RSS
Why Do We Keep Kosher?
A kosher McDonalds inside Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo: Marco Plassio via Wikimedia Commons
After dealing with the sacrificial system, and the roles that priests play within it, the Torah turns to the laws of kashrut. More specifically, the Torah tells us the sorts of animals, fish, and birds that we are allowed to eat and those to be avoided.
In this context, the Torah uses the words Tamey and Tahor, which are usually translated as impure and pure. However, these words are usually misunderstood and have nothing to do with cleanliness or uncleanliness.
The concepts of purity and impurity in the Torah are concerned with states of being, and states of holiness in a religious sense — and to prepare people to enter or exit from a particular location of holiness, such as entering the Tabernacle or Temple.
So what is the connection with what one eats? The laws of what we can and cannot eat are now known as keeping “kosher.” The word simply means approval. But what is the true purpose of keeping kosher?
Some say it concerns health — that some animals are more disease-prone than others, or that carnivores and bottom feeders are to be avoided. Others say that it had to do with commercial or animal husbandry, while others look at which animals were worshipped in the ancient world, and which were not. But no explanation covers all of the animals, birds, and fish that are listed here in Leviticus. There are always exceptions.
Some people think it’s ultimately a matter of laws without logic intended simply as matters of faith or differentiating one religious way from another. Mystics will say that what you eat intrinsically affects who you are, and can physically modify you and your experience of life and God.
I prefer the idea that regardless of how or why these specific examples came to be, the one thing that they do achieve is to get us to think before we eat or prepare food from living beings.
The sacrificial system starts with ways that we relate to a higher power, but also encourages us to be better people through mechanisms of repentance and atonement. The Torah takes something conceptual and turns it into something practical — just like how we should treat Shabbat different from other days of the week.
The sacrificial system involved the participation of everybody in the community, one way or another. A significant part of the system involved individuals bringing animals and birds of different kinds to be sacrificed. Whereas sacrifices towards God would be totally consumed on the altar, others might be shared with the priesthood and then ordinary people — so that they could benefit from the offering, eating it together there or at home. Originally, people living in reasonable proximity to the Temple could only eat meat if it was sacrificed there.
Looking at the books of the Bible during the era of the Kings, and as the tribes spread out further and further away from the Temple, killing animals for food no longer depended on the Temple exclusively, and this was where the laws that we have today that permit anyone to kill an animal and prepare it for food have come about.
These laws are not mysterious or occult systems of practice. Rather, they are part of the whole behavioral structure of Torah that seeks to raise a person’s consciousness and spirituality by what we call mindfulness. By thinking before one acts and bringing the spiritual world into everything we do, these acts inspire us to be a better person.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post Why Do We Keep Kosher? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login