[Fwd: Re: Der yidisher tam]

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Joe Kurland wrote:  But if a Jew
> eats pork as a matter of course, then he or she is in danger of losing the
> essence of yidishkayt.)
>
The Ten Commandments tell us not to kill,  not to commit murder.
Nowhere do they  tell us "except chickens, cows, etc."
The laws of  <kashrut> regarding pork  are  based on  the good sense not
to consume an animal that  was  known to cause trichenosis --  in a
desert climate before the age of refrigeration.
The fact that pigs are known to be cannibalistic is moot since chickens
are, too.
Similarly, we are instructed not to eat crustacean bottom-feeders, those
animals whose main form of  sustenance is the waste products of other
animals. It doesn't make a lot of sense to consume flesh that was built
up by the ingestion of excrement.
Predators, birds of prey and other creepy-crawlies are also forbidden in
the belief that one ingests something of the essence of the animal one 
consumes.  
A hyena-burger just doesn't sound too appetizing...
 However, other cultures in other environments eat all manner of rodents
and reptiles with no discernible ill effects to their health,  corporal
or spiritual.  
And, it is commanded, to save a life, any form of food is allowed. 

Although I personally  choose not to  consume the forbidden foods, I
would rather eat an organically-raised porker than a factory-raised,
hormone-riddled kosher  chicken or cow.  Legally,  in this country
(USA), cows are allowed to be fed sewage,  plastic pellets and cardboard
and the carrion flesh of other cows;  and they are. (See Rifkin's
"Beyond Beef"). 
 Chickens are rasised in cages their entire lives, deprived of sunlight,
earth and vegetation and  fed  chemically-laden feed.   They are
de-beaked, because such conditions drive them "insane" and they attack
one another.  Nice.

Logically, I don't see that a person is in any  more danger of losing 
one's 
<yidishkayt> by  eating pork  than by  eating  fowl or beef, today.
If you think that  a nitrate-laden, carcinogenic  kosher salami is going
to keep your spirituality any  more intact than a pork-chop,  I beg to
differ.  There is no basis in such a claim.

The  <mashgikhim> who care more how an animal is slaughterd than how it
was treated when it was alive or  what it was fed are doing us no
favors,  
<hekhsher>  or no <hekhsher>.

The "essence of yidishkayt" lies less in what you put in your mouth than
in how you treat others, animals included.  IMHO, a
spiritually-conscious individual, Jewish or otherwise, is vegetarian in
their diet.  Meat-eating  is  responsible for the disappearance  of the
rainforest, global warming and the hole in the ozone layer;  not to
mention clogged arteries that lead to heart-attacks and unnecessary,
early death.   

A gitn apetit,
Wolf Krakowski
http://www.kamea.com