Shmini Drash 5786

As many of you know, when I could not find more remunerative work, I always fell back to cooking for a living, and perhaps because of that, I think a lot about food. I suppose that makes me a “foodie.” 

Many of you also know that Sheila and I met as line cooks, so, for me at least, cooking had much better fringe benefits than the meager paycheck I received.

So, as this week’s Torah portion deals with many of the rules of keeping kosher, it could be that I’ve given the subject more than a passing thought.

Down through the ages, the Sages of Israel have used different approaches for understanding the significance of keeping kosher, but the broad consensus of rabbinic opinion is that keeping kosher confers spiritual benefits only, and does not contribute to our physical well-being.

In other words, kosher eating is not necessarily synonymous with healthy eating, not necessarily better for the human organism. After all, the vast majority of Olympic athletes, arguably the most healthy and fit people on the planet, do not keep kosher.  

But, knowing me, you won’t be surprised to learn that I would like to challenge the assertion  that keeping kosher confers spiritual benefits only, and does not contribute to our physical well-being. But before I do, we need to discuss one or two salient details of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.

OK, I know you’re thinking: aside from possibly eating a Galapagos finch (and fuggedabowdit they’re not kosher) what could Natural Selection possibly have to do with keeping kosher?

Let’s first make sure we’re clear on the meaning of Natural Selection. For non-biologists, it has been reduced to the catch phrase of “The Survival of the Fittest,” an unfortunate sound byte that has been twisted and manipulated out of all context from its original meaning.

Here’s a brief mythical example of natural selection: imagine an idyllic South Pacific island, with a native tribe whom we’ll call the Cute Residents of the Idyllic South Pacific Island, or CRISPIs for short. 

In the beginning of our story, the CRISPI tribe descended from a few proto-CRISPIs, so that all the members of the CRISPI tribe share similar genetics, and are of comparable height, skin color, eye color, etc. However, over the span of many generations, hundreds or even thousands of years, certain genetic variations begin to creep in. Maybe outsiders from far-flung atolls have paddled over, taken up residence, and started families with young CRISPI maidens. Maybe the genetic variations are due to naturally occurring genetic mutations (CRISPIs spend a lot of time idyling in the sun).

Whatever the reason, over time, the CRISPI tribe starts looking more diverse than it used to. This is called genetic drift. Some CRISPIs are now significantly taller or leaner than others, some have different color hair or eyes. (How that changing genetic information is physically expressed is called phenotype.)

And so everything plods along idyllically – until disaster strikes. A cargo container drifts ashore, and when opened, turns out to contain a den of (by now) very hungry zoo lions. 

In the face of this sudden environmental stress, different phenotypes now confer distinct survival advantages or disadvantages over others. For example, maybe faster, leaner CRISPIs have a higher likelihood of outrunning the lions and shimmying up a tree to safety than the slower, fatter CRISPIs. They’re also more likely to be able to safely scoot down, grab some food and shimmy back up to safety. Since more of them are likely to survive in this difficult new environment, they are more likely to have more offspring, who in turn are fast and lean, and better suited to making it in the new reality. And before too many generations have elapsed, the slower, fatter CRISPIs will likely die out for the converse reason.

Or flip it around: an Ice Age descends upon the CRISPIs, conferring a survival advantage to the more well-padded CRISPIs, better equipped to survive the bitter cold than the CRISPIs with little or no body fat to insulate them.

To summarize: before the cargo container was opened, the genetic diversity among the population didn’t mean very much; lean or chunky, tall or short, everyone strummed ukeleles and danced naked on the beach all day, Martha Meade-style. But when the circumstances suddenly changed, that phenotypic diversity became the critical difference between life and death. Nature, by creating new environmental conditions, essentially selected out the fast, skinny CRISPIs to survive, and condemned slow, fat CRISPIs to extinction.

That is the concept of Natural Selection in a nutshell (did you notice how I snuck in another food reference right there?) Is that concept clear?

Now we can get back to the business of food and kosher.

America has become a nation of fat CRISPIs. A century ago, tuberculosis, typhoid and dysentery were the leading killers in America. Today, the top killers are diseases of affluence: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer.

According to the National Institutes of Health:

• More than two-thirds (68.8%) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese.
• More than one-third (35.7%) of adults are considered to be obese.
• More than 1 in 20 (6.3%) have extreme obesity.
• Almost 3 in 4 men (74%) are considered to be overweight or obese.
• The overall prevalence of obesity is similar for both men and women (about 36%).
• About 8% of women are considered to have extreme obesity.
• About one-third of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be overweight or obese.
• More than 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be obese.  

Being fat has become so normative, mainstreamed, that there is no longer any shame in it.

I am also told by medical professionals that the overall cancer rate 75 years ago was about 1 in 15; today it is approaching 1 in 2.

What has changed in that time?

It’s the food. THE FOOD. Our food has changed.

In the past, people sat down to meals prepared from unprocessed, raw ingredients; fresh meats from the butcher, fresh produce from the green grocer, fresh bread from the neighborhood bakery. Milk was delivered fresh every day from the local dairy, or perhaps came from the family’s dairy cow. Another mythical person, the stay-at-home-mom, cooked these meals from scratch.

One of the most endearing parts of working in Williamsburg Brooklyn was the absence of box stores and supermarkets in that neighborhood. It was a retro-kick-in-the-head to have to go to the fishmongers for fish, the baker’s, the butcher’s, etc. Very old school, but nothing was prepackaged in plastic and everything was fresh and tasted terrific.

