Having Our Stories Heard - Kol Ami newsletter 2-8-2022
02/08/2022 06:01:52 PM
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Kol Ami Newsletter: February 8, 2022
Rabbi's Week in Review
This past week, a Tennessee school board banned Art Spiegelman’s seminal novel on the Holocaust, Maus. This is just one of many examples of how book banning has proliferated in the last year — not only censoring Jewish history but also Black history, the history of Indigenous peoples, and works in which LGBTQIA kids can see their own stories.
This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Tetzaveh (Shemot/Exodus 27:20-30:10). We read this week about the priestly garments — what meaning we put in the clothes we wear, and how we perceive others by the clothes they wear. Worship Event of the Week
This Friday, February 11, is Family Shabbat. (Due to recent Covid-exposure concerns and out of an abundance of caution, we are meeting via Zoom only.) Erica Clinton leads us through a program, based on Jewish values, on how we present ourselves — a theme brought out by this week’s Torah portion. We encourage all kids (and grownups, for that matter) to dress in a way that truly reflects who you are. To receive materials for the family-program art project, please RSVP before Friday to familyexperience@kolamikc.org. The family program begins at 6 p.m., with a short informal Erev Shabbat service at 6:45 p.m.For the Zoom link, click here.
Weekly Feature
A Meat Eater’s Vegetarian Venture By Wynne Begun
If I had to kill the meat I eat, I would be a vegetarian. I am an animal lover, and to even think about an animal suffering makes me crazy! At the same time, I was raised a carnivore, and I enjoy meat immensely — when it is plastic-wrapped with a date on it.
The hypocrisy of this does not sit well with me. I have friends who raise cattle and each year pick one out that will stock their freezer. I understand it is a business, but if I had to pick the one I saw as a day-old calf and named, no way I could enjoy the steak.
I have wondered if there are teachings in Judaism that could help me resolve this contradiction. Rabbi Arthur Green writes that animal slaughter became encoded in halacha, with laws against the consumption of certain animals, against the eating of blood, the mixing of milk and meat, as well as ritual-slaughter practices. It seems to me that Jews throughout the ages knew that eating meat should be taken seriously and not taken for granted. When Jews partake, we must do so in a carefully prescribed manner.
“We are urgently concerned with finding a better way to share earth’s limited resources,” Rabbi Green says. “We know that many more human lives can be sustained if land is used for planting rather than for grazing of animals for food. We are committed also to a healthier way of living and are coming to recognize that the human is, after all, a mostly vegetarian species. But for us as Jews, the impulse is largely a moral and religious one. We have a long tradition of abhorring violence. Cruelty to animals has long been forbidden by Jewish law and sensibilities.”
It does not seem too huge a leap for us, in these modern times with the challenges to our planet’s existence, to give up eating meat altogether. We know it is good for our earth and good for our bodies — if we can balance our need for protein within plant and dairy sources. However, my personal conundrum remains.
