Kosher Slaughter and Why Keep Kosher

Kosher Slaughter and Why Keep Kosher

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Kosher Slaughter and Why Keep Kosher

Rabbi Steven Morgen, Congregation Beth Yeshurun, January 29, 2016

You may remember that several years ago, in 2008, one of the two major Kosher Meat Packaging plants in the United States was raided by Federal authorities. The Company, Agriprocessors, which was located in Postville, Iowa, was found to have employed underage workers, and over 400 illegal workers were arrested. The owner was convicted on 86 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. The company went bankrupt.

It was a huge disgrace and embarrassment for the kosher meat industry. People who believed that the work “Kosher” stood for honesty, quality, and “obeying a Higher Authority,” were dismayed and disillusioned.

Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, here is “the rest of the story.” In 2009, Agriprocessorswas purchased by a Jewish Canadian billionaire named Hershey Friedman. He renamed it Agri Star Meat and Poultry and invested millions and millions of dollars into it.

Agri Star now “uses the government’s E-Verify program to ensure its employeesare legal and has redesigned the Postville plant to improve efficiency and animal welfare.In 2010, Agri Star met with PETA several times and adopted six of the seven animal-welfarerecommendations made by the animal-rights group …. The recommendations includedgetting the approval of renowned livestock expert Temple Grandin and giving a Grandin representative24/7 access to the plant.Agri has [thereby] minimized factors that could distress the animals before slaughtering, reduced the time the cattleare restrained and has an outside auditor visit each week to assess compliance …. In a recentaudit, fewer than 2 percent of animals took more than 30 seconds to lose consciousness after [Shehitah] – [which is] excellent by industry standards….”[1]

Why did Hershey Friedman invest millions of dollars into this business? Is he making a profit on his investment? In a recent interview, Friedman explained: “At the time there were two main players in the kosher meat market: Rubashkin [who owned Agriprocessors] and Alle Processing. After Rubashkin was pulled under, the rabbis called me and said we can’t let one Jewish religious company control the kosher beef and poultry market in North America. So they asked me to buy it and get it going again. It wasn’t done for financial purposes, it was done to really cater to the Jewish community. During the time Rubashkin was closed, the price of beef roughly doubled. After we acquired it, it came right back down. Did I know it was going to be such a headache to get it to a properly running company? No. It was a very long haul and a lot of money. … It’s become a chesed [a charity]. It’s not losing money, but it’s not a business I’m in to make lots of money.”

All of us who keep kosher owe a major “thank you” to Mr. Friedman for all of the effort and resources he put into making Agri Star a well-run kosher meat packing facility.

But I raise this subject tonight, not just because the JTA just published this interview with Mr. Friedman this past week, but also because keeping kosher has recently taken on a new dimension in our own home. But before I explain our new dilemma at home, let’s review why anyone should keep kosher at all in the first place.

Many people assume that Kosher food is just healthier. Pork, as we know, is high in fat and cholesterol, and used to be a common source of trichinosis disease. But the truth is that there are a lot of kosher foods that use unhealthy fats, preservatives, and other ingredients that we now know are not all that good for us. Not that kosher food is any more likely to contain these elements than non-kosher foods. But they are not necessarily going to be any less likely to contain them, either.

So what is the purpose of eating kosher food?

The Bible, I believe, is fairly clear on this, but you have to pay very close attention to certain verses in Genesis, Deuteronomy and Isaiah.

In Genesis, when God first creates Adam and Eve, God charges them with ruling over the Animal Kingdom. But, God also tells them that they are only to eat fruit and vegetables. Check it out. You can read it yourself in Chapter 1 of Genesis. God repeats this vegetarian diet when Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden in Chapter 3 of Genesis.

But then, in Chapter 9 of Genesis, after the Great Flood, when Noah gets of the boat, God tells Noah that now humans will be allowed to eat meat along with the fruit and vegetables that were already permitted. Verses 3-4 read: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green plants, I give you all these. You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it.” And then God goes on to warn Noah that killing another human being is strictly forbidden.

So, why the change of plan? Why did God originally plan for humans to be vegetarian and then – after the Flood – allow us to eat meat, but not to kill another human being? The answer would seem to be that God just did not realize how aggressive, violent and deadly we humans could be. Once he saw the ferocious viciousness of the human race before the Flood, God decided He had to wipe out all of Creation and start over with the most peaceful, kind and honest person He could find – Noah and his family.

