The meat of the matter

ITEM: Purim arrives in just over a week. Pesach follows a month later. Menus for both are already being prepared.

ITEM: A friend and his family are mourning the death of a beloved pet. That is something too many people cannot understand. Pets, after all, are not people. They are just “dumb animals,” and are easily replaceable. “Get over it and move on” is a common refrain.

Both items involve our relationship with the non-human life forms with whom we share this planet. The first item deals with what are known as “required festive meals,” se’udot, and what such meals entail. To discuss that, though, requires discussing the second item first.

Too many people in the world at large ridicule the idea of mourning a pet for the reasons I mentioned above. It is because that attitude is so widespread that about 10 million animals die each year from abuse or cruelty in the United States alone. It is also why over three-quarters of a million abandoned cats and dogs are euthanized in shelters here every year. No matter, though. They are just dumb animals, after all.

Most people who think that way do not know any better. The Jews who also think that way, however, should know better because from the Torah’s very first chapter, we are taught to honor, respect, and protect all non-human life forms. As to why, it is because they are “k’ilu avoteinu,” meaning that in a very real sense, they are considered to be among our ancestors, as Joseph ben Abba Mari Ibn Caspi put it so perfectly in the 14th century.

Ibn Caspi wrote more than 30 works of philosophy, biblical commentary, and grammar. He said that because the evolution of this planet as depicted in the Torah’s very first chapter — a depiction commonly grossly distorted beyond recognition by fundamentalists — allows for no other conclusion.

There is also the fact that God in that chapter issues commands to the non-human life forms and to us. Why would God waste any time giving commands to all those non-human “dumb animals”?

In that first chapter, too, God wanted all humans and non-humans to be vegetarians, because meat-eating involves killing an animal, but God had to compromise on that later on (see Genesis 9). In doing so, God realized that this compromise could lead down a slippery slope to animal abuse, which it in fact did, as will be seen. God therefore put into the Torah a whole body of law we call tsaar baalei chayim — meaning causing unnecessary physical or emotional suffering to all non-human life forms. This body of law deals with our responsibilities to all creatures great and small, how we humans — all humans, not just us — must respect them, care for them, and protect them.

While we get a sense of that in the Torah’s very first chapter, it was in last week’s parashah, Mishpatim, that this whole body of law begins to roll out in chief. That is very telling in itself because, as I have often argued in this space, the Sefer Ha-b’rit, the Book of the Covenant, contained in Mishpatim is in a real sense the constitution of the Jewish people, God’s kingdom of priests and holy nation.

Two weeks ago in the so-called Ten Commandments, we were told that our animals deserve the same day of rest as we do. Last week, Mishpatim explained why: “so that your ox and your donkey may rest.”

The Book of the Covenant in Mishpatim makes it very clear that there is no such thing as a “dumb animal.” As the late and sorely missed chief rabbi of the British Empire, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z”l, explained, “Judaism regards animals as sentient beings…. They are capable of distress…. [They] have feelings and they must be respected.”

Maimonides, the Rambam, said much the same thing in his code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah.

The Torah issues multiple commandments to ensure that we are attentive to those feelings. We must chase a mother bird far enough away from her nest so that she will not suffer watching us stealing her future children whose eggs she had been sitting on. We must not muzzle an ox while it threshes because it will feel psychological pain if it us unable to chew some of what it is threshing. We must not take a newborn calf away from its mother before she weans it, nor are we allowed to disturb a family by slaughtering an animal and its young on the same day, and so on.

If we have to avoid causing living creatures psychological pain, how much more so must we avoid causing them physical pain.

One tsaar baalei chayim law in Mishpatim is repeated two more times in the Torah, which is how it signals a law’s seriousness. Says the Torah, “You shall not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

There is no issue here of the mother goat feeling pain of any kind, physical or psychological, because this law is about us, not her. As Rashi’s grandson, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, the Rashbam, put it, are we so cruel as to cook a child in the very milk that was meant to nourish it? That, he said, is “a shameful, distasteful thing.”

People here and around the world crave their hot dogs and hamburgers, and juicy steaks. Americans alone consume billions of pounds of beef every year. But what no one ever asks is “Where’s the beef coming from?”

And yet we should.

The vast majority of cattle here live in unbearable conditions. By the time they are a few months old, they are shipped to massive industrial feedlots that hold tens of thousands of animals at a time. The feedlots are crowded, dusty, and saturated with manure. Air quality is often so poor that workers have to wear masks.

The cattle are fed diets their bodies were never designed to handle and tend to cause painful digestive problems for many cows, including liver abscesses and other serious and quite painful conditions. That is why they are routinely given antibiotics.

Also, modern beef cattle have been bred to grow at astonishing speeds, far faster than their bones and organs can comfortably support. Chronic pain is a common result.

Transport to slaughterhouses brings its own suffering, followed by the physical and psychological abuse they suffer during the slaughtering process itself. Kosher slaughter is more humane, of course, but “more humane” does not mean “is humane.”

Life is not much better for egg-laying hens, other four-legged creatures people feed on, or for fish and other seafood. The details differ, but these industries depend on efficiency, not compassion; profit, not dignity; speed, not mercy.

That brings us to the question of foods that are said to be absolutely required for a festive meal, other than wine for kiddush and bread for the “motzi” blessing (“who brings forth bread from the earth”). One such meal is the Purim seudah, which many people will enjoy this year on March 3. Also upcoming, in addition to Shabbat meals, are the sedarim and other festive meals we will consume on Pesach.

The phrase “basar v’dagim” was drummed into my head early on. The words mean “meat and fish.” Both supposedly are required for a seudah. It was not true then and it is not true today.

Certainly, and only because of tradition, they are the preferred seudah staples, but meat is not mandatory, and fish was never considered to be required until the Middle Ages, when Ashkenazic custom made it so.

That meat is considered by so many to be mandatory can be traced back to a statement in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Pesachim 109a. Sacred meals are supposed to be joyous ones, it says, and “there is no joy except with meat and wine.” The “joy” part is based on Deuteronomy 16:14, which states, “And you shall rejoice on your festivals.”

What that blunt statement says, however, and what it may actually mean may be two different things, judging by Maimonides’ version of this law.

In his The Laws of Festivals 6:17-18, Rambam paraphrases that statement but only as part of a longer statement that contains a huge qualifier. It says that everyone in a household, not just the men, are required to rejoice on a festival because of Deuteronomy 16:14 — but each person in that household must rejoice “in a manner appropriate” for him or her. While “men eat meat and drink wine,” he says, children are given roasted nuts and sweets. “For women,” he says, the man of the house “should buy attractive clothes and jewelry.”

In other words, the operative phrase is “in a manner appropriate” for each person — and that includes the men. If meat does not bring a man joy, he gets to eat what does.

That is how halachic authorities who came later ruled, including Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ginzburg in his Sha’agat Aryeh, Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein in his Aruch HaShulchan, and the great moralist the Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, in his Mishnah Berurah.

Considering the abuse non-human life forms must go through before reaching the table, maybe the time has come to at least consider revising some of our Shabbat and festival menus.

Perhaps, as well, we can show compassion for someone mourning the loss of a furry four-legged member of his or her family.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.