As a scholar of food and Judaism, I am often asked about the origins of the kosher laws.
Unfortunately, in answering these questions, I sometimes play the role of the party pooper, as I patiently explain, for example, why the Jewish aversion to pork is not based on fears of trichinosis.
In fact, as David Kraemer pointed out in his recent book, “Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages” (Routledge, 2007), the evolution of kashrut is often based on social factors. In short, kosher rules are often social rules.
In defending this proposition, I usually turn to the early rabbinic period — roughly the third and fourth centuries C.E. Several early rabbinic texts attest to a social explanation for kosher regulations.
For example, a Jew is forbidden to attend a wedding feast for an idolater’s son – even if he brings his own food and servants – simply because the social interaction itself is not kosher. And beer made by gentiles is forbidden to drink, the rabbis say, because it might lead to intermarriage! While these rules have changed over time, the fact remains that kashrut legislation is often motivated by social factors.
I have spent a lot of time considering the social nature of kashrut in light of the recent controversy in Postville, Iowa. As many of you know, the “kosher” meat plant there became the epicenter of an earthquake that shook the Jewish community, culminating in the Nov. 13 conviction of Agriprocessors plant manager Sholom Rubashkin on various money laundering and business fraud charges. As a result, Jews have once again asked whether kosher is really kosher.
While space does not permit me to discuss the history of kashrut debates, the controversy that followed in the wake of Postville is far from a new phenomenon. What is novel about this most recent debate is the extent to which it connects to arguments about food ethics in our society at large.
From the ascendance of the Food Network to a Sept. 24 Michael Pollan lecture in Madison that drew 7,000 people, food is a hot topic of discussion. These debates have not remained isolated from Jewish concerns, as blogs such as The Jew and the Carrot (jcarrot.org) translate wider foodie concerns into a Jewish vernacular.
Changing kashrut
What the Postville controversy brings into relief is an intriguing — and vexing — question: To what extent do broader ethical, economic and social concerns in regard to food affect kashrut?
Needless to say, there are a variety of stances on this issue. Many Jews see kashrut as a religious system that should not be influenced by social concerns, which are perceived to be ancillary.
Others disagree, claiming that these issues lie at the very heart of kashrut. Still others take a middle ground. It should be stated that these views are held by Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, making broad denominational generalizations difficult.
For example, in a June 5, 2009, piece entitled “Kosher to eat but not kosher to buy,” Rabbi Shlomo Levin argued, “What we need is not a replacement for the current kosher supervision system, but an addition to it.” For Levin, the ethical, economic, and social concerns raised by the Postville controversy required that an additional layer to kashrut be added. Here he built upon the work of Hekhsher Tzedek, a Conservative program that seeks to connect Jewish and modern American foodways.
While Levin and the Hekhsher Tzedek movement argue that ethical, economic and social concerns must be added to kashrut much like frosting is added to the top of a cake, I would actually argue for something a bit more radical: these concerns must be added more like a middle layer of frosting, i.e., directly into the kashrut system itself.
Rather than determining whether something is kosher and then determining whether it is “kosher,” we should advocate for integrating these systems.
There are numerous historical precedents for the integration of contemporary social concerns into Jewish conceptions of eating: from what we eat to how we eat.
This would not be an innovation. To be sure, we are not the first Diaspora Jews to wrestle with this issue. For example, Philo, a first century C.E. Jewish philosopher living in Alexandria, Egypt — the New York City of its day — argued that the biblical food laws accorded with Greek philosophical notions of rational thought that were then in vogue.
A more recent example can be found in Milwaukee native Hasia Diner’s "Hungering for America" (Harvard University Press, 2001), which discusses how the early- to mid-twentieth century Jewish labor movement joined together with food workers in order to protest the real human price of the artificially cheap cost of kosher food in America.
Underlying the fight for union bakeries or to break up monopolies on kosher meat was an argument in favor of connecting Jewish notions of food with business and social ethics.
To call eating a political act has become cliché. To call it a religious act has an even older history. However, the fact remains that eating is a social practice that, while necessary for survival, is an act that communicates a range of values: political, social and religious.
Kashrut is about more than what we eat and how it is prepared. As Jews have noted for millennia, kashrut must also be concerned with the broader ways in which that food exists. How a food item is financed, grown, produced, etc. must play an integral part in establishing whether or not that food is “kosher.”
Jordan D. Rosenblum, Ph.D., is the Belzer Assistant Professor in Classical Judaism at UW-Madison. His book, “Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” will be published by Cambridge University Press in May.
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