Constructing a Life of Meaning, Part One: Food
Rosh HaShanah: September 27, 2003/5764
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

One of my favorite passages in the Talmud is found in the tractate Kedushin in the Talmud Yerusalmi. It states when we stand before the Holy One at the final judgement, we will have to give account for every permissible pleasure in this world that we could have enjoyed and did not. What a great religion; as long as certain pleasures are permitted, it's our obligation to fully enjoy the wonderful food, drink (and more) that we encounter in life.

I like this teaching a lot. It helps me see my personal inclination towards celebration and exuberant living not so much as indulgence as enthusiastically embracing the permitted pleasures the world has to offer.

Still, I know that Jewish tradition would move us towards moderation and I've always considered one reason that I keep kosher as a way to regulate and moderate my tendency to overindulge, to reign in my eyes, that are often too big for my stomach. In America, our culture constantly teaches that you should be able to have whatever you want, whenever you want it, an attitude that I think is both harmful to the individual and society, not to mention to the planet as a whole. I find it helpful to eat within an ordered system that places certain limits on my approach to food.

Food is problematic for many people on campus. For my grandparents in Rumania, food was problematic because they didn't have enough of it. At college, it's problematic for other reasons: people eat too much or too little, people are "too busy to eat" or rush so quickly that eating becomes an afterthought, an act of snatch and grab. Many people cultivate little appreciation that we are the small group of people on the planet who actually have enough food to eat. This morning, as part of my approach this year to talking about how to integrate holiness into our everyday lives, I've decided to talk about a Jewish approach to food. I am convinced that keeping kosher is, or should be, about much more than what we eat. It should be also be about how we eat and how we approach the entire act of eating as well.

Let me begin by sharing some personal history. I grew up in a committed Jewish home where we never kept kosher. We not only ate everything but made fun of Jews who seemed to care more about what they ate than what they did for the Jewish community or for Israel. Now I live in a house that has never seen a pepperoni pizza. McDonalds has never crossed our door. We not only have two sets of dishes, we have two dishwashers. We're into this. I hardly think of myself as a religious fanatic, although some of my friends, Jewish and non-Jewish, clearly do. Yet, keeping kosher gradually has become a very important part of my life, a continuing way that I define my religious, cultural and spiritual identity. Like most serious commitments, in my life, keeping kosher is a work in progress. I would like to tell you a bit about why I do this and the effect it's had on my life.

Of course, keeping kosher is about more than regulating our desires. For me, a person with a vegetarian mindset but carnivorous tastes, the laws of sh'hitah, kosher slaughtering, are a way to negotiate eating meat, and still recognize that we are obligated to minimize an animal's suffering. Ideally this commitment to an animal being killed as quickly and painlessly as possible should help develop our sense of compassion. The story is told that the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hassidim, was a shohet, a ritual slaughterer. A certain man wanted to learn exactly how the Baal Shem did shehitah. So he read everything written about this and he studied and finally he found one of the Baal Shem's students and asked: can you watch me do this and tell me if I am doing it exactly as the master would. The man watched him and said, "Oh you did everything technically correct except for one thing." What's that, asked the man. The old man answered, "Before the Baal Shem would slaughter an animal, he would pause and wet the knife with his tears." Certainly this approach would mean that caring about kosher meat would also mean that we cared about how animals were raised and the importance of showing compassion to all living things.

The oral law has taken the essential injunction not to cook a kid in its mother's milk and made it much more complicated with the rules about separate sets of dishes. Still, I try to remember that this act, actually cooking a baby calf or goat in the milk of it's own mother seemed conceptually cruel to the rabbis and the laws about not mixing milk and meat are essentially about teaching the value of compassion as well.

There's another way that I use keeping kosher in my personal practice and this has to do with remembering my religious and cultural identity. Now, I believe that the ultimate goal is for people to transcend religious, cultural and national differences and see themselves as citizens of the world. Still, I strongly believe that the only way we can aspire to the universal is by first accepting and celebrating our particular identity. But we Jews have a problem. It's a good problem but a problem none-the-less. We are now living in one of those rare times in history when Jews can "pass" and not be known as Jewish unless we assert it ourselves. It's easy for many Jews to simply forget who they are or say they will pay attention to their Jewishness some time later in their lives. By keeping kosher, I am constantly reminded of who I am, my history, my culture, as well as essential Jewish values that I'll talk about in moment. If I eat according to Jewish tradition, at least three times a day, and often more, because I eat non-stop, I have to think about my Jewishness and I like how that brings a certain historical and cultural richness into my everyday life.

Still, while these issues, regulating how we eat, showing compassion, affirming our identity, are all important. I want to raise a number of other values that people often overlook when they think about keeping kosher. In Parshat Re'eh, one of the two parshiot that contain the laws of kashrut, (Sh'mini, Lev. 11) the Torah does not frame these commandments in the context of curbing desires or teaching compassion. Instead, it puts the laws of kashrut in the much stronger language of blessings and curses. Observe these laws and blessing will come to your life. Reject them and you will be cursed. What is the Torah trying to teach us about how we approach our food that can bring blessings to our lives or how can the transgression of these commandments curse us?

