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Friday April 9, 1999

Shemini: What is value of following kosher laws?

RABBIELIEZERFINKELMAN

Shemini

Leviticus 9:1-11:47

II Samuel 6:1-7:17

The early reformers of Judaism, first in Germany and later in the United States, sought to rationalize the religion. In their view, ancient Judaism promulgated the most sublime and elevated ideals of ethical monotheism but also contained superfluous rituals, even superstitions, which mar its beauty. Enlightened Jewish leaders could, in their view, distinguish between the superb universal ideals and the outmoded oriental ceremonies, between the baby and the bath water. Eliminating those observances would produce a higher, cleansed Judaism.

Kashrut, the biblical requirement that we refrain from eating certain kinds of nutritious and healthful food, seemed to those leaders a particularly striking example of antiquated ritual. When American Reform leaders formulated their positions in the Pittsburgh Platform in 1885, they dismissed kashrut in the following words:

"We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas altogether foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation."

Times change. Many leaders of Reform Judaism in America now take a more positive view of the commandments in general, and of kashrut in specific. A veteran Reform rabbi, Arnold Jacob Wolf, depicts the rules of kashrut among the other biblical commandments as "jewels," all of which have great value, although "some are just too heavy for me to lift." Still, he maintains, "in principle, no commandment is inferior to any other."

Wolf emphasizes that even if we do not keep certain commandments now, we must "not [eliminate] parts of the halakhah from the Jewish agenda just because we find them too difficult or remote," so that "there may come a time when we, or our descendants, will recover those portions."

In essays reprinted in "Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf," he also demands more than this theoretical non-abandonment of the commandments: "If we really meant it, couldn't we here and now do more Judaism?"

Rabbi Richard Levy has recently proposed principles for the Reform Jewish movement calling upon each Jew to engage with the practice of the commandments, including kashrut, in a serious way.

While the reputation of kashrut has fluctuated in the Reform movement, the more traditional Jewish movements have maintained the relevance of the kosher laws. In a 1988 statement, leaders of the Conservative movement listed "the observance of Kashrut" as characteristic of the "ideal Conservative Jew." Orthodox rabbis continue to call upon every Jew to practice kashrut, to "distinguish between the ritually unfit and the fit, between the animal which is to be eaten and the animal which you shall not eat" (Leviticus 11:47).

In that context, the Northern California Board of Rabbis, an organization of rabbis of different movements, urges "that all community events within the Jewish community henceforth be strictly kosher." Some of the rabbis personally might not keep kosher; their synagogues may not keep kosher. And yet they agree on the value of kashrut at communitywide Jewish institutions. In the communal spaces where Jews meet, serving kosher food allows Jews of varying sorts of observance to meet on relatively level ground. Not perfectly level, for the Jew who keeps kosher has a slight privilege: She can determine aspects of the menu, which the Jew who does not usually submit to kashrut must endure in order to fully share her company. He must, indeed, limit his menu slightly and pay more for this limited fare.

People have different reasons for helping to construct a Jewish public square that respects kashrut: Some do so because they accept the eternal command of the Creator, some because they wish to comply with millennial Jewish custom, some because they wish to honor the autonomy of those who have chosen the commandments, some because they wish to create a Jewish community welcoming to all, even the most observant.

I wish our community success in constructing a Jewish public square that respects kashrut.

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