On Cud and Cloven Hooves

Reflections on Kosher Law

Kosher Law, and Why I Follow It

I want to be careful with how I handle this topic. My relationship with kosher law (collectively known as kashrut) is multilayered, and I want to be sensitive to the many different ways that other people relate to Jewish dietary rituals and regulations. While I have Jewish ancestry (matrilineally, no less), I can only with great stretching of terms be understood as “a Jew.” I’m a practicing Christian, with unknown (at least 4) generations between me and my most recently practicing Jewish ancestor. As such, I recognize that the line between “getting in touch with my cultural inheritance” and cultural appropriation is fuzzy at best. Any attempts on my part to engage with Jewish tradition are not an effort to pick up the kind of social currency that is at times associated with being a member of a cultural, religious, or ethnic minority. Rather, my goal has been to grow in intuitive understanding, deepen my connection to my own faith’s history, and develop a mindfulness of the connection between the spiritual and the mundane.

Specifically, I want to separate myself from the contingent of Christianity that acts as if there’s some magic boon placed on those who practice random aspects of Jewish tradition. I’ve seen more than enough Christians blowing shofars in hopes that it’ll get their prayers answered faster. This misses the point of Jewish practices, treats GOD like He can be fooled by simple play-acting, and also, it’s just weird. Tzitzit aren’t magic talismans, phylacteries are (in my opinion) an overly literalistic interpretation of a hyperbolic metaphor, and carving Deuteronomy 6:4-5 into your doorframe isn’t going to mysteriously make your boss favor you at work. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 is pointing to Jeremiah 31:33; that is, these specific, tangible practices are given in the Torah for the purpose of shaping our hearts through repeated rituals and life patterns. To the best of your ability, understand why the Scriptures say what they say, and discern what aligning yourself with the will of GOD as described in them looks like in your context. Which brings us back to kosher law: why does the Bible say to avoid seething a kid goat in its mother’s milk and how does this point us to GOD? Why can we eat cattle but not swine? Why can we not eat blood? (Perhaps a better question than the last one, however, would be, “Why would someone want to?”)

Ultimately, I believe that the guidance for kosher eating was given to us for a reason. GOD certainly did not instruct Israel on what and what not to eat for lack of other laws. Rather, I believe that rightly understood and internalized, kosher laws (even when not necessarily practiced to their fullest extent) are a way to properly orient oneself in the world and live into a brighter vision of a flourishing world. Kashrut seeks not to constrict and burden, but to reveal and liberate the one doing the eating as well as the source of food. Kosher law instructs us on how to relate to our food in a way that dignifies and values life. Animals to be eaten must be slaughtered in a particular way that both minimizes suffering and preserves the creature’s dignity. Their throat must be slit cleanly and quickly with a special knife. An animal cannot be slain on the same day as its offspring. One cannot eat the fruit of a tree for the first three years after it is planted; it is to be allowed time to flourish for flourishing’s sake, without immediately being reduced to an asset for economic production. Specific to produce that was grown in the land of Israel are particular rules regarding tithes, redemption prices, and disposal, all with the aim of orienting the consumer into a mindset of reliance upon GOD for our needs. Kosher law equips us to see both food and ourselves as parts of GOD’s good Creation, and part of an ordered world in which there truly is enough.

How I Approach Kosher Law

Over the years, I have for stints of time (usually in the range of weeks, up to a month) practiced kosher dietary law. However, starting on September 15th of last year, I have been doing my best to remain faithful to kashrut, with the exception of certain things that, based on my context, I think would go against the spirit of the Law. The first two commands that I have used as guiding principles are that I am to love my GOD and love my neighbor. These perhaps don’t seem all that dietary in nature, but I believe that, in the words of Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine.’” Similarly, if “on these two commandments hang all the Law and Prophets,” then every individual statute of the Law should be viewed through the lens of fulfilling the commandments of Love. The Laws are given for a reason, and while the violation of some commands can be clearly understood as violations of Love (looking at you, “don’t murder”), others require some more hermeneutical creativity. Thus in this way, even the Law is an invitation into acts of Creation; we are called not to be mindless drones, but creative co-laborers, spreading the light and life of the Kingdom in our own unique contexts - even thousands of miles and thousands of years removed from their original authoring.

