GEN176 … God’s vegetarian command in [this verse] “set before us … the ideal of creation.” … the vegetarian ideal “reappears in the vision of the Prophet Isaiah … ‘the wolf shall dwell with the lamb….’  The optimal vision of Creation is thus embodied in a vegetarian diet.” (By Aaron Saul Gross, "Continuity and Change in Reform Views of Kashrut 1883-2002; From the T'reifah Banquet to Eco-Kashrut") SACTAB 249

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GEN184 Surrounded by an endless variety of edible plant life [this verse], Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden by God, to till and to tend Genesis 2:15, to work in the Garden, and to be shomrei adadah, “guardians of the earth.”  Life was easy in Eden, for everywhere they looked food was readily at hand, every tree pleasing to the sight and good for food Genesis 2:9.  Today, however, how ironic it is that we too are surrounded by food, but we have lost our sense of kesher, our connection to the food, to the land, and to our Creator. … Even when we think about healthy eating, we reduce food to proteins and carbohydrates, vitamins and mineral fiber and fat.  We label our food as good or bad.  Food is more than a combination of chemicals that taken in the right doses keeps us alive.  Food, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. The food we eat sustains us, nourishes us, and connects us to each other to the earth, and to the Creator of the earth.  Food is to be enjoyed and savored.  If we have no kesher to our food, we are even farther from a sense of kesher to the land. We do not know the sources of our food, how our food is grown, where it is grown, how it is harvested or the ramifications of those choices.  We do not understand that the cultivation of what we eat can actually be destructive to the fertility and the sustainability of the land.  This destruction of essential resources is an unnecessary waste that the biblical and rabbinical literature would call bal tashchit. (By Batsheva Appel, "Connecting Locally: Jumping Off the Producion Line") SACTAB 173-4

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GEN185 The Torah pictures Adam and Eve’s Edenic diet as consisting of [this verse].  According to our people’s sacred myth, animal flesh was not permitted to humans by God until after the Flood; and then, apparently, only as a concession to human frailty Genesis 9:3.  Vegetarianism is the Torah’s ideal. If meat is later allowed, the principle of tzaar baalei chayim, of not causing needless suffering to an animal, is yet upheld.  Passages in the Torah such as those that require the working animal to rest along with its owner on the Shabbat Exodus 20:10, prohibit the slaughter of an animal and its young on the same day Leviticus 22:28, forbid one to eat before one’s domestic animals have been fed Deuteronomy 11:15, prohibit yoking together the larger ox with the smaller donkey Deuteronomy 22:10, and prohibit the muzzling of one’s ox when it is treading grain Deuteronomy 25:4, all serve to establish tzaar baalei chaim as an ikar g’dolah, as a major guiding principle.  Now consider: in creating the rules of sh’chitah, of “compassionate slaughter,” the Rabbis of the Talmud were more stringent about the taking of certain animals’ lives than about the taking of others (e.g., fish are not subject to the rules of sh’chitah).  Why? I am going to guess because of the Rabbis’ intuitive understanding that the more developed an animal’s consciousness, the more susceptible it is not only to physical but also to psychological suffering. When Jews consider their diet today, I would argue, it would be reasonable likewise to give added consideration to the effect diet has on the suffering most especially of animals of more highly evolved consciousness, to give the highest consideration to those animals that stand to suffer the most.  From this perspective, there is no question that a diet that includes meat means suffering for the one animal on this planet most susceptible to suffering.  That animal is the human animal. And that’s the bottom line of this argument: a meatless diet is the most ethical for a human being to follow because it is the diet that causes the least amount of suffering in other human beings. …  Over one billion people on the planet are either starving or are chronically undernourished.  That’s about one-sixth of the entire world’s population.  Indeed twenty million people—twenty million! – die each year due to hunger. Three out of four of those are children.  With the effects of climate change already upon us (unprecedented droughts, the disappearance of lakes and rivers, vast stretches of formerly fertile farmland turning to desert), those already staggering numbers are sure to go up, and dramatically.  Right now in the United States alone, more than half of all water consumed goes to support animal agriculture.  Given what climatologists tell us is coming, we will very shortly simply not have enough water to sustain that anymore.  Animal agriculture is inefficient in the extreme. Ever been on a farm? Animals eat a lot. You’ve got to invest eight to twelve pounds of grain for every one pound of edible beef you get back. Unbelievably inefficient.  If we gave up our meat-based diets, simply stopped raising animals for food, all of those crops we are now raising to feed those animals would be sufficient to feed every starving man, woman, and child on the planet.  Judaism obligates us to address this issue.  And with respect to those who are starving to the point of death, our moral obligation to act is, of course, an even higher one; the issue rises to the level of pikuach nefesh, the obligation to save human life. (By Mark Sameth, "I'll Have What She's Having": Jewish Ethical Vegetarianism") SACTAB 230-2

