Vegetarianism October 11, 2009
Posted by qvashty in religion, religious curiosities, vegetarianism.trackback
There was a story in the Times about a ruling on Shabbos elevators:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/nyregion/10elevator.html?em
And one by Jonathan Safran Foer on vegetarianism:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-t.html?ref=magazine
It is likely that you may have seen these. I have to say that I loved the way Safran Foer ended his piece. He is trying to figure out how, after he and his wife examined their values and decided to raise their children vegetarian, they could still have a culinary bond with his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who used to clip coupons for food she’d never eat, and always made chicken with carrots.
“Even at the worst times, there were good people, too. Someone taught me to tie the ends of my pants so I could fill the legs with any potatoes I was able to steal. I walked miles and miles like that, because you never knew when you would be lucky again. Someone gave me a little rice, once, and I traveled two days to a market and traded it for some soap, and then traveled to another market and traded the soap for some beans. You had to have luck and intuition.
“The worst it got was near the end. A lot of people died right at the end, and I didn’t know if I could make it another day. A farmer, a Russian, God bless him, he saw my condition, and he went into his house and came out with a piece of meat for me.”
“He saved your life.”
“I didn’t eat it.”
“You didn’t eat it?”
“It was pork. I wouldn’t eat pork.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“What, because it wasn’t kosher?”
“Of course.”
“But not even to save your life?”
“If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”
I find the abstinence from pork to be as empty of a value as the Shabbos elevator concept and the whole lot of rituals that religions have come up with. But I wonder if it would have been as easy for me to become a vegetarian had I not started out in life with the obsessive-compulsive eating disorder that is OJ kashrus. I check food labels, get grossed out by meat cooties, ask annoying questions to waiters, warn my hosts ahead of time, and have trouble travelling sometimes. But that doesn’t seem nearly as difficult- socially or at the supermarket- as it was to keep kosher. What is different about it?
- It does not prevent me from breaking bread with people who do not share my diet. Kashrus as we know it is designed to isolate the Jewish people from sharing bread and wine (or in today’s terms, packaged foods) with outsiders.
- I can buy bulk and packaged foods based on the label, not on the authority of a rabbinic cartel. On the other hand, while it might be different in the UK, there’s no vegetarian certification in the country- and I often turn down kosher products, such as Breyer’s yogurt, because of the ingredient list.
- “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.” Wise words indeed. But in the case of vegetarianism, we get our humanity from an ethical practice; in the case of kashrus, from an arbitrary ritual practice. Jews don’t feel bad for the pig. I feel bad and grossed out when I see a dead body at the dinner table.
The bad thing about keeping kosher growing up is that I can’t shake the cootie factor. If somebody has a hamburger and fries on the same plate, I won’t nibble the fries. If I accidentally eat meat, I throw up. I am uncomfortable with people bringing meat into my house. I get nervous when I think people might mix up the serving utensils or when they clink the food onto their plates with full contact. This is a social problem that was lessened during the kosher years because an OJ is hardly ever in mixed company with food.
A quibble.
> in the case of vegetarianism, we get our humanity from an ethical practice
I think vegetarianism would be more a matter of morals than ethics. And of course kashrus has nothing to do with either morality or humanism (is that like vegetarianism?) except insofar as one considers following the mitzvos to be morally imperative.
You really get physically sick when you eat meat? So interesting, the way our perceptions affect us.
Its strange. Personally, I’d eat pretty much anything as long as it tastes good. But my wife won’t eat tongue because, “eew, it’s a tongue.” Yet she has no problem with any other part of the cow. Is that what it is for you? The idea of eating an animal is icky? Or is it the pain caused the animal, or some combination of the two?
That’s a fair criticism. For educational reasons not relevant here, I have trouble keeping morals and ethics straight in conversation. I think I found myself thinking of morals as “don’t commit adultery on your husband who left you as an agunah” and so started using ethics to describe right and wrong. But I know it’s not correct.
I gradually phased out meat as a teenager because of rational consideration of right and wrong. This led to more and more visceral disgust as time passed.
One thing to ask is how much of a “meat cooties” you have. My impression is that vegetarians who grew up keeping kosher are much more likely to be uncomfortable with only minor connections to meat (such as being served witha untensil just used to serve meat) where as vegetarians who don’t have that background are generally (but not always) less strict.
Yes, that describes my meat cooties. The utensil thing is very socially awkward, to the point that I wish it weren’t so, but the reaction is visceral.
I think that a strict OCD kosher upbringing may have influenced this, although I see some other vegetarians have the same problem. And of course, many don’t.
I have a friend who was raised vegetarian (she is of another ethnicity) and became vegan- she has a similar reaction to utensils when it comes to meat, but is not so upset if the spoon touches a dairy food.