With that said, one of the beautiful things about kosher law is its complexity and the millennia of communal discussion we get to listen in on. There’s rarely (if ever) any lone interpretation for any given clause of the law. Understanding ritual law is like visiting an archaeological site. You want to check out a single shard of pottery but find yourself digging through layers and layers, millennia’s worth of history and culture that add to and complexify the meaning of what you expected to be a simple, straightforward investigation. Rabbi Akiva says this, Rabbi Gamaliel says that; Rabbi Eliezer says this oven is ritually pure, Rabbi Joshua says it’s not. Even the interpretations have interpretations. Torah shouldn’t be understood as clear-cut, black-and-white statutory legal-isms. Rather, it’s best understood as a way of life. Torah isn’t known so much as it is lived. Of course, living according to Torah is greatly helped by one’s knowledge of Torah, but the knowledge itself isn’t the point. This might be a product of our inherited Western mindset, but I know that the Christian traditions I’ve spent my whole life in place great value on our ability to systematize and untangle proof texts and regulations from each other. We inherited a beautifully convoluted body of Scripture, and the spiderweb-like tangle of it all makes us a bit uncomfortable. Our first instinct is to put on our latex gloves and use our sanitized scalpels to dissect books into individual chapters, paragraphs, and verses. We pin individual clauses down like butterflies in a display case. This can be, of course, a worthy pursuit; knowledge of the Scriptures is one of the purest and highest things to desire. However, we must be careful that in our pursuit of knowledge, we do not kill what we’re trying to study. Butterflies are easier to study when they’re pinned down and stretched across a board, but while they’re like this, we’ll never truly know them - how they fly, how they eat, how they dance. Something is lost. As uncomfortable as it can be, we have to at times allow the Scriptures to teach us in all their confusing complexity. The claim that “the Bible is clear” fails to explain why there are hundreds (and counting) of Christian and Jewish denominations; even the Scriptures interpret each other in varying ways (the New Testament authors refer to various prophecies from Isaiah and lines from the Psalms as pointing to different truths; this doesn’t mean one is right or wrong, but rather that reality is complex). If faith without works is dead, doctrine without faith or works must be even worse off. The Scriptures are alive and active; from them, we can find life anew, if we don’t kill them first.

I am a Christian, confessing the creeds of Nicaea, Athanasius, and the Apostles, respecting the New Testament, and (at the time of writing) serving as an office-bearer of the Church. I do not identify as Jewish except in ancestry. I hold in both hands the release of the halakha from Acts 10:9-16 and the upholding of the Law from Matthew 5:17-20. It’s in this sometimes murky middle space that I follow kosher law. I aim to not call unclean what GOD has called clean and to not set aside even the least of His commandments. Not the slightest stroke of a pen comes short of eternity in Torah, which the Rabbis called “black fire written on white fire.” Even the whitespace between the letters has something to teach us. I don’t need to understand the Torah to learn something from it. Contrary to the way we (or at least I) usually approach things, some teachings must be first followed before they can be learned from. Think Mr. Miyagi: “Wax on (don’t eat pork)”, “Wax off (don’t mix meat and dairy).” Looking at an acorn, you wouldn’t guess the kind of tree it can grow into until decades after it’s been buried and forgotten.

A Few Case Studies

At this point, it might be helpful to actually examine some parts of kosher law, and I’ll do my best to explain my own understanding of them. I can claim no expertise when it comes to ritualistic legal matters, and on many of these, I may very well be in the minority. But, as a friend of mine likes to say, “This isn’t my first time standing in disagreement with the majority of first-century Jewish rabbis.”

