Of Vitamin B12 and the Nefesh Yehudi

A gutn teg, a gutn yahr, Adon Fleyshfresser. Voos machtste? You don’t look so great. What’s up?

You seem excited, Adon Fleyshfresser. What’s this? Du hob mir im Warshau? You’ve got me, eh? OK, let’s hear it, Mr. Fleyshfresser. Tuchus afn tish!

I see. Since Vitamin B12 has been shown to be essential to human health, and since you say I can’t get Vitamin B12 on my vegan diet, therefore the vegan diet is unhealthy for the human, and Baruch Ben-Zev’s firm conviction that Judaism is a vegan religion, as evidenced by G-d’s statements in B’rasheet (Genesis) 1:29 on what Man is permitted to eat, is incorrect. And the end result is, you are right, I am wrong, and you can go on eating meat, and feeling like you are an observant Jew.  So you really think you have Ben-Zev in Warsaw on this one, eh?

Well, Mr. Fleyshfresser, not so fast. Haven’t you heard of those many vegetarian Hindus, some of them vegan, who lived to be over a hundred. If B12 (and the amino acid carnatine, found in meat) are so essential to human health, how did these men achieve their fivescore years, and without evident neurological damage?

Ah, but wait, Ben-Zev, you say. When Hindus came to Britain, and maintained a vegan diet, they did start suffering from Vitamin B12 deficiencies. So there.

But, Mr. Fleyshfresser, be not so sure. You’re talking of well-washed industrial food, not the village greens that the Hindu vegan would have eaten in his native land. Evidentally, the amount of B12 naturally occuring from insect deposits on the produce, as well as normal bacterial contamination from small plot gardens, and cold-water washing of such produce, provided enough natural B12 to prevent those conditions that became manifest once these individual removed to Britain, and other western cultures. So, under pre-industrial conditions, vegans could indeed have obtained their B12 from eating a purely vegan diet, providing it was grown and processed under those “primitive” conditions.

Don’t look so downtrodden, Adon Fleyshfresser. You may get yet another chance to “hob mir in Warshau.” — Baruch Ben-Zev

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

Judaism: The Vegan Religion

A guten teg, a guten yahr, kinderlech.

In this, our initial blog, we wish to state why we believe Judaism is a vegan religion, and why it is axiomatic for anyone calling himself a true Jew, except through bloodline alone, to be a vegan, or, at the least, a lacto- or lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

The basis of this, of course, is found in the initial instructions to man in the Bible, after the “be fruitful” bit, which is obviously intended to make sure this wonderful game of life keeps going. But right after that bit, we are given our dietary instructions from the Unnameable Name, in B’rashiyt 1:29. Basically everything that comes from a tree, and its seeds, and everything that comes from plants and their seeds, these shall be to you for food. Very clearly and very specifically stated, a vegan diet.

The courage of such an approach is truly amazing, when we consider the precariousness of life in the ancient Middle East as far as food security went, and nutritional knowledge. In some instinctive way, whoever put down that first book of the Testament (and some think it was a woman) knew that vegan diet was best for mankind. And this, notwithstanding the fact that in olden days people must have noticed that those who ate meat and were active, kept their muscularity, while those forced to eat one grain alone, or a very low-protein diet, had very small musculatures, unless they could eat large quantities of that grain, especially wheat.

Modern dietary theory seems to be indicating that the supposed necessity of mixing amino acids at one meal from different sources is not a necessity, as was theorized by the protein combining vegetarians of the 1970’s. It turns out that you can get the protein from one source, but only if you eat very large quantities, far beyond what is normal for most people, and far beyond what you’d need to if you were combining. Nor was combining necessary at one meal; the grain might come at breakfast if the beans or nuts came at lunch. But combining made it much easier to achieve this blend of essential amino acids, so that one could get by with eating one pound of oats a day, with beans and nuts, instead of 5 pounds of oats alone, or 3 pounds of wheat alone. Few had such opportunity for largess and profligacy in the old Middle East. That the ancient vegan Jewish sages, like the Essenes, knew a vegetarian diet was a necessity to be a truly observant Jew, speaks amazingly for their inner insight into human nature, and human physiological nature, in the face of horrendous times, and great insecurity.

