‘Shalom Begins on Your Plate’
For your own good — and the world’s — eat less meat, rabbis say
“Eating less — or no — meat and dairy products would have the single greatest impact on our environment,” Union for Reform Judaism’s Rabbi Adam Grossman declares in the seven-minute video “Shalom Begins on Your Plate.”
The video was released recently by the Los Angeles-based Center for Jewish Food Ethics as part of its inaugural campaign encouraging Jewish institutions to adopt a more sustainable food policy and Jewish individuals to consider shifting toward a plant-based diet.
Local rabbis signed onto the initiative, including Shammai Engelmayer, Paul Kurland, Charles A. Kroloff, and Donn Gross, and they span the Jewish streams. Rabbis Engelmayer and Kurland are Conservative, Rabbi Kroloff is Reform, and Rabbi Gross is Orthodox.
The video highlights three specific ways in which plant-based eating better aligns with Torah values that collectively inform a contemporary understanding of what is kosher, which literally means fit to eat:
• “Bal tashchit” – Avoiding unnecessary destruction and waste of natural resources.
• “Tza’ar ba’alei chaim” – Treating all living creatures compassionately.
• “Shmirat haGuf” – Guarding our physical health.
CJFE’s co-executive director, Rabbi Jonathan Bernhard, said, “Our tradition calls us to be stewards of the earth, of the other animals with whom we share it, and of our bodies. Each of these responsibilities resonates in the mitzvot, the sacred opportunities life grants us.”
He said these issues are becoming “more urgent by the day, especially as industrial animal agriculture is a primary driver of environmental threats such as deforestation, pollution, and climate-warming emissions.”
In 2017, 75 Jewish clergy signed a statement encouraging their fellow Jews to transition toward a plant-based diet as a way of bringing healing and peace to the world. That list has now grown to over 200 names attached to the “Shalom Begins on Your Plate” campaign.
“I signed on because ‘pikuah nefesh,’ saving a life, is at the core of Jewish ethics,” Rabbi Kroloff said.
He added that although he is not a vegetarian, “I am convinced that a more vegetarian diet is good for our bodies, good for our souls, and good for the planet. I see this as a journey — personal and communal — toward a diet that will help to sustain the two amazing gifts which God has given me: a body that can flourish and a physical world that supports us.”
As rabbi emeritus at Temple Emanu-El and a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, he said he plans to “encourage our synagogue and organizations I affiliate with to ramp up their vegetarian offerings.… Inertia makes it difficult. Education and experimentation — ‘Let’s give it a try’ — can motivate many.”
Rabbi Engelmayer, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and a columnist for this newspaper, who has written on the topic, said Jews often believe that eating meat and fish is rabbinically mandated.
“Our sages, a blessed memory, were very insistent that any ‘sacred meal’ such as Shabbat dinner and festival meals, wedding feasts, etc., had to include meat and fish. By making that decision, they managed to distort the Torah’s true intent,” he said.
“The first two Torah portions of Genesis are very clear: Human beings, and even the animal kingdom, were meant to be vegetarian. God destroyed the entire world because of the blood lust among humans and among animals. God then compromises, allowing meat eating, but requiring life for life,” he continued.
“The biblical ideal clearly is vegetarianism and the laws of kashrut, in part, are meant to emphasize that when we eat meat, we are taking a life. A law in Leviticus actually states that unless we kill the animal for a ‘sacred purpose,’ we are committing a crime akin to murder.”
Rabbi Engelmayer, who teaches adult education classes and has a “virtual pulpit” meeting weekly on Shabbat mornings and holidays, said he frequently emphasizes these points in his sermons, podcasts, and columns.
“And I will continue to do so. I signed on to this because keeping people aware of the realities of Torah law, not just the myths and distortions surrounding it, is very important to me.”
Rabbi Gross is one of the few Orthodox rabbis on the list of signatories displayed at the end of the “Shalom Begins on Your Plate” video. His Caldwell shul is believed to be the first modern Orthodox synagogue where the food at every kiddush is 100 percent plant-based. He also owns the kosher plant-based catering business Meals to Heal.
Rabbi Gross said that Orthodox Jews tend to be suspicious of change, and that resistance to dietary changes is especially strong due to societal and educational influences.
“My thinking is that many of our ancestors grew up in Europe dirt poor, but with a high value to have meat for the Sabbath and holidays because kings and rich people had meat,” he said. The poorest families would buy cheap fish heads, bones and skin to cook gefilte fish. “The ideal of ‘kingly food’ became deeply ingrained, especially in the observant population, and they can’t shake it. That’s been compounded by advertising telling people for years that meat and dairy are necessary ingredients for a healthy body.”
Rabbi Gross said he understands this mindset; he remembers that “the first time I encountered vegans in Tel Aviv, it was three or four years before I became vegan, and I wasn’t ready to hear the message.”
He does not push the agenda among his congregants. “I used to talk about it a lot more,” he said. “Now I’m trying to live the example. Everyone who comes to my shul knows what I stand for even if I am not speaking about it loudly anymore. I am optimistic. It takes time for things to percolate. As long as we put it out there, the drumbeat gets louder and steadier.”
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, another Orthodox signatory, is founder and president of Arizona-based Jewish vegan movement Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy, which is part of the nonprofit social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek. He has written more than a dozen books on Jewish ethics.
Rabbi Yanklowitz said he is “engaging a lot of Orthodox Jews” through Shamayim and through his modern Orthodox rabbinic association, Torat Chayim, which has about 400 members.
In 2017, Torat Chayim issued a statement calling upon all Jews “to consider research of livestock raised in the factory farming system and to question whether food prepared in this manner meets the reverence-for-life standard on which kashrut is founded or the ethical standard we require from agri-business.”
The Torat Chayim statement continues: “A substantial body of research suggests there is significant and unnatural pain caused toward animals during their raising and slaughter for human consumption, that factory farming is one of the leading contributors to carbon emissions, and that the consumption of large amounts of meat is a leading contributor to cardiac disease, gastrointestinal ailments, and certain types of cancers.”
The CJFE, a nondenominational group formed recently from the merger of Jewish Veg and the Jewish Initiative for Animals, welcomes additional signatures on its clergy statement and urges people to share the “Shalom Begins on Your Plate” video on YouTube or the CJFE website.
Rabbi Kurland leads Congregation Shir Shalom in New City, New York. He did not respond to a request for comment.
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