A food fight worth having

BASYA LAYE

This week, the New York Times reported that human beings are happier the more time we spend talking meaningfully about life and the less we engage in small talk. The psychologist who published the study said, “By engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world.”

Judaism is rife with opportunities for meaningful reflection and dialogue. Jews are encouraged to take apart sacred texts, word by word, letter by letter, to parse for meaning. Then, there is the tradition of examining words so deeply as to apply a numerical value to each letter along with attendant metaphysical qualities.

Another Jewish pursuit, and one common to cultures the world over, is food – making it, talking about it, celebrating it and eating it. While vegetarianism is closely associated with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, it is not often paired with Judaism, where brisket, lox, chopped liver, gefilte fish and schnitzel rule the day. What would the Jewish holidays be, you might ask, without your mother’s chicken soup?

If food is so important and emotionally significant, why do we shy away from the most basic conversations about it? In Eating Animals (2009, Little, Brown and Co.), erstwhile novelist Jonathan Safran Foer sets out to have this conversation. He has written an engaging and informative book about his journey to full-time vegetarianism, making the case for why we shouldn’t eat meat, but pointing out that, if we do choose to eat animals, it’s imperative that we educate ourselves about what we’re eating and how it came to be.

With Pesach upon us, there are more than a few intersections between Eating Animals and the festival that celebrates the “time of our freedom.” Pesach provides an opportunity to unpack the layers of meaning in the story of our exodus from Egypt, to explore what freedom means to us and to those around the world. The Pesach seder is the perfect place for Jews to have conversations about social justice, environmentalism, consumerism and consumption, addiction and other ways in which modern life might “enslave” us – our relationships with food included.

Fêted for his novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which tackled the landscapes of the Holocaust and Sept. 11, 2001, respectively, Foer is known for his quirky prose, imagery-filled narrative and originality. Here, he maintains much of his warmth and ability to tell stories that are, at once, serious and self-deprecatingly honest.

I was predisposed to see eye-to-eye with Foer on the food front, though I set out to read dispassionately – albeit with the mind of one who has not intentionally had a morsel of animal flesh – ever.

Many of us have been exposed to the books and movies about food production that seem to have proliferated recently: Fast Food Nation, Food, Inc., The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the classic Diet for a New America, among others. It should come as no surprise then, when Foer cites the statistic that 99 percent of all animals eaten (in America) come from factory farms. That statistic is no different in Canada, where 95 percent of the 650 million animals raised for eating are slaughtered on industrial factory farms. The stats for fish (wild and farmed) are even more astounding, the industry no less ruthless.

While he spends most of the book investigating factory farms and their (torturous) practices, Foer devotes a chunk of his book highlighting the one percent of meat that comes from family-run farms, which he exalts as a more humane, personal and sustainable means of food animal production.

Foer’s Judaism figures dominantly in his narrative. He frames the discussion around the story of his grandmother’s survival during the Holocaust and the habits she developed around food. He tenderly describes behavior with which many of us whose family members survived the Holocaust – or the Great Depression – can identify: the restaurant rolls pocketed, sandwiches carefully stored in pocketbooks, the lore of lucky bread “ends.”

Foer is concerned here with the stories we tell ourselves, specifically about food. “Stories about food are stories about us – our history and our values.”

In Judaism, Foer writes, food “nourishes and helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable – the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matza is the bread of our affliction.”

On Pesach, we tell the story of escape from Egypt and, to retell this saga, we use food, matza, bitter herbs and something to symbolize the korban pesach, the paschal lamb.

Keeping in mind the Jewish prescripts to be kind to animals (tzar ba’alei chaim), the admonition not to be wasteful (bal tashchit) and the mitzvah of sending away a mother bird before removing her eggs, how can we reconcile these commandments, among others, encouraging compassion for all creatures, with, what Foer says is, “a reckless and unthinking practice” of eating?

One way to do this is to incorporate a discussion into our rituals. Read up on different perspectives. Ask questions. Sit quietly and think it through. Discuss it at the seder with your families and friends.

Foer insists that his book does not make a straightforward case for vegetarianism and, while this is true, I’m not certain if he decided to abstain from overt didacticism because he was uncomfortable with the possible charges of self-righteousness that are so often lobbed at those who espouse a meat-free diet.

Foer clearly points out that, while animals are not people, we don’t have to anthropomorphize them for them to have value. We cannot dismiss them – and the arguments in favor of protecting their dignity or their lives – just because we don’t understand them, or cannot experience shared consciousness.

For the most part, Foer doesn’t examine other aspects of using animals and their “byproducts.” Most of us are unaware of which animal products are used and where and how often – cochineal for coloring, gelatin and rennet, animal fats, bone char, “natural” flavors, the list is endless. He also leaves aside more practical implications, like the testing of cosmetics, cleaners or pharmacological drugs on animals. And there are other issues unclaimed here, including the production of dairy, eggs, honey, leather and fur.

For Jews, what matters is action, and Pesach provides a structure to deeply explore what that means. What do we want to teach our children, Foer wonders? How can we model ethical and kind behavior?

It remains true that one person can only make a small difference in the overall scheme, but each of us can contribute to the greater gestalt of Judaism. The sum of the parts, it turns out, is much greater than the whole. That’s truly something worth retelling as we cast off the shackles of our oppression and revel in our tremendous freedoms.

For related resources, visit eatinganimals.com, jewishveg.com or micahbooks.com, publishers of Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb and Haggadah for the Vegetarian Family.

^TOP