Somewhere along the line, all that changed. Mommies went to work, and no one had time to cook. Supermarkets gradually drove the butchers and bakers out of business. Fast food franchises proliferated. Food ceased being food, and became a ‘product,’ and food production became an industry.

Once food becomes a product, like an iPhone or a Chevrolet, product consistency becomes a core business value. Food preservation and color retention and spoilage reduction factors become paramount. Today, supermarket shelves are chock full of ‘product’: preserved, pasteurized, homogenized, hydrolyzed, stabilized, texturized, re-formed, artificially colored and flavored, all designed to protect and service the interests of the food supply chain (not the consumer), which takes weeks to get the food “product” from factory floor to supermarket floor. And the FDA smiles benevolently on this cacophony of plastic food because studies (paid for by the food manufacturers) prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the preservatives don’t kill laboratory mice (at least not right away, anyway).

And let’s not even discuss the billions of advertising dollars spent to convince consumers that buying all this product is normal and cool and desirable, and oh! how you’re missing out if you don’t have a Tastycake with your morning coffee, or Crunchberries for breakfast or Doritos in your lunch pail. Thirsty? Grab a Coke, easy as breathing.

Today, America is a country of soda guzzling, Big Mac chomping, Hot Pocketing, bacon loving, Hamburger Helpin’, perambulatory heart attacks on a stick. The days of eating a home cooked meal that didn’t derive from a box are in the rear view mirror.

Is it any wonder that we’re obese, that we’re cancer-ridden, that we have artificial knees and hips? That one in seven Americans are gluten sensitive, who can no longer tolerate the adulteration of wheat, which benefits the production requirements of the mega-bread factories? That food allergies that we never knew in our childhoods are exploding in frequency? 

We are committing suicide by plastic spork.

And by the way, I am brushing with very broad strokes here, certainly not referencing specific individuals. I understand that there are metabolic conditions, environmental and genetic factors, that also govern our overall health.

Notwithstanding that disclaimer, it may well be that, up until recent times, keeping kosher only conferred spiritual benefits. Maybe in the past, before this sea change in food, it was true that people who kept kosher were no more or less physically healthy than non-Jews who did not keep kosher. 

But the food environment has suddenly changed, and the difference between keeping kosher and not, differences that once didn’t mean much in terms of physical health in the past, may now mean the difference between life and death.

What does the Hebrew word “kosher” mean, anyway? It means ‘fit’, as in fit for human consumption. And at its core, keeping kosher is all about paying attention, and being sensitive to, what we consume as food.

Kashrut itself has evolved in certain respects. Until the advent of household refrigeration, when an animal was slaughtered, every possible part was consumed, including the heart, the brain, the spleen & the thymus and other organ meats. Technically kosher, but ultimately unhealthy for you. 

Today we know better than to eat organ meats. Veal and foie gras, once technically kosher, are now considered by many Israeli poskim (decisors of Jewish Law) to be not kosher, because we have become sensitized to the pain inflicted on the animal prior to slaughter, and causing an animal pain is a biblical prohibition.

Another factor in favor of keeping kosher: the mean time from factory to store is significantly shorter with kosher meat.

And because we Jews are careful to scrub our fresh produce for any evidence of visible bugs, we are also doing a pretty bang-up job of washing pesticides off our produce.

And of course, eating at McDonald’s and Burger King and Taco Bell is (thank Gcd!) out of the question.

In the same way that our particular rules about frequent hand washing saved the Jews from the Black Death (so much so, that our non-Jewish neighbors accused us of causing it) our higher standard of what is fit to eat may well inadvertently be saving us from supermarket poison.

To be sure, it is possible, as the Ramban will remind us in a few weeks, to be a menuval b’reshut HaTorah, to fulfill the technical requirements of keeping kosher and still be a glutton and a boor, overweight and sickly. But I contend that the kiyyum, the fulfillment of the higher intent and spirit of kashrut, goes way beyond the slavish search for the kosher symbol on a package of boxed macaroni & cheese. (In fact, if it’s packaged, it’s processed…)

We have a biblical commandment to be healthy, if for no other reason, as the Rambam points out, that  the sick and bedridden can’t be effective servants of G-d. We have to be able to move and act with alacrity in our service to Hashem.

To really keep kosher is to think hard about the food we eat. We just ended Passover, and every year, I am amazed at how people lose their minds – and drain their wallets – buying exorbitantly priced Kosher for Passover cake and doughnut mixes and exotic candies and potato chips and ketchup and sodas and cookies and tortes – as if they won’t survive for a week without them.

My contentions in this matter are being buttressed by several recent studies that show a direct-line correlation between consuming processed and ultra-processed foods and cancer, particularly colo-rectal cancer, now being seen in increasing numbers in 20 and 30 year-olds. 

Here’s a clever idea: go native. Be a lean CRISPI. Learn to cook basic meals from whole, raw ingredients, untouched (to the greatest extent possible) by plastic wrap: lean kosher meats and fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh bread. Make a soup. Use fresh herbs. Once you eliminate factory food, you will see your health dramatically improve. 

We are the Or LaGoyim, A Light Unto the Nations; walking, talking examples of the myriad blessings of a Torah-centric life. That living example extends to every aspect of our lives, including the food on our tables and the physical health that derives from it.

Reflect on and really examine the food you eat. Really think hard about kosher. If you do, you will find that keeping kosher confers both spiritual and physical benefits that only the Author of Life Himself could have foreseen when He gave us the great gift of Torah some 3,338 years ago.

Shabbat Shalom.