When I first started looking into converting to Judaism — well, I was fifteen. I lived on Skor Bars and Dr. Pepper. (This is not a joke; you can ask my dentist.) I did not look into it very long; the rabbi I consulted suggested I wait a few years. I always assumed, however, that I would get around to it.
In 2002, having married a Jewish man and had a baby, I finally “got around to it” after a few years of study. At this point, I was no longer surviving on Skor bars, but bacon cheeseburgers. As I tried to formulate a Jewish practice, I added Shabbat to the rotation, and, along with it, a weekly kosher dinner. We toyed with the idea of keeping kosher all the time, but never took it seriously, for several reasons:
1) The health reasons given for keeping kosher were made obsolete by such modern innovations as refrigeration and the FDA.
2) The ethical justifications for kashrut — that kosher animals are killed more humanely — were offset by the fact that most kosher meat still comes from factory farms.
3) It seemed like a gigantic hassle.
4) Our rabbi said we didn’t have to.
5) Bacon cheeseburgers.
No, we didn’t think about it very hard. But very few people we knew kept kosher. It seemed archaic. And we didn’t have to. So we didn’t.
Over time, however, the idea of keeping kosher began to represent the gold standard of Jewish observance for me. I think it has something to do with my perfectionist streak. Despite the fact that raising two children in a Jewish household and sending them to Hebrew school while studying for my own bat mitzvah was far above average Jewish observance, I wanted more. I secretly read the blogs of kosher housewives. I still didn’t want to keep kosher. But now I felt bad about it. (Insert Jewish guilt joke here. I would suggest: “I am my own Jewish mother.”)
Also, I attended a family bat mitzvah several years ago, where the new Jewish adult explained, earnestly, her personal reasons for keeping kosher, paraphrased as “Every time I think about what I eat, it reminds me that I’m Jewish.”
Enter Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the founders of Jewish Renewal, and his book, Jewish With Feeling.
Rabbi Zalman suggests moving away from traditional kashrut and toward “eco-kashrut,” a term he coined. In my understanding, eco-kashrut makes explicit the justifications for “regular kashrut,” incorporating our modern attitudes towards the food chain and our environment. In other words, instead of keeping kosher because it’s safer (it’s often not), we would make food choices that are safer for our families — buying locally and patronizing restaurants that buy locally. Instead of keeping kosher because it’s more humane for animals (again, not necessarily), we would buy markedly less meat because the production of meat is so hard on the environment, and then, when we do buy meat, make sure we are comfortable with how the animals were raised and killed.
Even if one chooses not to follow the injunctions to separate milk and meat and the various food prohibitions, eco-kashrut requires eating very thoughtfully. Would we merely buy hormone-free milk, or organic hormone-free milk? Which is better for the earth; which is better for the cow? Every eating choice becomes a tiny step towards tikkun olam, the Jewish goal of repairing a broken world.
I am going to try this and see where it leads. I even have an action plan!
* Join a CSA to get fresh, local produce every week
* Prepare a vegetarian Shabbat
*Look into joining a meat CSA
* Develop a policy for eating out/take-out
And, finally,
* Start fleshing out (pun!) what is and is not eco-kosher, and whether it includes a Niman Ranch bacon - Cowgirl Creamery cheese – Prather Ranch beef burger.
The (food) revolution will be blogged. Watch this eco-kosher space.
3 Comments
Meat CSA: I have a friend who every so often organizes a large beef purchase with a group of folks. Requires a big freezer in the garage, but organic grassfed beef at $5/lb is pretty good for steak OR ground beef, and this way you get both.
I also buy most other meat from Marin Sun or from The Fatted Calf. Both are all humanely raised, but the quantity of pork fat in the latter makes old-school kashrut not a real option.
Incidentally, your description of “kosher” is exactly how Dara is practicing it these days.
Great post! You have inspired me to do a vegetarian Shabbat this week! We’ll see how it goes. Although, it is considered a mitzvah to eat meat on Shabbat and Yom Tov. Does tofu count?
Eddie, thanks for the heads-up on the meat CSA. That’s what I was afraid of. Technically, I have access to a large deep freeze, but it’s at my grandfather’s house and is at least thirty years old and there is probably a body in there (Hoffa?). I still might look into Marin Sun’s CSA, though — it looks less whole-cow-in-my-freezer and more chops-and-what-have-you. (Also: Dara’s temple has its own CSA! *is jealous* )
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