Reply to Reb “Factual Basis” on My Blog: Judaism: The Vegan Religion

Abi gezint, kinderlech.

A blogger who wrote a responsum to my first blog, “Judaism: The Vegan Religion”, in his blog “Meat Your G-d” by factualbasis, criticising it from various angles, seemed to be a little irritated by my arguments (maybe I got his goat), and even had to slip in some distortion of my positions, which I will attempt to clarify here.

Firstly, and a minor point, he claims that I implied that the B’rayshiyt, the First Book of the Testament, which the Gentiles refer to as “Genesis”, was written by a girl. I made no such implication, merely stating a view I had read, years previously, in an old copy of the LA Times, in which a professor at USC claimed that, in his opinion, he thought Genesis had been written by a woman, and giving his reasons which I thought at the time were interesting. I threw this in  just because it is so easily assumed (and I assumed it myself) that it was written by a man. It certainly seems a masculine, robust document to me, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that it was written by a woman. And to my anonymous critic, I would point out there is quite a difference between a girl and a woman, in case he hasn’t noticed. To say that I implied a girl wrote it, is a complete distortion of what I wrote in my blog.

Then the critic goes on to wonder how I can possibly say that Judaism is not a meat-eating religion, even encouraging its followers to eat meat, and also to wonder why didn’t G-d explicitly forbid it.

He seems to completely overlook the reasons I gave in my blog for meat-eating having been part of the religion in the past, and also to deny G-d explicitly forbade it, when that is exactly what He did do in B’rayshiyt. He listed specifically what was necessary for man to live in harmony with his laws, when he told Adam, “stick to the grass and tree fruits, these shall be to you for food”. But as I also pointed out, man in the Middle East didn’t know nutritional science, and so meat eating was anecdotally observed to keep people going into their 50’s and 60’s, and since the first law of Judaism was to be fruitful and multiply, these rules permitting meat were put into the rule book. In this historical sense, my critic, Reb “Factual Basis” — a strange name for a Reb I must say —is correct in that Judaism was historically a religion that permitted meat eating, and animal sacrifice. Remember though that this was after Noah, after G-d saw that man was not just that angel Adam, the seed of His consciousness, but also a conniving devil, who would do all kinds of nasty things for coins, and the things they bought. Remember these meat-eating laws are given in a time in Torah prior to the Messianic Age, or the Age of a Perpetual Sabbath. (Do you remember the saying that if there were two consecutive days that were the Sabbath, the Messiah will have come?) So just because these laws were back then, doesn’t mean they are the be-all and end-all of Judaism, and as we said, they were adopted most probably to ensure a nutritional basis for human survival in the desert before science brought the light of truth to help illuminate the traditional texts. Did not the Vilna Gaon say that every advance in science deepens our knowledge of Torah? How true, though we must always be a bit sceptical of every new “scientific breakthrough”, for a lot of them have been reversed.

This logical argument for why men ate meat in the old days and why it is permitted after Noah, is completely ignored in my critic’s hatchet piece.

Then he criticises my view that only a Jewish vegan can be a true Jew, except in the bloodline aspect. Yet bloodline is just as valid a reason as any other and not to be sneezed at, nor are we denying that person’s membership in the religion. Would my critic say that a secular Jew, or a Reform Jew, is not a Jew because they do not follow the Orthodox Laws to the letter? Should someone who “rounds the corners’ of his head, or shaves, should he be drummed out of Judaism?. I think not (but I don’t shave, so maybe it feels wickedly sinful). But what I meant was that to enter the deepest reaches of Judaism, one must be at least prepared to take the journey, and no Jew who is not a vegan, or at least a lacto-ovo-vegetarian which does not involve killing an animal (like not eating cheese containing rennet), can hope to attain to the compassion and friendliness to all living things that is necessary for that entry. A meat-eater lives in fear for he knows he has brought a horrible, yet unnecessary, end to a sensate creature that if it were he himself, and he were the victim,  he would cry out, “Please G-d not me. Why me?” Why, indeed, to bring such misery on such innocent creatures, who’ve never harmed you, and will warm to your hand at the slightest sign of affection. Those animals waited billions of years for their chance at life, and you steal it for a few meals you could have made out of kasha and nuts. I find the beings of most animals far more angelic that virtually all humans I meet. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Finally, Reb “Factual Basis”, exhorts me to open up the book and read, if G-d’s OK with it why shouldn’t I be?, he asks, as if G-d IS OK with it, now we have all these other sources of nutrition, and know how to combine proteins, but I say that G-d WAS OK with it, when people thought it meant survival, but not any more. Torah was written by wise people, who didn’t know nutrition, though they knew the human psyche, and how to distinguish virtuous behaviour. But they weren’t perfect. After all, Reb “Factual Basis”, doesn’t it say somewhere that “You shall not suffer a witch to live?” How about the order to stone Gays to death? Do you think those maxims should be kept in Judaism? And what about capital punishment, which the State of Israel, the Jewish State, forbids, except for Nazi war criminals? Capital punishment is the same kind of bestiality as meat-eating, and the Jewish mind perceives it, but it is mentioned in the Bible frequently. But I would not forbid meat-eating if it were truly the case of a human being starving to death if there were no alternative.

Remember that modern Judaism even welcomes atheistic Jews who live a highly virtuous life, or secular humanistic Jews, who may be agnostic. We don’t exclude anyone who lives a highly moral life, no matter what they think about Jewish Theology.

And what of the prohibitions in Judaism against hunting for so-called “sport”, one of the most heinous of human crimes, like a mob of Nazis hunting down a child. Since we know and can get an incredible array of foods in virtually every large city in the world, and most rural areas, how does penning up, and finally murdering a gentle animal differ from the blood-crime of hunting?

Shtayt azoy, Reb “Factual Basis”.                                                                          — Baruch Ben-Zev

Tags: Jewish veganism, Jewish vegetarianism, the crime of hunting, the Vilna Gaon