Meaty Issues
There are three issues in this week's portion that I want to address.
Where's The Beef?
In Leviticus 17:3-5, while complaining that the Children of Israel were bringing offerings of meat to the local satyrs, we are told that all animals that are butchered away from where God's place was must have their meat and blood brought to the temple so that God can get His portion, the priests their portion, and the blood may be dashed upon the alter. The owner of the animal would bring the rest of the animal home for consumption.
Now, imagine that, centuries later, the people are spread out across the land, and it is not convenient to bring an animal to Jerusalem when you live a full day's journey away.
Deuteronomy reflects that period, and changes a couple of the rules.
The first is that you don't have to bring any animal to the Temple unless you proclaim it to be cherem to you, holy and forbidden, and only for the Temple. You are permitted to kill your own animal and eat it. And unlike the Levitical requirement to cover the blood after it has been poured upon the ground, the Deuteronomist simply required that the blood be poured on the ground "like water" and not eaten.
One likely explanation for this difference, telling the people that they could kill and eat their own livestock, could have been the result of people actively ignoring the priestly requirements.
Read how the Deuteronomist repeatedly stresses that the non-Levites must not forget about the Levites, and that the non-Levites need to give a portion to the Levites, that the Levites should be treated like one of the poor, and that the Levites don't have as much. Could this also reflect a time when people were fed up with the Levitical cult and the Deuteronomist is emphasizing such a condition?
In any case, there is a difference between the Leviticus and the Deuteronomy view of butchering your own livestock.
What To Eat?
This weeks portion also lists a lot of animals that you may eat, and those what you should refrain from eating. You may eat any bird that is tahor (it doesn't explain what that means, and is often rendered as "pure"), and it then lists a number of birds that we cannot eat.
But guess what? We don't know what animals that most of the biblical names are referring to! Sure, one translator is keen on having a bird be a carrion eater, after all, what is less tahor than one of those? But another translator may decide that it's not really a carrion eater at all. Is an eyal a "deer"? Or is it more like an impala since the horns of a deer are used to blow an alarming sound.
Because of these problems, the Rabbis, who claim that there was an "oral Torah" where MNoses told people what all of this meant, admitting that they don't know as well made up a rule about birds: if your family doesn't have a tradition of eating a specific bird, then you don't eat it. And I know some people who, for this reason, refrain from eating turkey.
Meat, Milk, and OCD
Verse 14:21 ends with, "You shall not boil/cook ["seethe"] a kid (gadi) in the milk of it's mother."
This does not refer to a cow, chicken, or even a sheep, but a goat.
Three times this prohibition is given, but no reason is ever mentioned.
Some people say that it was a type of food of idolaters, but there is no evidence that this was the case. The Rambam, who disagreed that it was idolatrous food declared that it was likely unhealthy, but this too is without any evidence.
And so, the Rabbis declared that all of the meat forms that would be brought for Temple sacrifices (bovine, sheep, goat) would be considered meat, and any milk, even from a different animal, was forbidden to cook in the same vessel at the same time. They later added birds either because they were also Temple offerings, or because people confused bird meat with meat from one of the other animals. They refrained from including fish in the meat category since it was never a Temple offering (unlike the Greeks who would offer a tuna to the Temple of Poseidon).
And even though the Talmud speaks of using a bowl for cooking a dairy meal, and after washing it out, using the same bowl for cooking a meat dish, later Rabbis ruled that you could not use the same cooking vessels for meat and dairy.
And, of course, since you cannot derive any benefit from it, you cannot feed your pet meat/dairy food, and there are those who have two washing sinks, one for meat, and one for dairy.
Some people do the same thing for their trash as well.
The Torah does not forbid cheeseburgers, and the zealots treat the layers of Rabbinical ordinances based on Deuteronomy 14:21 as though God really was demanding that everyone have two sets of dishes!
(With the invention of very hot electric dishwashers, some people, but not many, have reverted to using one set of dishes).
It has been my observation that the more religious a person is, the more OCD he or she is concerning all of these rules.
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