First posted on The Times of Israel at: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/acharei-mot-smart-diet/

Netziv Leviticus: Acharei Mot

Smart Diet

“Their kitchen is their shrine, the cook their priest, the table their altar, and their belly their god.” -Charles Buck

There is a now-apocryphal story making the rounds of a gentile mother in a supermarket telling her nagging child that he can’t have something because it’s “not kosher.” A curious Jew inquires as to the family’s identity. The mother readily admits she is not Jewish, but says she picked up the term watching a Jewish mother in a supermarket in a similar circumstance of a nagging child, and then magically, the words “it’s not kosher” immediately stopped all annoying requests. The gentile mother was impressed and now uses the sorcerous word for any situation where she will brook no argument. More TV? “Not kosher”, a new toy? “Not kosher”. The child may grow up with a skewed understanding of what the term “kosher” means, but there is one underlying meaning that they got. It involves a statement that the item or action is out of bounds. There is a higher authority that has deemed that whatever it is you want, you need to control yourself and accept that not all your desires can be fulfilled.

In the business of eating there is a wide spectrum of practices in regards to observing the laws of eating Kosher. They range from being directly involved in slaughtering, processing and eating only foods where one personally supervised the production, to the other extreme of eating anything that crawls, is grown, found or manufactured on our planet. Within that range there are people who rely only on very specific supervision groups; those that will rely on any Jewish supervision; those that will purchase and prepare Kosher products for the home, but be more lax on what they eat outside; those that are particular that their meat and chicken are kosher but are less concerned about any other products; and an infinite variety of other standards, preferences and personal quirks when it comes to determining what we ingest.

There are also a variety of reasons that are proposed as to why one should eat Kosher. A popular one that receives sporadic scientific support is that it’s healthier. A Kabbalistic reason is that it helps the soul. The Netziv on Leviticus on 17:16 gives a reason I hadn’t heard before: eating Kosher makes you smarter. He phrases it in the negative. Eating non-kosher makes you dumb. Giving in to ones cravings and baser emotions makes one dumb and can lead a person to other sins. Therefore the reverse must also be true. By eating a kosher diet, it must somehow improve ones intelligence, ones mental capacity and agility. It leads one to restrain oneself, to exhibit self-control. Such mastery can be a strong developer of character and of a sense of boundaries. And it may also be healthier for body and soul.

May all who choose to, enjoy a happy and kosher Pesach.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Ben-Tzion

Dedication

To my friend and colleague, Moshe Silberberg, for his unending efforts to provide Kosher food to the Jewish community of Uruguay.