Kosher Wars

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

As a non-practicing Jew, before I knew about locally grown, pastured meats I often bought kosher meats in the supermarket assuming they were somehow superior to the rest of the factory farmed cuts on the shelves. I really didn’t know much about kashering, the act of making something kosher, other than the interesting fact that rabbis can kasher an oven with a blow torch. I knew that there’s a certain way that an animal must be slaughtered in order to be kosher, a way that’s supposed to be more humane, but I didn’t realize that most rabbis no longer perform the act until I heard rumors of PETA footage of slaughterhouse atrocities. 

Kosher Wars, an article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, explores the meaning of kosher and the movement to link kosher food to ethical issues, discussing a kosher food economy based on a model of farmer’s markets and coops.

Ten years ago, learning how to slit animals’ throats by hand was simply not a compelling choice for young rabbis of the clean-shaven, earnest sort like Kastner. But the politicization of food issues and the popularization of epicurean and artisanal eating has made learning Jewish food traditions relevant for a new generation. Kastner grew up in the Reform movement, which 120 years ago formally disavowed kashrut, the kosher dietary laws, as an anachronistic impediment to “modern spiritual elevation” — though Reform leaders later softened their position, decreeing that kashrut was a matter of personal choice. But for Kastner, Jewish ritual slaughter actually seems a bit revolutionary. He says he thinks that contemporary disconnection from our food sources is the cause of numerous environmental and social ills, like the national obesity epidemic. He wanted to be a shochet to help people make more healthful food choices and reconnect to the source of their food, and to encourage investment in local agriculture. He says the rules around kosher food — like the requirement that meat be slaughtered by a pious person with a certain intention and the requirement to say a blessing over every food acknowledging its source (land, tree, grain, other) — encourage mindful eating and discourage overconsumption of resources.

Kastner is part of a nascent Jewish food movement that draws upon the vast body of Jewish traditions related to agriculture and farming; Judaism, for all its scholarly abstraction, is a land-based religion. The movement emphasizes the natural intersections between the sustainable-food movement and kashrut: a shared concern for purity and an awareness of the process food goes through before it reaches the table. “The core of kashrut is the idea of limiting oneself, that not everything that we can consume should be consumed,” Kastner said. “I wouldn’t buy a ham sandwich, and I would also refrain from buying an exotic mangosteen imported from China, which wastes fossil fuels and is grown with pesticides.” He told me he studied shechita because he wants to “create food systems outside the industrial model.” He has been trying to set up a grass-fed-kosher-meat co-op in his neighborhood; he says he hopes to travel to a local farm and shecht the animals himself.

The full article is here.