A very interesting piece on NYT about how Kosher food changes in the States.
"Perhaps surprisingly, more than 70 percent of kosher-food consumers in the United States are not observant Jews; they choose kosher products because they view them as safer or rely on the strict ingredient labeling for their food allergies or other religious concerns."
"Jews no longer know that their meat is kosher because they know the person who killed it but because of the symbol that appears on the shrink-wrap at the grocery store."
(This is a bit sad but it is not an isolated event. We also check symbols for "certified organics".)
"In some American Jewish households, the raid on Agriprocessors started a deep conversation about the very meaning of kosher: is it simply about cutting an animal’s neck and butchering it in a specific way? Or is the ritual also meant to minimize an animal’s pain or to bring sanctity to its death? Does it matter how the animal was treated when it was alive? How about the workers who processed it? Is reverence for life possible in a factory-farming setting?"
"Some in the ethical-kashrut movement describe it as a return to the traditional values of kashrut: community-based supervision of the food supply, reverence for agriculture and animal husbandry and attention to detail...But some Orthodox rabbis say that labeling kosher foods or restaurants according to an additional set of standards would inappropriately redefine kashrut and that it grafts trendy values and ideas onto a practice whose real purpose is mysterious and unknowable."
“In some profound way, kashrut is not rational,” Waskow told me. “That may even be part of it. The idea may be just to cause you to pause before you put food in your mouth. To stop and ask a question.”
(Make a lot of sense to me. )
HT: MM
2 comments:
Thanks for posting. I read the whole article and it was very interesting. Here in Israel there is a certification system for restaurants for work standards (as many workers are underage or underpaid migrants or illegal residents). As correctly stated in the article, the treatment of the animal does not technically render it not Kosher, but by buying meat from inhumane farming, you are in fact causing the system to continue.
There is a rule in the Torah that prohibits "putting a stumbling block in front of the blind" which is generally taken in its wider meaning of doing something that causes somebody to unwittingly do a bad action or even to put a temptation in front of them that will cause them to fall. Money is the biggest temptation so buying factory farmed meat could be (and probably should) be construed under this.
However the world being imperfect the temptation in front of us consumers to save money is too great to cause us to stop putting the temptation in front of the producers to keep producing and so on and so forth ad infinitum...
yes, it is a vicious cycle...how to break it? to buy from somebody I know, or even better to grow our own,seems to be the way out. That is why I am into farmer's market and growing my own veggie...
Post a Comment