A Beastly Matter

The other day I had a bit of an altercation with someone. A gym buddy type. She is pretty opinionated, as am I, so that's always a recipe for argument. Anyway, she was waxing lyrical over this new Kashrut venture, recently launched, involving the breeding of beef and lamb for the Kosher market, where the animals would be kosher from head to tail because of the invocation of a rather arcane law. Usually the hindquarters of the beast are not considered kosher and are sold by the butcher to non-kosher butchers. This is because of the sciatic nerve, or Gid HaNasheh; we can't eat this because ...umm...that's where Jacob was wounded when he was wrestling the angel and was subsequently named Israel? Have I got that right? As I'm writing it, it seems to not make sense. Please correct me, O knowledgeable ones.

There is a way to dissect out all parts of the Gid by a specialised shochet, rendering the meat edible. This is called Treibering or Porging, and is very time consuming and difficult, so these days it is not done much.

OK, so here's the thing. Apparently, if a pregnant cow or ewe is Kosher slaughtered and the foetus is removed, it is considered Kosher and doesn't need its own Shechita. OK, that's not too controversial, even though is is a bit sad to think about this, and I have never heard of anyone doing this. But if this foetus, untimely ripp'd from its mother's womb, like MacDuff, is mature enough to survive; and if you can get such calves or lambs, male and female; and if you breed them together when they are grown, the resulting progeny would be completely edible. Also, the animal does not need the exhaustive examination of innards that regular animals do after slaughter, which saves time and money I guess. This is called Ben Pekuah, and it has been about 1,000 years since anyone sat down to a plate of such meat.

The idea is to make kosher meat cheaper for kosher consumers. I guess it is also about the exciting prospect of eating a rump steak or a leg of lamb etc, previously forbidden foods.

There are a couple of reasons that I don't buy this. Firstly, the cheap thing. I would have thought that the profits made by the butcher when selling the hindquarters on, would factor into the final price of meat; but then again I may be naive.
The other thing is this: although the rabbi endorsing this may be a man of wonderful character and good intentions, I think, frankly, he is not up to the standard needed to do these fancy-pants manoeuvres and I don't trust his Hashgacha (supervision). There have been a few dodgy things in the past involving his Hechsher (kosher stamp of authority) which are enough to make me uneasy. Yes, yes, you're going to talk about all the divisions in Hechshers and these Jews won't eat from that rabbi and those Jews won't eat from this rabbi, and it's all politics yada yada, and it IS a problem. And meat IS expensive. OK.
But Rambam did it! Sure- and this rabbi is not Rambam.

And that's when my buddy got stroppy with me:

'That's the same argument that is used all the time about Agunah! That nobody is wise enough or learned enough nowadays to make any changes and so no changes are made and women are trapped in bad marriages by recalcitrant husbands! And so the Beth Din does nothing and the women suffer!'

We sort of bickered that out a bit and it wasn't till after that I thought of a decent response, as is the way of these things.
And that is: It's not the same thing. The problems of Agunot are basically human rights issues. Withholding a Gett is a form of abuse, and this is being sorted in civil courts even if the Batei Din drag their collective feet, often to their disgrace. I share my buddy's anger and frustration with the situation. And in fact there are brave rabbonim who are stepping up to the plate and who are trying to effect change.

But this Ben Pekuah deal is not about human rights; it's about economics. But it's also about having a good fress, is it not?

You know, I actually don't think meat should be cheap. Maybe it should be a bit cheaper than what it is, but it should be expensive. It certainly is expensive for the animal. I am not advocating vegetarianism, nor am I a vegetarian. But I have always felt that people need to understand what meat-eating entails. I don't think we need to be like Mark Zuckerberg who, for a while, only ate meat from animals that he had killed himself; that's a bit extreme, also impossible for folks who keep kosher, unless they are trained Shochets. But I think that we need to keep in mind that the animal- whether animal or fowl or fish for that matter- died for our nourishment and pleasure. They are not just choice cuts wrapped in plastic on a tray. If you want to eat meat, don't just eat the fillet steaks. Eat the cheap cuts, learn how to cook them. You can feed a family a meat meal and make it quite economical. The real sin here is to waste the meat by poor handling. And as far as nutrition is concerned, you really don't need to eat much meat to get the iron, zinc, B12 etc. We are used to serving and eating slabs of muscle- thats what fillets and all the cuts you know are, muscles; maybe we should be more like the Chinese and use meat almost as a condiment. And maybe not turn up our noses at offal - liver, tongue, sweetbreads, tripe etc. If these things make you squeamish, I think that you are being a child about it and you are not recognising the fact that it was a living, breathing animal that gave you that juicy steak, and it should be acknowledged and respected.

Pushing the boundaries of Halachah is important, if the object is worthy. Unchaining the Agunah, helping the convert, these things are important.

Stuffing our faces with cheap meat, not so much.

For/give

I received an odd phone call last night.
This time of year, before Yom Kippur, Jews often ask forgiveness from each other, for having done something or said something which would have been hurtful or embarrassing. Because on Yom Kippur, all the breast-beating and confession to G-d is worth little if there is an actual human being hurting from what I actually said or did to him or her. I haven't done much of this asking thing in my adult life, because generally I try to be kind to people and if I have wounded someone, I probably wouldn't know. But I have done it.
Anyway, the person who called me was someone I went to school with, so since we graduated in 1972, and I think I have seen her twice in the intervening years, she is not really someone about whom I think very often. Or at all. I was intrigued when she confessed her wrongdoing to me, which was in my mind most trivial, and I wasn't even aware of it. As she was speaking, I was wondering if she was in fact, mentally ill. Then I wondered what she really wanted from me. OK, OK, I'm a bit suspicious of strange phone calls.
When I asked her how she was and what she had been up to, the floodgates burst and she talked for the better part of an hour about events in her life which frankly made it sound like a soap opera. I was aghast at some of the things she told me. My end of the conversation went like this:
Really!
Oh that's awful!
OMG, how sad!
Wow, she really said that, huh?
Whoa, that's weird!
I'm sorry to hear that.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
And I meant most of it because it was sad and weird and awful, most of her jumbled tale. She was getting pretty emotional too, but that's how she always was, even at school. And she was always a storyteller, embellishing and embroidering.
And then she said she had written a book, an autobiography,  and had found a publisher (I must say that this made me very skeptical, because I know how bloody hard it is to get a book published when you have no 'platform', i.e., if you are a nobody). And I'm in the book. Well, I'm not worried nor do I think she was trying to make me worried. I don't think she has a grudge against me and I also don't think this book will get published. Just saying.
So she finished up by tearfully asking my forgiveness which of course I gave her whole-heartedly because even at the time it allegedly occurred, about 15 years ago, I didn't notice anyway.
Sometimes I think I am a little too insensitive, but really, there is little that hurts me or that I even notice without laughing at, or that sticks in my memory. (Except duplicity. That, I remember.)
She wanted to give me her mobile number, which I took, but I demurred when she asked me for mine. You can't blame me. I still don't know what it was really all about apart from a wounded soul wanting someone to listen. So I hope I did that well enough.
And if she does get her book published, I hope she sends me a copy. It will be pretty juicy, I'm sure. Just not the bits with me in it, I am too boring.

OK, just thought I'd share that on behalf of the lonely wounded people. I wish them all, and myself, and all of us, and the world, Gmar Chatimah Tovah; to be signed and sealed in the book that matters, the Book of Life.