Finding God in the Details
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5765
When my maternal grandmother past away there was no relative to say Kaddish. My grandfather had passed away, and she had two daughters who were unable to commit to reciting the Kaddish three times a day. That left the 2 sons in law, my father and my uncle. My father offered the opportunity to my uncle because my uncle lived closer to my grandmother but my uncle declined and offered the following rationale. He said that while it was meaningful for him to say Kaddish when his own mother passed away he really did not like being forced to alter his routine, or to have his life revolve around minyan times and Kaddish. For the clincher he told the family that he didn’t believe that God wanted to control our time; that couldn’t be what God wanted from him.
To that I did not respond because sometimes family and religion don’t mix and this was one of those times. But on the tip of my tongue dying to come out was “You could not be more wrong and that may be exactly what God wants.”
With that in mind let us take a look at the laws of kashrut that we read in this morning’s parsha- the signs for kosher animals and kosher fish and the list of prohibited birds. These are laws that are so basic to our faith that often we don’t stop to ask why? Why these specific signs and more generally why do we have these restrictions at all?
Rambam, in his Guide for the Perplexed, argues that our dietary laws are health related; this is God’s way of ensuring that we eat healthy food.
Ramban, Nachmonides argues that the benefits are not physical but spiritual. We are not trying to avoid unhealthy foods; rather we are trying to avoid foods that will affect and contaminate our souls. To support this approach he garners support from the introduction to the paragraph detailing the laws of kashrut. The Torah with the general prohibition or “Lo tochal kol toevah”, do not eat any abomination. This description is missing from the earlier recording of the same laws in Parshat Shmini and is noted by the Ramban and the Seforno who offers a similar approach to the prohibition.
With these and similar approaches I have 2 problems:
- Practically it is very difficult to verify the correctness of the approach. I know many people who do not keep kosher but who have kind and generous souls, and the health issues I will leave to the doctors among us to figure out.
- More fundamentally, it is very rare that the general reason given or approach taken will explain the minutiae of the Halacha, or all of the details.
To illustrate that point take the prohibition of eating milk and meat together. The torah commands us 3 times, Lo tevashel gedi bechalev imo” do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”. This would appear to be one of the simpler laws to understand. To cook a kid in its mothers milk is simply cruel and terrible, something that must be avoided at all costs. Rashi quotes the Midrash which tells us that the reason the prohibition is recorded three times is to teach us three separate and distinct issurim, You may not cook meat and milk together, you may not eat them together and you can’t receive any benefit from a mixture of meat and milk. It is so cruel apparently, that you can have nothing to do with it. We might even understand the extension of the prohibition to all meat and milk and not only a kid in its mother’s milk. Maybe cooking meat in its life source is inappropriate. Somewhat diluted but still ok.
Then come the exceptions.
- It only applies to sheep and cattle. Other kosher animals are only rabbinically prohibited. Rashi quotes 3 more.
- A Chaya, or a non-domesticated animal
- Chicken and other birds
- A domesticated animal that is not pure or kosher.
It’s not cruel to cook those animals in their mother’s milk? Where is the logic in that? How does it fit into the rationale provided?
There is an old joke that I like and think about often when confronted with these types of questions- trying to thread the rationale through all of the details of a particular mitzvah.
The joke goes as follows. Moshe ascends Mount Sinai and god tells him “don’t cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” Moshe responds, you mean we can’t have to wash our mouths out between milk and meat. So god repeats the command a second time- “don’t cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” And Moshe says, you mean that we have to wait six hours between meat and milk. A third time God tells Moshe “don’t cook a kid in its mothers milk” and Moshe says you mean we need separate dishes for meat and milk. Frustrated God gives up and says fine Moshe, have it your way!
Why do I like that joke? Because what makes it amusing is the apparent disconnect between the Torah’s original command and the details that follow.
Maybe for that reason commentators offer other explanations for the prohibition. Rambam believes that it is a prohibition related to idolatry. This of course is subject to the flaws of the previous attempts. Eben Ezra cautions us against trying to figure out the rationale because the best minds have tried and have not succeeded.
At this point there are two approaches that we can take.
- We can continue to seek that elusive approach that will explain al of the details of hilchot kashrut.
- Or we can conclude that we will never find such an approach but more importantly that it is not that critical to do so.
What do I mean?
I would argue that it is important to have rules that regulate our conduct and that is an end in it of itself. Maybe that end is even more important the any rationale that we may find. The fact that we have religious laws that regulate our conduct, specifically in the most material of areas, food, allows us to elevate the activity from a purely material one to one that has a religious dimension as well. Every time you go to eat something, not only are you filling your physical body, but you adhere to a spiritual directive as well. You ask yourself, is this a food that is permissible for me to eat or can I eat this food now? The regulation of each detail gives us a spiritual framework in which to live our daily lives.
And so to my uncle I would have said, God does want to regulate our conduct and tell us what to do. God tells us what to eat and when to eat it and the Torah provides us with numerous other laws and restrictions meant to place all areas of our conduct in a spiritual framework and very often it is within those details and that framework that we find God.
