11:43-44).  This is therefore a matter of desensitization and impurity.  The text did not refer to these things as harmful or sickening, but rather as "temeim" and abominable, to indicate that the reason for their prohibition relates to the soul rather than to the body and its health.

 

In other words, the Abarbanel understands that the Torah's repeated use of the term "tamei," variously rendered as "unclean" (poor translation), "impure" (better translation), or "ritually unfit" (best translation), in its discussion of the laws of Kashrut, is a sure indication that we are dealing with a soul matter rather than a physical effect.  This is because this term and its cognates, sprinkled liberally throughout the book of VaYikra, is almost always understood as describing a state of being of the soul rather than as some physical and quantifiable effect.

 

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF ABARBANEL

 

Like the Rambam before him, the explanation of the Abarbanel is at the same time compelling as well as difficult.  On the one hand, we may be relieved by the fact that there is no longer a necessity to demonstrate the positive effects of Kashrut in clinical trials.  After all, if Kashrut impacts only on the state of the soul but not the state of the body, then we could hardly imagine its effects to be measurable, any more than the human soul can be examined under a microscope.  Whatever may be the tentative or even final conclusions of nutritional science concerning good foods and bad foods, they are rendered irrelevant by the Torah's legislation.  The Torah, the word of God, is focused upon the human soul and its moral and religious state and seeks to elevate and to sanctify it, and that is the real reason for Kashrut.  That Kashrut may be beneficial to the human body as well as to the soul is a possibility that Abarbanel chooses to intentionally overlook, since such an effect would, of necessity, be solely arbitrary and coincidental.  The explanation of the Abarbanel is seemingly bolstered by the vocabulary of the passage itself that makes use of the term "tamei" an unusual number of times. 

 

As for its difficulties, Abarbanel's thesis has only one.  In order to accept it, we must suspend our God-given reason, for no analysis can ever confirm the validity of his claim.  Since Kashrut impacts upon the soul, we cannot delineate its impact or gauge its effects in any measurable way, anymore than we can subject the ethereal soul to empirical study.  Of course, though, if we are prepared to accept the existence of the soul notwithstanding its elusiveness, then Abarbanel's argument may not be such a proverbial leap of faith after all.  In any case, what is perhaps more significant (and here he diverges mightily from the Rambam) is that his thesis introduces a mystical element into the understanding of the mitzvot that need not be founded upon Rambam's bedrock of human reason.

 

KASHRUT AS SELF-LIMITATION

 

Thus far we have seen two possible explanations for Kashrut, both of them addressing different realms of the human being, both of them understood by their authors to be mutually exclusive.  There is, however, another dimension to the matter that may assist us in ultimately bridging the chasm between the two.  Recall that Kashrut concerns consumption, those things that we may not eat and those that by extension we may. Primarily then, Kashrut is prohibitive in nature for it LIMITS our choices and places constraints upon them.  We may not consume all that we desire if we are to be loyal to God's laws.  In other words, by exercising self-restraint we acknowledge God's ascendancy.

 

One may contrast the matter with the typical state of affairs in the animal world, where creatures consume other creatures with impunity.  In the state of nature, survival is paramount and one may indeed describe the situation as a clear expression of "eat first and ask questions later."  Animals are driven by overpowering instincts and by biological drives that render moral and ethical issues utterly irrelevant.  Not surprisingly, then, the Divine demands upon the human being in general and upon the Jew in particular cannot dare to overlook this most basic area of existence.  We must eat in order to survive, but survival for the human being is more than physical continuity – it is transcending the animalistic state of nature in order to reach towards God.  Significantly, then, it is our uniqueness as human beings that must be the ultimate source of the laws of Kashrut.

 

Humanity in general does possess a rudimentary law of Kashrut, one that is calculated to drive an unambiguous wedge between them and the rest of creation.  I refer of course to the so-called Noachide principle of not consuming a limb torn from a living animal (see Bereishit 9:4).  What could be a more obvious limitation of human consumption in such as way as to differentiate it from the prevalent order of the other carnivores – those whose bloody ways resoundingly confirm the prevalence of "nature red in tooth and claw"?  Animals exercise no constraints and feel no compunctions in their relentless pursuit, capture and consumption of prey, but the eating exercised by people must be different, if they are to recognize the ascendancy of a moral code and to abide by its dictates.

 

"PROTO-KASHRUT"

 

The laws of Kashrut are thus an amplification of the Noachide principle, a much broader and inclusive series of injunctions that effectively impact upon every area of consumption and transform the basic act into an unusual opportunity for recognition of God.  Perhaps there is more here than meets the eye to Ramban's (13th century, Spain) assertion that "the prohibited birds are all cruel predators by nature, whereas the permitted land animals – those that possess split hooves and chew their cud – are not carnivores…"  (commentary to Vayikra 11:13)

 

We may in fact find the root of the matter in the very first command with which God addressed the first man, impressing upon him the axiom that only by acknowledging the transcendence of an Absolute Deity could there be the possibility of moral, ethical or spiritual development: "God Lord commanded the man saying: you may eat from all of the trees of the garden.  But from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil you MUST NOT EAT, for on the day that you consume from it you will surely die!" (Bereishit 2:16-17).

 

Rambam may have been concerned with the health of the body and Abarbanel with the well-being of the soul, but concerning the following both would have to agree: adherence to the laws of Kashrut cannot but incorporate discipline and self-control, the prerequisites for any serious moral or spiritual development.  This is undoubtedly Kashrut's most enduring attribute.  

 

Shabbat Shalom