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The Metaphysics of Kosher and Kosher metaphysics

4/1/2016

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Last year I studied the rules of kosher and non-kosher food for 6 hours a day. Then a friend asked me a question and it changed my entire understanding of Kosher. This week’s parsha details the oldest health food craze, the Torah diet.

This week’s Parsha Shemini discusses kosher and non-kosher animals.  
After all the zoological details the end of the chapter makes a seemingly tangential non-sequitur or random statement.

“For I am Hashem your G-D - 
you will sanctify yourself and you will be holy for I am holy”, Vayikra 11:44.


My friend, Mechy, asked, Dan, why do you believe you cannot eat the animals prohibited in the Torah? I responded, every mitzvah is because G-D commanded it. But if I had to give a reason, one understanding I have is that these animals are not good for you metaphysically. Kosher is you are what you eat, at a spiritual level.


Mechy’s Dilemma

Q: If a Rabbi makes a mistake and says something is kosher when it is accidentally not kosher and someone eats it, did they eat non-kosher and cause themselves spiritual harm?

My initial thought was that the person did eat non-Kosher. We have a list in the parsha of the non-kosher animals and the person ate one so they ate non-kosher.   
But now after further thought, discussion and research I believe the person did not eat non-kosher at all. They ate kosher food! Humans make things kosher and non-kosher. G-D has invested us with that power. Humans are the ones who imbue holiness into things. It is not the things that imbue holiness unto the people.

That is what “ you will sanctify yourself”  is telling us.

​ We are the ones that invest the metaphysical reality into kosher and non-kosher. When a Rabbi says something is kosher for you, it is kosher. The declaration itself makes it kosher to you.



Bonus Source: Rav Soloveichik weighs in.

Judaism has always maintained that holiness is not something objective inherent in an object, prevailing independently of the way this particular sacred object is treated . We denied the idea that there is sanctity per se, a metaphysical endowment which persists irrespective of man’s relationship to the object.  

​Sanctity is born out of man's actions and experiences and is determined by the latter. The very instant man adopts a coarse attitude towards the hallowed object - the moment of sacredness is eliminated.


Sanctity expresses itself not in the formal quality of the object or institution but in a relationship between the latter and man. It is an experience rather than an endowment. If something is not experienced as sacred , the object or institution forfeits its uniqueness and numinous character.



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Photos from Lawrie Cate, Mr.TinDC