GEN285 The Jewish laws of kashrut were established to wean man away from violence and to learn to abhor the sign of blood. The Jew must be taught to detest death, abhor blood, and recoil from unnecessarily hurting any of God’s creatures Love for sadistic pleasures must be utterly uprooted from the human heart. God is the Creator of life, and man is its guardian and protector. Adam and Eve were commanded never to take the life of any animal, but to subsist on vegetation alone: From all the trees of the Garden you may eat” [this verse].  A quandary arose after the flood, which decimated all living creatures, including plants and animals.  Prior to that, the Almighty had never given man permission to consume animal flesh. Had God not permitted Noah and his family to partake of the animals, they would have perished. Moreover, since Noah had exerted strenuous efforts to save the animals as well as himself and his family, he was entitled to partake of their flesh in order to survive. God allowed Noah’s descendants to eat meat as well, and since then there has been an acceptance of the human need to consume meat as a source of nutrition and sustenance.  The problem that arose was how to allow man to take animal life for food, while simultaneously suppressing his love for violence? Furthermore, how could man partake of the flesh on the animal without becoming one himself? The Almighty therefore gave the laws of kashrut, whose purpose was to regulate how man could take animal life, which animals he could slaughter, how he could put them to death, and which parts of the animal could then be consumed. Simultaneously with granting man the right to devour animals flesh, God insisted that he take life only in the most humane possible way, and even then never consume the animal’s blood. Furthermore, man was permitted to partake only of nonaggressive, non-predatory and servile animals like goats, cattle, and sheep. As the ancient Rabbis point out, all the permitted animals are herbivorous and therefore nearer he vegetable world. They spend a great deal of time in the process of digesting their food and show an almost plantlike passivity.  The same applies to fowl. The only fowl allowed to the Jew are birds that survive on berries, worms, or bark, never scavengers or flesh eaters. The rules of kashrut are based on the belief that meat eating is different from eating vegetables and requires a great deal of sensitivity to animals. Man must be weaned off the callous indifference to taking life – any life.  Rabbi Joseph Albo, the great Spanish mystic, wrote that Adam and Eve and their progeny were originally forbidden to eat meat because of the cruelty involved in killing animals. In fifteenth-century Spain, Don Isaac Abravenel, one of the greatest biblical exegetes, endorsed the call for vegetarianism and taught that when the Messiah comes, everyone would return to this ideal state. Contrary to the view that the main rationale for kashrut is hygiene, the fact that the law of kashrut rule out all beasts of prey shows a different impetus.  Animals that have split hooves cannot be predators, for the split hoof makes them slow moving and awkward. … What the Torah was doing in limiting the Jews to these passive vegetarian animals was first, weaning them away from love of violence by causing them to slaughter animals humanely, and second, ensuring that they do not consume anything that would encourage their innate predatory treat by forbidding them to eat any omnivorous animals.  The founder of Christiany was insistent that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out the mouth that defiles” (Matthew 15:11). Judaism rejects this belief, stressing that man can indeed by defiled by absorbing the wrong foods. Parents try to govern their children’s television intake, convinced that violence and sex can have an adverse effect on the minds of their young.  If this is true of mental material, why should physical sustenance be any different? The undeniable fact is that if you eat poison it can kill you. Judaism simply expands on this by applying it also to spiritual poison. BOTEACH 301-03