If there’s one statute that anyone knows about kosher law, it’s the prohibition of eating pork. More precisely, kosher law states that land animals are kosher if and only if they both have split (cloven) hooves and chew the cud. Why does it matter whether an animal is a ruminating even-toed ungulate? My honest answer is that I’m not entirely sure. I have, however, a few roughly-shaped thoughts on the matter, which I’ll try to communicate. One common perspective is that in the older days, back when people were more closely connected to their sources of food, there was a sense that “you are what you eat” applied to more than just your body, but also your character. For example, if you ate cloven-hoofed animals, this could be seen to symbolize that you live your life with a division between left and right, right and wrong. Followers of kosher law essentially absorb that division into themselves. Division, in the sense of discernment, is a theme within Torah. The same word (בָּדל, “badal”) used in Genesis 1:4 when GOD divides the light from the dark and in Genesis 1:6-7 when GOD separates the waters above from those below is also used in Leviticus 10:10 and 11:47 when explaining the role of priests to make a distinction between clean and unclean, the holy and profane. Likewise, chewing the cud has often been used to describe thoughtful meditation. Even in English, the word “ruminate” means both to think deeply about something and to chew cud. The word used in Psalm 1:2 for one who meditates (הָגָה, hagah) on the Law of the LORD literally means a low rumbling or muttering, often used to describe the sound animals make when they chew their food. We should always have the Torah in our mouths, muttering its teachings to ourselves, dwelling on them, saturating our minds with Law until they drip like a sponge filled with wine. Furthermore, just like a ruminant creature will regurgitate its food over and over, so ought we make a habit of revisiting long-held beliefs again and again. Perhaps our views will shift and refine as we process them further; perhaps they will remain the same, and we will be able to glean new insights from old roots. The creatures we too often reduce to “mere” sources of food have much to teach us. Let your food nourish not only your body, but also your mind, character, and soul.

This idea of our food affecting us holistically and spiritually, not just physically, can have some interesting implications for the Church - especially in terms of the Eucharist. I was raised in a tradition that heavily emphasized the symbolic nature of Communion. We don’t believe that the bread literally becomes the flesh of our LORD, or that the thimbleful of grape juice turns into a cocktail of erythrocytes, plasma, and platelets (oh my). Besides, blood is perhaps the least kosher thing someone can consume. Later in life, I’ve chosen (or has it chosen me?) to participate in a more Reformed church. In this tradition, there is a greater emphasis on the “real presence of Christ” in the Eucharist. We believe that while the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine, Christ is very much present in and through our sharing in the gifts of His table. We really, truly consume Christ; we taste and see that He is good. As we do so, we pray that we may become more like Him and that our Church may more closely resemble His body and Kingdom on Earth. From this angle, the idea of eating only cloven-hooved cud-chewers as a symbol of turning us into the kind of people we should be is not so strange. It’s perhaps only a few steps away in terms of metaphor from the very same thing that many Christians believe about Communion.

Another perspective on why kosher law restricts the consumption of land animals to only those with cloven hooves and a penchant for chewing cud has to do with order. Specifically, GOD created the world in a particular way, and that way is full of order, structure, and logic. This is perhaps more obvious within the limits on the other kinds of animals that can and can’t be consumed. When it comes to sea creatures, only those that have fins and scales are kosher. Salmon, tuna, bass, herring, carp, and more are kosher. Shrimp, catfish, crabs, lobsters, and octopuses are not. Why? One explanation is that kosher law tries to line up our dietary categories with the taxonomical categories we observe in nature. When you think of “fish,” odds are you imagine something with fins and scales. Other aquatic creatures, like squid, shellfish, dolphins, whales, and frogs don’t fit into this category. They exist outside of the archetypical boxes into which we place things and that are described in Genesis 1, and thus should be avoided, at least at mealtime. They’re not wrong, evil, or broken in some way - they are instead beautiful manifestations of GOD’s abundant creativity! Nonetheless, we might do well to be reluctant to consume them into our own bodies. Likewise, when you think of a “bird,” what comes to mind? Likely, a small-ish, feathery seed-eater. Interestingly, rather than list what birds are kosher, Torah only lists twenty-four examples of what is not kosher. These are mostly birds of prey and carrion birds, which are outliers in the aviary kingdom. We are to eat only those birds that more cleanly fit into our taxonomical category of “bird.”

The tricky thing with this perspective is mostly its inherent fuzziness and subjectivity. Nonetheless, even if this view doesn’t explain the grounds for kosher regulations as cleanly as we might like, there are still some helpful things to learn from if you meditate on and internalize them. This angle on kosher law turns our diets from a mundane thing we do to stay alive into an active participation in the very ordering of the universe. Our food is important, and our bodies mean something. It matters what we put into them; matter matters. Man lives not on bread alone, but on the very Word of GOD, the rhemati Theou; we are sustained by the ordering life force of GOD that is active in our world.