Once they were off the boat and ready to repopulate the world, God wanted to ensure that Humans would not revert to savagery again. So God gave humans permission to be violent and deadly with other animals – to kill them for food. But absolutely forbad us to kill another human being. And while we could kill an animal for food, we were not to eat the blood, because the blood represented the life of the animal. Our Sages understood this to also prohibit torturing animals when we kill them.

Finally, we are all familiar with the vision of the prophet Isaiah, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf, the beast of prey, and fatling together, with a boy to herd them.” That is found in chapter 11 of Isaiah. But most of us are not as familiar with the very next verse which explains why the wolf will dwell with the lamb so peacefully. This next verse reads: “The cow and bearshall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.” In other words, even predatory animals in this ideal world of the future will be vegetarian! If they will be vegetarian, then surely humans – whom God originally intended to be vegetarian – will also give up meat.

So, what the Bible seems to be telling us is that ideally (in the Garden of Eden, that is in Paradise) we were vegetarian. In the ideal future of the Messianic era, we will once again be vegetarian. And only during this in between time – in the real world that we all live in – are we allowed to eat meat at all. If so, then we can now understand the laws of kashrut in the proper context.

When God created a special relationship with Moses and the Israelites, part of this special relationship involved taking back most of the permission that he gave Noah (and everyone else) to eat all kinds of meat. That’s why, for instance, in Deuteronomy where the kosher laws are repeated it says: “you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: the Lord your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be His treasured people. You shall not eat anything abhorrent.” Part of our special relationship to God is defined by the restrictions God placed on eating animals. Only a small group of animals that live on land are permitted: only the animals that chew their cud and have split hooves. Only a small group of animals that live in water can be eaten: only those with fins and scales. And only a small group of animals that fly in the air can be eaten.

The major rules for kashrut drastically limit the kinds of animals we are allowed to eat. Then, we need to kill most animals in a way that is both humane and drains the blood quickly since we are not allowed to eat blood. And finally, we are obsessive compulsive about separating meat and dairy foods. Why? Because, I believe, milk is the ultimate life-giving source of nourishment a mother feeds her children. And meat is, after all, a dead animal. We therefore separate these two categories of food because they represent polar opposites: life and death.

In other words, the laws of kashrut are designed to teach us about the sanctity of life – all life, including the lives of animals. By eating kosher we are supposed to remind ourselves that while we enjoy the taste of meat, an animal gave its life for our enjoyment. God permitted us to do this – in a very restricted way – but even as we do it, we must remember that taking a life (even an animal life) is not a trivial act.

By the same token, someone who is a strict vegetarian, is automatically keeping kosher. Because vegetarianism was and is the Biblical ideal.

Which brings me to the current dilemma in our family. Our son Daniel has decided to become a vegetarian. We do still eat meat sometimes, particularly on Shabbat or when we go out to Genesis Steakhouse. (Daniel doesn’t, of course, but Diane and I still do.) But I have to say that Daniel’s decision has made me take more seriously the idea that we ought to be vegetarian ourselves. And who knows, maybe we eventually will.

Being vegetarian provides several additional benefits:

Many processed meats (including deli and hotdogs) are really not so good for you.

If you want to keep kosher, the cost of kosher meat – even with the new Agri Star plant on line – is still much more expensive than non-kosher meat.

There is no need to have separate dishes, pots and pans.

It is environmentally better to eat vegetarian because the amount of water and other resources needed to feed animals for meat in order to then feed humans is many times greater than what would be required to feed human beings directly with fruit, grains and vegetables.

You don’t have to be concerned with how the animals were raised, how they were killed, how they were treated, whether artificial hormones were used, or overuse of antibiotics, and all of the other issues in raising animals and processing meat.

But, if you are going to eat meat, I think the rules of kashrut are even more relevant today than ever before. After all, our ancestors often raised the animals themselves and took them to the butcher for slaughter. They were very aware that an animal died for their pleasure of eating meat. After all they had a relationship with the animal. Today, we buy a package of meat in the supermarket and it doesn’t even look like an animal. By keeping kosher we have a ritual that reminds us every time we go to the supermarket to buy meat that what we are going to eat was once an animal. It reminds us of the sanctity of all life, even animal life. And thereby we elevate the act of eating, which all animals do, to a conscious and reverent act.

Shabbat Shalom!

[1] This and the following paragraph are cited from