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GEN179 R. Yehudah said in the name of Rav: “Animal flesh was not permitted to Adam, as it is written: ‘It [vegetation] will be for you to eat and for all the animals of the earth’ – but the animals of the earth will not be food for you.  And though it is written Genesis 1:28: ‘And have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth,’ the “dominion” in question is in respect to work” Sanhedrin 59b. TEMIMAH-GEN 12

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GEN186 A careful reading of the Bible suggests that God’s ideal diet for human beings is vegetarian, not carnivorous.  (But see also comment Genesis 4:4).  Adam and Eve, the first human beings, are commanded by God to limit their eating to vegetables and fruit.  Generations later, after the sins of lawlessness and violence committed during the time of Noah Genesis 6:11-13, followed by the devastating flood God wreaks on the world, God permits human beings to eat animals Genesis 9:3.  The Bible never explains why God now permits the eating of animals.  Perhaps He was convinced that a vegetarian diet would be too difficult nutritionally for most people to observe, or perhaps He felt that people would not observe it since meat eating is a strong desire.  The late Bible scholar Nechama Leibowitz--summarizing an argument offered by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook--explained that the permission to eat meat had less to do with nutrition than with humanity’s propensity for violence: “…after the deluge, the descendants of Noah, that is, all mankind, were permitted to be carnivorous.  Since the land had become filled with violence and man had given free rein to his worst instincts, man was no longer required to make the supreme moral exertions required to forgo the slaughter of animals. It was far more important that he should, at least, utilize what moral fiber he still possessed to refrain from killing his own kind and respecting the life of his neighbor.” (Studies in Bereshit/Genesis, page 77).  Thus it should be viewed as no coincidence that immediately following the permission to eat meat is the law ordaining capital punishment for murders: “Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed” Genesis 9:6.  On the other hand, the fifteenth century Spanish rabbi Joseph Albo argued that the slaughtering of animals was deleterious to man’s character development: “In the killing of animals there is cruelty and aggression and the ingraining in men of the negative trait of spilling innocent blood…” Sefer Ha-Ikkarim 3:15.  TELVOL 2:331

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GEN187 The Maharal (Judah ben Bezalel Low, ca. 1520-1609) provides the most explicit articulation of animals having an inherent value rooted in divine concern. “Everything, like grasses and fruits, were created for the sake of animals, which are flesh, for He gave them everything to eat, as the verse states, “I give you …” [this verse]. From this you see that everything else was created for the animals, while the animals were created in the world for their own sake” (Be’er Ha-Golah). (By Alyssa M. Gray, "Jewish Ethics of Speech") OXFORD 424

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GEN188 The various manifestations … of God’s image within us give us each divine worth. We have that ultimate source of value regardless of our abilities and disabilities, our wealth or poverty, our personal qualities or defects, or the degree of our usefulness to others. We have divine worth even if we do not think very much of ourselves. The divine worth granted to each of us is a special blessing; we share in no less than the essence of God. It is also the source of many of our responsibilities to ourselves, to others, to our world, and to God. If we indeed know the difference between right and wrong, we have the responsibility to choose the right. If we are to be God’s partners in ongoing active creation, we must act accordingly. This concept has far-reaching implications when applied to the area of intimate relations. The sexual aspects of our being—physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual—are not base or obscene; they are part of the entire human being that God termed “very good” after creating us [this verse]. We must use our sexual faculties, like all other elements of our being, for good purpose, as defined by Jewish law and tradition, to activate their potential for divinity. And we have not only the ability but also the duty to do that. Intimate relations, then, are not seen within Judaism as simply physical release or the product of base, animalistic lust; they are, when carried out in the proper context, no less than an expression of divine image within us. DORFFLOV 76