First, I want to mention an obvious but central truth about food and blessing in our lives: It's not only what you eat, it's how you eat it that transforms the act of eating in a blessing. Eating becomes more meaningful by what anthropologists would call the "framing" of the act, how we mark it and call attention to it. In our tradition, we frame eating with a bracha, taking a moment to acknowledge, "Oh my God, I, my family, my friends, we are actually in that privileged group of people in the world, in our country, in our city, who have enough food to eat. Thank you." There's a passage in the Talmud in Brachot 35a that reconciles the contradictory verses "L'Adoshem haaretz u'm'loah" (The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof) and "HaShamayim, Shayim L'Adoshem v'haaretz natan l'v'nai adam." (The heavens belong to God while the earth is given to human beings) Rav Levi teaches that before we say a bracha, the food belongs to God. Once we acknowledge that and express our thankfulness, the food is ours to enjoy. The gemorah teaches that eating without a blessing is essentially stealing and I would say, when we choose to eat that way, we curse ourselves with a selfish, privileged mindset. While brachot, blessings, are one way to transform the act of eating, the parsha opens other possibilities for bringing the way we eat into the realm of blessing as well.

In Chapter 16, the Torah goes on to command us to observe Passover and quickly, that observance turns out to be about how we eat during the festival. We are told to eat only matza L'ma'an tizkor et yom tzetkha me'aretz Mitzraim kol yamei ha'yekha" "so we can remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live (Deut. 16 3). Food counters the curse of forgetting who we are and where we came from. If we think about it in the intended way, for a week out of the year, what we eat reminds us of one of the most important parts of Jewish history: Once we were slaves, but now we are free. We're reminded to remember that slavery still exists in the world and we, as Jews, know what that felt like and as long as people are still enslaved, we are never completely free. It is through food, that we are blessed with remembering our history, and we are reminded about an essential truth in the Jewish tradition, that redemption and freedom are possible and achievable.

A few verses further on in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to celebrate Shavuot, the barley harvest. But the text doesn't only say, bring in the harvest and celebrate; it stipulates a specific way to celebrate the festival. The verse reads: "V'samachta b'hagecha, ata u'vincha u'vitekha, v'avd'kha v'amatekha, v'halevi, v'hager v'hayatom v'ha'almana asher bish'a'rekha" "You shall rejoice in your festival, with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow in your communities." (16:14). The text could have just said, "v'samachta b'hagecha" Rejoice in the festival, enjoy its bounty" Instead it stipulates that our approach to celebration, to feasting on the bounty of the harvest, is about the broadest, most compassionate inclusion. It's not only about bringing our immediate family to the table. The right way to celebrate is to include those without parents, those without spouses, extending invitations to our tables across the lines of class (slaves) and even religion, to the stranger. This has important implications for how we think about who should sit at our tables when we eat. Even within our own communities, in our homes, in our apartments, in the dining hall, do we reach out to people who are lonely or going through a difficult time in their lives? To ask someone to sit down and eat with you can be an incredible gift that can literally transform their day.

The parsha goes on to say that on all the shalosh regalim, the harvest festivals when we are blessed with food, our approach should not be miserly but generous. When we are fortunate enough to have food, we should be eager to give some of it away and not appearing before God "reikam" (empty handed) (16:16). Just as God gives food to us, we become God-like by providing that food to others. This has many implications for how we approach food in our lives. Perhaps if you live in an apartment and everybody contributes to a kitty for food that people in the apartment might consider putting in a few extra dollars a week to donate to Oxfam or the Boston Food Bank or Mazon, a Jewish Approach to Hunger. What a strong statement for a group of people to make, to affirm our commitment as Jews to not only enjoy the bounty in the world, but make sure to give back so that others can enjoy it as well.

Perhaps these ideas make clearer what the "bracha and k'lalah," the blessing and the curse are in regards to how we eat in our lives. Perhaps the curse is treating food in a way that takes it for granted and in doing so, deadens us to the disparities in how food is distributed in the world. The curse is eating in a way that makes us forget our history, that is devoid of tradition, that isolates ourselves, and separates us from others. The blessing connected to food is consuming it in a way that increases our awe and wonder, connects us to our history and becomes the communal focus for celebration with a generous and inclusive community. If we approach food, and the way we eat, in this manner, then "v'hayita akh samei'ach" we will have "nothing but joy" (Deut. 16:15).

Rosh Hashana is a time when we begin again and we have a wonderful opportunity to rethink many aspects of our lives. When we think about how we eat, we can think about our identity, compassion, thankfulness, our connection to history, our connection to the people in our community, how we can have an impact on our broader society. How we approach food gives us an opportunity to bring meaning, to bring holiness into our lives every day. I hope this new year is a time for renewal, fulfillment and joy. B'taavon, Bon Appetit, Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah.