And God blessed them [Adam and Chava], and said to them: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply [be many], and fill the earth, and bring it under your control [subdue it]; and have command over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and all living things that crawl upon the earth. And God said: ‘Here, I give you all plants that bear seeds, that are upon the face of all the earth, and all trees, in which there is fruit of the tree that bears seeds—for you they shall be for eating.
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply [be many], and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon all the wildlife of the earth, and upon all the fowl of the heavens, and all that crawl on the soil, and all the fish of the sea – into your hand are they given. All things crawling about that live, for you shall they be, for eating, as with the green plants, I now give you all of it. However – flesh with its life, its blood, you shall not eat.
This text parallels strongly elements of the text in Bereshit 1:28-29. Yet there is a striking difference. In the account of creation in Bereshit, God blesses human beings and gives us dominion over all of creation, but only the plant kingdom is given to us to eat for food. In this blessing, God not only gives us plants, but also the animal kingdom as food. In this, it marks a transition for humans from being herbivores to omnivores (eating both plants and animals).
What does this transition signify? What might it say about our relationship to creation and about our nature as human beings? How do we decide what is acceptable to eat and how is this connected to our identity? To what extent are we what we eat?
This text parallels strongly elements of the text in Bereshit 1:28-29. Yet there is a striking difference. In the account of creation in Bereshit, God blesses human beings and gives us dominion over all of creation, but only the plant kingdom is given to us to eat for food. In this blessing, God not only gives us plants, but also the animal kingdom as food. In this, it marks a transition for humans from being herbivores to omnivores (eating both plants and animals). Whether we should eat meat is a contentious issue. Before delving into this issue it might be helpful to slow down and spend time reflecting on how we decide what counts as food and how we decide which foods we will eat. The issue is more complex than merely deciding between “meat or not meat”. The discussion plans and exercises here explore our relationship to food, how what we eat might affect us, and how we decide – culturally, religiously, and morally – the boundaries to what we choose to eat.
While the text now states we have permission to eat meat, there are distinctions and limits here as well – we can eat flesh, but not blood, and we will be held accountable for killing another human being. What does this transition signify? What might it say about our relationship to creation and about our nature as human beings? How do we decide what is acceptable to eat and how is this connected to our identity? To what extent are we what we eat? Does eating flesh make us more violent or is it a release that leads us to be less violent? If we start thinking that it is acceptable to kill animals will we end up thinking it is acceptable to kill people?
Both the Jewish textual tradition and philosophical discourse are animated around these questions, offering us multiple responses that can inform our inquiry
Secondary Sources: Animals and People – Killing Animals and Killing People
Bereshit Chapter 9:1-7- בְּרֵאשִׁית
You are permitted to use the animals and employ them for work, rule over them in order to utilize their services for your survival, but you must not hold their life cheap or kill them for food. Your natural diet is vegetarian… Apparently the Torah was in principle opposed to the eating of meat. When Noah and his descendants were permitted to eat meat this was a concession conditional on the law against eating blood. This law implied respect for the principle of life (“for the blood is the life”) and hints that in reality all meat should have been prohibited. This restriction was designed to call to mind the previous total one. Cassuto: From Adam to Noah, on Genesis 1:27 Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Cassuto
Umberto Cassuto was also known as Moshe David Cassuto (1883–1951).
He was a rabbi and Biblical scholar born in Florence, Italy.
Since the land had become filled with violence and man had allowed himself to do terrible things, man was no longer required to go without killing animals for food. It was far more important that he should control himself and hold back from killing other human beings, and respect the life of his neighbor.
Nehama Leibowitz on Rav Kook, Professor Nehama Leibowitz was a famous Israeli Bible scholar who developed a particular style of Bible study that was very popular around the world. Image source: www.lookstein.org/nechama_biography.html
I permitted you to shed the blood of every living except your own blood which I did not permit since you are human. I shall require it …. This is a general rule. Subsequently the text explains its detailed application. “By the hand of man” – if many slay a single person or one individual another, I shall seek out the blood. I shall also seek it out from any beast, by commanding another to slay it. For animals are permitted to you but not you to them.
Abraham Ibn Ezra. Born in 1089 in Spain. He was a poet,
astrologist, scientist, and an expert in Hebrew grammar. Image source: http://www.visitaporelmoncayo.com/
Permission was not given to man to destroy even the most inferior of his kind, until the Divine command to Noah. A special command of God was even required to allow Adam and Eve to make use of the plants which are lesser than the animals, as it is stated: (1:29): “behold I have given you all the herbs of the field.” Similarly, God commanded the shedding of a man’s blood, if his sin warranted it…. as in the Law of Moses, …. For man is the highest of God’s creatures, created in His image and enjoying the gift of intelligence. Other creatures must therefore fear him and one man must not destroy the other, since by doing so man destroys the highest work of God, made in His image, and he goes and destroys it. Radak
“Radak” is short for” Rabbi David Kimchi” He was born in southern France in the year 1160. He came from a family of famous scholars, which gave rise the famous saying; Where there is no ‘kemach’ (flour) there is no bread”.
In this week’s parsha, as Noah stands outside the ark surveying a post-deluge world, God blesses him and gives him new dietary parameters: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these.” (Genesis 9:3) This divine permission to eat meat is a big departure from the instructions given generations earlier to Adam and Eve, who were only allowed to eat a vegetarian diet.
No explanation is given in the torah for this change, which is bundled together with other injunctions against eating the blood of animals and against murder. But the rabbis argue that the permission to eat meat is an attempt to put boundaries on something people were doing prior to the flood, killing animals wantonly and without regard to the fact that to eat an animal was to take a life. God was setting up checks and balances to explicitly prevent this cruelty.