Now we have the facts of nutritional science and diet before us, and a series of “Rebs and Rabbis of Diet and Nutrition”, many of them not even Jewish, people like Gary Null, Nathan Pritikin, Dr. Gershon Lesser, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Edell, and Professor Neal Benowitz, and many others, (perhaps beginning with Carlton Fredericks and Adele Davis), to refer to, ponder, and study. We have a vast array of knowledge about diet and nutrition which points to the fact that vegan diet is not just an eccentric luxury of the “slightly not there”, but a necessity for good continual health and longevity. The final word, of course, isn’t in, and we should always remain skeptical as to the truth of any categorical imperatives in diet, but the preponderance of evidence is there, and perhaps Gary Null, and the late great Nathan Pritikin, have been the most  instrumental in spreading the word. And Dr. Gershon Lesser’s decade long radio stint on PBS from Santa Monica City College should never be forgotten in getting a lot of the LA crowd to awaken to diet and health. All these men have done great Mitzvah’s with their speech boxes and pens, even if they sometimes unwittingly gave out misinformation based on what they actually believed at the time (for example, the approval of 400 I.U. of Vitamin E -alpha tocopherol- which was later shown to mask the lack of delta tocopherol — and didn’t lead to the miraculous longevity many were proclaiming its use would engender). But nutritional science is a bit like tacking into harbor against a headwind; there is a lot of back and forth motion necessary to get into port, but at least you’re headed for port, and not drifting out to sea with no provisions, and no radio.

We also have the natural sciences now kicking in on the side of the Jewish vegan diet. The anthropologist Richard Leakey, son of the famous Louis B. Leakey, has theorized that ancient man was, in normal times, a pretty strict vegan, but in times of drought was forced to the disgusting necessity of eating the carcasses of dead animals he would find lying about all over the place. Before fire, this must have been really rough. But that is why our teeth and digestive juices seem to be geared to an omnivorous diet. But it was omnivore out of necessity of bestial survival, not out of choice. And of course, many tribes, noticing the meat/musculature connection mentioned previously, must have opted for hunting as a lot easier that growing beans, which they didn’t know enough about, or in nut-free areas, where a regimen of berries and pot-herbs alone made that musculature an arduous attainment. Easier just to spear or blowdart a monkey, antelope or bird. But these tribes did not have the vegan insight of Judaism.

Finally, and exceedingly persuasive, is the fact that man’s closest cousin,  in psychological consciousness, is the gorilla, and the gorilla, who does not have a hinged thumb like man, and so cannot engage in agriculture. — the gorilla is a strict vegetarian, save for one element: he eats insects, which are very high in protein. But insects are but a tiny part of his diet. And look at the strength of the gorilla; in mythology he is felt to be of an almighty strength, as is shown by the “Mighty Joe Young” and “King Kong” fictions, who have to be shot to ribbons with bi-plane machine guns over and over to bring them down.  Our closest relative in consciousness is a virtual vegan. If Ha-Shem had given him a hinged thumb, Ben-Zev thinks he would be purely vegan.

And finally we have the ethical compassion of Judaism, that would forbid killing such beautiful innocent animals, like cows, sheep, lambs, goats, ducks and geese and chickens, and fish, all innocent children enjoying this miraculous life G-d gave them. And suddenly, in the pink of their life and health, they are taken out one day and murdered, as we see in the sacrilegious Rubashkin slaughterhouse practices at Agri-processors.  Aaron Rubashkin, a man bringing great dishonor on our beautiful religion of peace, compassion and human wisdom, as are all so-called Kosher slaughterers, a convenient myth for those who want to forget the incredible misery and suffering they impose on defenseless animals. And no wonder that 30% of the Haredi community in Crown Heights is classified as grossly overweight or obese — that is one of the punishments for such behaviour. While man eats meat, the messiah is not here.

Alles flaysch iz trayf, kinderlech. Shtayt azoy.                                         — Baruch Ben-Zev