LEV196 ... we need to remember that, for our Rabbis, religious eating was not solely a matter of prohibiting the consumption of certain foods and food combinations. Moving beyond the biblical text, our Sages addressed not only what Jews ate, but how they ate as well. To begin with, their system of kashrut included a method for slaughtering those animals deemed fit to eat. [Derived in part from the priestly sacrificial descriptions, the rules of proper slaughter and “fit” slaughterers are enumerated in Babylonian Talmud, Chulin 9a.] If our Rabbis were unable to formulate a unifying rationale for prohibiting certain foods, they were far more successful in deriving principles of slaughtering that have stood the test of both time and logic. By intertwining the biblical precept that prohibits eating “the blood of any kind of flesh” [Leviticus 17:14. See also Lev. 3:17, 7:26, 19:26; Deut. 12:16.; I Sam. 14:34; Ezek. 33:25, 39:17ff. It should be noted that the context in Leviticus 17 (as well as in Deuteronomy 15) makes specific provision for pouring the blood out on the ground. Most interestingly, Genesis 9:4 also relates this legal precept to Noah and his sons; intrinsically, it seems as if the laws respecting life-blood were attended to hold for all humanity (as R. Chanania b. Gamliel intuits in Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 59a)] with the verse that associates blood with life's essence, our Sages discover a religious principle behind the laws of proper slaughter [on the appositive association of “life” and “blood,” see the interpretation of Gen. 9:4 offered by R. Chanania b. Gamliel in Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 59a)]. They teach that out of respect for all the sacred life that God has created, we must ritually recall that divine creation prior to taking advantage of it for our own gustatory purposes. While we might be entitled to slaughter an animal in order to satiate our own hunger, our religion reminds us that we nonetheless need to remember our secondary role in the transcendent order of the universe; by returning to God the blood representing the divine life that inhabits all, we remember God's primacy in the order of our universe. (By Seth M. Limmer, “ON KASHRUT.)