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GEN189 It is the long rather than the short view of history that reveals the workings of God. Through suffering and judgment man moves toward the Messianic goal of triumphant righteousness and perfect felicity. The rabbis, as we’ve indicated above, found further comfort in the belief that the injustices of this life will be righted in the next. The doctrine of otherworldly compensation in a heaven and hell is largely derived from the human craving for a final balance. Accordingly Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish interpreted the Divine approbation of creation in the words “Behold, it is very good” [this verse] as applying to this world, and the additional conjunction “and” which precedes these words (“and behold, it is very good”) as referring to the hereafter. God beheld both worlds at one glance. The present order is completed by the next. In the words of Robert Browning: “Here, a broken arc, there a perfect whole.” R. Meir interpreted the same text, “And behold, it is very good” as applying to death. Other masters applied it to the evil inclination, to suffering, to Gehenna and to retribution. Genesis Rabbah 9:5-13 Seemingly evil, they all serve useful purposes in the Divine order. “No evil comes from above.”  Genesis Rabbah 51:3; Tanhuma, Buber, Vayera 18. Nahum of Gimzo’s moto, “This too is for the best” – gam zu letobah, Taanit 21a expresses the optimistic note in Judaism. R. Akiba teaches similarly, “Whatever God does is for the best.” Berachot 60b  It forms part of the Divine law of compensation. “There is no death without sin, and no suffering without iniquity.” Shabbat 55a  While coming as punishments, both have atoning power. The pious prized suffering because it purges men of sin.  The afflictions of the righteous are but blessings in disguise. They are the chastisements of love, visiting man in this life that he may be purified of the effects of evil and prepared for the bliss of the hereafter. Kiddushin 40a, b; also Berachot 5b; Sifre, Deuteronomy 307. COHON 56-7

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GEN190 With the French Revolution at the end of the 18th-century, the emancipation of the Jews of western and central Europe began. Equality and citizenship came slowly and grudgingly, but the fact that they took place at all seemed almost miraculous to the Jews of the period.  Wherever freedom was made available, Jews avidly took advantage of it. In the process, Jews radically transformed their view of human nature and its battle between good and evil. The society in which Jews enthusiastically immersed themselves was one of extraordinary economic expansion and cultural creativity, of scientific and technological triumph, and thus, of apparently well-founded optimism. Human initiative, not tradition or revelation, was credited for making all this possible. Human reason was viewed as the engine that empowered longer, fuller lives; if applied to great social problems, it was believed that reason would soon eliminate many of humankind’s ancient ills.  This certainly affected society’s understanding of the evil that people did to each other.  The problems we for so long blamed on the devil were really our own inability to shake our outmoded, self-imposed superstition and dimwittedness.  Now that human progress had finally begun to show its genius, we saw evidence of its benefits everywhere. Modern Jewry had special reasons to espouse the optimism embraced by the general society. In this new freedom we personally experienced the benefits of reason; we perceived our emancipation as a modern-day reenactment of that classic redemptive experience of the Jewish people, the Exodus from Egypt. Only this time the mighty hand and the outstretched arm were not God’s but humanity’s, acting through the new political and social order. Disproportionately, Jews became the prophets of education, culture and social betterment. The yetzer ha-ra now seemed a nightmare of an impoverished premodern imagination; the yetzer ha-tov was seen as a primal aspect of modern rationality, as championed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. From early in the 19th century until the second half of the 20th century, Jewish teachers proclaimed the essential goodness of human nature and the benevolent power of human reasoning. They seized whatever rabbinic evidence they could find to convince those few who still doubted that we ourselves have the means to overcome the evil urge. For instance, “R. Samuel b. Nahman said: The words ‘Behold, it was good’ refer to the impulse to good, and the words “Behold, it was very good” [this verse] refer to the impulse to evil. But how can the impulse to evil be termed ‘very good’? Extraordinary! However, were it not for the impulse to evil, a man would not build a house, take a wife, or beget children. As Solomon said, ‘Again I considered all the labor and excellent work and found them to be the result of man’s rivalry with his neighbor’ [Ecclesiastes 4:4] Genesis Rabbah 9:5-11.  Judaism now taught that by using our God-given human intelligence, we could harness even the evil urge in the service of the good. BOROJMV 178-9

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GEN192 “Behold it was very good” [this verse]. Rav Nahman bar Shmuel said in the name of Rav Shmuel bar Nahman, “It says, ‘good’ – this is the yetser tov, but it also says ‘very [good]’ – this is the yetser ha’ra.’  Is then the yetser ha-ra’ ‘very [good]’? [Yes, for] were it not for the yetser ha-ra’, a man would not build a house, marry a woman, have children, and engage in business as it says …  Bereshit Rabba 9:7 [note the tradition is from his father and that he bears his grandfather’s name].  COMMENT: This midrash on Genesis 1:31 proposes an answer to two questions: What is the “it” in the verse; that is, what is the antecedent to the implied pronoun? And, what is the meaning of “very”; that is, what kind of goodness would be “very” good? The answer given here is that the yetser ha-ra’, which in rabbinic psychology is the source of sinfulness, contains a germ of goodness in it, for it is the sexual and ego drives that move humanity to achieve.  The inclination to do evil, then, is part of the goodness of creation. (There is an alternate midrash that suggest that death is the kind of goodness that is “very” good and, hence, included in creation in Genesis 1:31).  BANAL 191

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