GEN630 Noah celebrated the renewal of all life after the Flood by building a sacred slaughter-site and lifting up to YHWH, the Breath of Life, those animals and fowl that were “pure” for eating, to reconnect the Earth with God. … This practice taught that the relationship between adam and adamah was the expression of relationship with God. So it is not surprising that biblically, and then in rabbinic tradition, elaboration of proper and improper foods, what was and was not kosher to eat, took on immense importance in defining a sacred life. Animals described by their relationship to earth, sea, and air embodied into intimate human relationship those three primal aspects of God’s process of creation. Separating mammalian foods of life (milk) and death (meat) became a marker of sacred limitation of the God Who gave life or decreed death. (By Arthur Waskow, "Jewish Environmental Ethics: Intertwining Adam with Adamah") OXFORD 412-3