But “This concession to human weakness is not a license for savagery,” argues scholar Nahum Sarna. Meat cannot be eaten without recognition of its origins in life; God’s permission can be seen as the original injunction to eat mindfully.
…have we fulfilled our obligation to God by eating humanely raised meat, or should we be aiming for Edenic ideal of not eating meat at all?
Can eating meat ever be a holy act? I posed this dilemma to Naftali Hanau, owner of Grow and Behold, an ethical kosher meat company. Hanau, a former vegetarian (because of the historical lack of humanely raised kosher meat), argues that questions of sustainable eating must go beyond whether or not one should eat meat.
There are many overlooked trade-offs in the food system. “How is it any better to eat conventional tofu, made from genetically modified soy and grown on a field covered in petrochemical fertilizer? Conventional food does not get a free pass on environmental sustainability just because something is a vegetable.” He pointed out that Amish farmers who raise his chickens – moving the coops by hand and restoring the soil – leave a smaller environmental impact than conventional vegetable farming.
One question I posed to Hanau was whether having greater access to sustainable meat meant he ate more of it, as I have found to be true in my house. He said that it had not, but that it was still an ongoing conversation in his family about how much meat to eat. Purchasing sustainable meat is not a license to eat it mindlessly, he says. All forms of eating can be savagery. All of them can be holy. This was the challenge to Noah and to us.
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is director of education and outreach for Rabbis for Human Rights-North America.
As a vegetarian who returned to meat-eating, I find the question “Is meat-eating ethical?” one that is in my head and heart constantly. The reasons I became a vegetarian, then a vegan and then again a conscientious meat-eater were all ethical. The ethical reasons of why NOT to eat meat are obvious: animals are raised and killed in cruel conditions; grain that could feed hungry people is fed to animals; the need for pasture fuels deforestation; and by eating meat, one is implicated in the killing of a sentient [conscious] being. Except for the last reason, however, none of these aspects of eating meat are necessary, yet they are exactly what make eating some meat unethical. Which leads to my main argument: eating meat raised in specific circumstances is ethical; eating meat raised in other circumstances is unethical. Just as eating vegetables, tofu or grain raised in certain circumstances is ethical and those produced in other ways is unethical.
What are these “right” and “wrong” ways of producing both meat and plant foods? For me, they are summed up well in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the ecological community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
While most present-day meat production is an ecologically foolish and ethically wrong endeavor, happily
this is changing, and there are abundant examples of ecologically beneficial, pasture-based systems. The fact is that most farmers interested in ecology agree that animals are integral parts of truly sustainable agricultural systems. They are able to cycle nutrients, aid in land management and convert sun to food in ways that are nearly impossible for us to do without fossil fuel. If “ethical” is defined as living in the most ecologically sound way, then in fairly specific circumstances, of which each eater must educate himself, eating meat is ethical; in fact NOT eating meat may be arguably unethical.
The issue of killing of a conscious being, however, lingers….
For me, eating meat is ethical when one does three things. First, you accept the biological reality that death is part of the chain of life on this planet … Second, you combine this realization with that cherished human trait of compassion and choose ethically raised food, vegetable, grain and/or meat. And third, you give thanks.
Secondary Sources: Animals and People – Killing Animals and Killing People
Bereshit Chapter 9:1-7- בְּרֵאשִׁית
You are permitted to use the animals and employ them for work, rule over them in order to utilize their services for your survival, but you must not hold their life cheap or kill them for food. Your natural diet is vegetarian… Apparently the Torah was in principle opposed to the eating of meat. When Noah and his descendants were permitted to eat meat this was a concession conditional on the law against eating blood. This law implied respect for the principle of life (“for the blood is the life”) and hints that in reality all meat should have been prohibited. This restriction was designed to call to mind the previous total one. Cassuto: From Adam to Noah, on Genesis 1:27
Umberto Cassuto was also known as Moshe David Cassuto (1883–1951). He was a rabbi and Biblical scholar born in Florence, Italy.
Since the land had become filled with violence and man had allowed himself to do terrible things, man was no longer required to go without killing animals for food. It was far more important that he should control himself and hold back from killing other human beings, and respect the life of his neighbor.
Nehama Leibowitz on Rav Kook, Professor Nehama Leibowitz was a famous Israeli Bible scholar who developed a particular style of Bible study that was very popular around the world.
A related issue to that of eating meat concerns our relationship with animals overall. What does Judaism say about our treatment of animals; how we should relate to them and care for them? Secondary source materials relate to this question of our care for animals. These are particularly well suited to LPS (as well as being relevant to older students).
You should not sit down to eat until you have first fed your animals.
(Talmud, Berachot. 40a; Gittin, 62a)
You should not buy an animal unless you can guarantee it will have an adequate food supply. (Jerusalem Talmud, Ketubot, 4:8)
Shepherds
Moses and David are often described in our tradition as devoted shepherds who gave every animal in their flock personal attention. It was this trait of their personalities that made them worthy in God’s eyes of leading the Jewish people.( Exodus Rabbah 2.2)
Once, while Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, one young sheep ran away. Moses ran after it until the sheep reached a shady place, where he found a pool of water and began to drink. When Moses reached the sheep, he said: ‘I did not know you ran away because you were thirsty. Now, you must be exhausted [from running].’ Moses put the sheep on his shoulders and carried him [back to the herd]. God said, “Because you tend the sheep belonging to human beings with such mercy, you shall be the shepherd of My sheep, Israel.”
PDF 