This “order-telic” perspective of kosher law can be used to make sense of some other parts of kashrut. One of the statutes that I have spent the most time meditating on is that which says “You shall not seethe a kid¹ in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21). One of the most common explanations for this thrice given commandment is to warn against partaking in pagan customs. Rabbi Maimonides, a very famous and respected Jewish commentator of Torah, said it this way: “As for the prohibition against eating meat in milk, it is in my opinion not improbable that … idolatry has something to do with it. Perhaps such food was eaten at one of the ceremonies of their cult or at one of their festivals… According to me, this is the most probable view regarding the reason for this prohibition; but I have not seen this set down in any of the books of the Sabians that I have read.”² There is also archaeological evidence for ancient pagan rituals involving the cooking of a kid in milk as a way to get a good harvest. This would explain why all three instances of this prohibition in Torah are in the immediate context of rules for harvest time. Torah states that the first fruits of the land belong to GOD, with the understanding that this is because all blessing comes from Him. Thus, we are to give the first fruits of our bounty to the priests, who then will take some for themselves (since they don’t have the same territorial allotments as the rest of Israel) and distribute the rest among the poor and disadvantaged. We are to trust in GOD for our harvest, not in magic rituals to unseeing gods.

Another view, however, is that this command also has to do with keeping life and death separate. Milk nurtures life, and it is cruel to cook a young creature in that which was meant for its nourishment. A great deal of Torah can be seen through this ordering lens, including the purity laws surrounding blood, emissions, diseases, touching the dead, and more. Life and death are to be respected and kept separate. Most who follow kosher law refrain from mixing any meat with any dairy and wait anywhere from one to six hours between eating meat and eating dairy. Personally, I have interpreted this command more narrowly, and have refrained only from eating the dairy products of a given species with the meat of the same species. I don’t have cheese from a cow on a beef burger, but I would be fine having goat cheese on a beef burger. I am fine with having cheese of any sort on a chicken sandwich, but I extend the life-source principle to eggs and don’t mix anything containing eggs with my chicken. Recently, however, I have become increasingly convinced of the more traditional approach, and may soon stop mixing dairy (and eggs) with meat entirely.

This just skims the surface of kosher law. As I wrote earlier, there is much that can only be understood after having more fully engaged in the practice oneself. I have done my best to describe some of my own perspectives, as well as those that are perhaps more widely or traditionally held than my own. I am no expert in Jewish halakhic law, so if this is of interest to you, I urge you to read up on your own. There are plenty of reputable resources out there, and the Talmud has a great deal of writing on these matters.

Learning from Kosher Law

There is one other major component in my own practice of kosher law. As I stated earlier, the lens through which I interpret all law - kosher or not - is that of loving GOD and neighbor. If I believe that strict obedience to a particular point of kashrut in a particular situation would impede my ability to love and fellowship with either GOD or those around me, I try to find a more internalized or contemplative way to respect kosher law in that circumstance. For example, there are times when I’m the guest to a wonderful meal, and there are no kosher options - or more often, there is no way for me to respectfully be selective in what I eat without making the host feel bad about their cooking or about their ability to provide something that I can comfortably eat. Personally, I would rather break kosher law than inconvenience or cause discomfort to a friend.

I find that kosher law provides a useful corrective to the way I see my own dependence upon and relationship with GOD and Creation. Christians have connected meals with spiritual practices since the beginning. Whether it’s the Eucharist, or prayers before meals, or relying on GOD to provide our daily bread, food is a way for us to fellowship with each other, enjoy GOD’s abundant grace, and depend on His Goodness, all in one. Kosher law is simply a more statutory framework for fleshing out this kind of imagery. I have found it meaningful to engage with this ancient tradition, but I don’t urge any other Christians to follow this path unless they feel that they would get something out of it. I’m still learning about it and from it. As I said earlier about my views on meat and dairy evolving, the way I perceive and practice kosher law is in perpetual development. I imagine that just as I have received different things from it at different points in my life, so would different people get different things from following kosher law. What a gift, then, that we have each other to learn from!

1. The word translated “kid” is often understood to refer to the young of any livestock, not just goats; this is also why often in the Scriptures, the wording is literally “kid of a goat,” rather than just “kid,” because you need to specify the species. Thus, this statute is broadly understood to prohibit the cooking of any young creature in its mother’s milk, not just when it comes to goats.

2. Guide for the Perplexed, Part III:48, Pines translation