LEV112 I don't know whether I believe that God doesn't want us to eat animals--the Torah seems to support both sides of that argument. Before the Flood, God does not indicate any purpose for animals in the scheme of the Creation. In Genesis 1, only birds and sea creatures and human beings are blessed. In Leviticus 11:40, the Torah makes it clear that there is no intrinsic value to an animal dying a natural death. Such a creature is called n’veilah, and we are forbidden to eat it. In the description of the cap High Priest’s Yom Kippur ritual (Leviticus 16), the fortunate animal is not the goat that is kept alive, doomed to wander sin-laden through the wilds of Azazel, but the one whose death comes in a korban, as part of a ritual sacrifice. All animals, like all humans, must die. The question is, does an animal's death fulfill a purpose? The Torah seems to say--whether you agree with this reasoning or not--that the animal’s purpose is to nurture bigger animals and human beings. Human beings, after all, also nurture the earth when we die and are buried. Although God seems to see nurturing other creatures as one of the purposes for the existence of animals, God clearly wants human beings to think about the lives they are taking. Consider the long lists of creatures permitted and forbidden, the near-death struggle in Parashat Vayishlach from which Jacob emerges wounded in his loins, the source of the prohibition against sirloin and tenderloin and porterhouse. Consider the statement in Genesis 9:4 that blood represents the life that belongs to God and not to us, and the Rabbis’ tortured extensions of the simple command to avoid boiling a kid in its mother's milk. Taking your animal’s life may be permitted, but we are to empathize with the animal’s pain, with tzaar baalei chayim. If the ideal is the reinstatement of the Edenic condition, then to confront the realities of consuming animals with every meal we buy, prepare, and consume not only builds our Jewish identities, but also makes us aware many times each day of God’s mitzvot--and reminds us of our failure to create societies free from violence and lustful appetite. The encounter with the realities of taking the lives of living creatures reminds us of our own creatureliness as human beings, even as the dietary section in Deuteronomy 14:21 reminds us that our destiny is to be an am kadosh, a holy people to Adonai our God. We are creatures, whom God commanded to consume other creatures to live--but we can also be holy, striving to climb out of creatureliness into godliness. It is a struggle: Jacob’s frail body versus the spirit; k’doshim tihyu, Leviticus 19:2 tells us--we are becoming holy; we have not yet reached the goal. (By Richard N. Levy, “KASHRUT: A New Freedom for Reform Jews”) (Continued at [[LEV354]] Leviticus 19:13 defraud SACTAB 71-2).