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March 11, 2011
Time to consider food
Advocates bring eco-kashrut straight to the fore.
REBECA KUROPATWA
According to its proponents, eco-kashrut connects Judaism more deeply to the earth. Eco-kashrut reimagines the biblically mandated concept of Jewish dietary law to include issues in production, environmental impact, animal treatment and sustainability.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, one the first proponents of the eco-kashrut movement, explained this connection in an essay originally published in the Jerusalem Post.
“In the deepest origins of Jewish life, the most sacred relationship was the relationship with the earth. For shepherds, farmers and orchard-keepers, food was the nexus between adamah (the earth) and its closest relative adam (man) – so, ancient Jews got in touch with God by bringing food to the Temple.”
Rabbi Larry Pinsker, of Winnipeg’s Congregation Shaarey Zedek, concurs. “Eco-kashrut bridged the gap between ancient Jewish ethical standards regarding the proper use of the earth and the food chain in modern Western society,” he said in an interview.
Pinsker described the beginnings of the eco-kashrut movement, which began about 30 years ago. “Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Dr. Rabbi Arthur Waskow raised questions about whether the way in which we obtain or manufacture food wasn’t subject to a broader set of ethical principles, beyond those defined in biblical and talmudic dietary laws.
“While fruits and vegetables harvested by migrant workers living under substandard or even dangerous conditions might, strictly speaking, be acceptable for human consumption under ancient Jewish halachah, they proposed that Jewish law governing mistreatment, endangerment or abuse of workers should render those foods unacceptable until the safety of workers was guaranteed.” The rabbis argued that damage to the earth caused by agricultural practices pollutes the food chain or otherwise harms the ecosystem, ethical violations that make the food unfit for human consumption, he explained.
“Schachter-Shalomi and Waskow also proposed that by establishing such a linkage, one was obligated to speak up in defence of the earth, migrant workers and others at risk when toxic pesticides were used to increase yields, and where pain suffered by animals raised and ultimately slaughtered to provide human food,” he noted.
The Conservative movement in North America in the last decade has developed an ethical kashrut standard to ensure workers in production facilities have health insurance and other benefits, and that production companies follow toxic substances exposure safety guidelines.
According to Pinsker, this complements eco-kashrut, as do “child labor laws being obeyed by companies in the agriculture and food industries and up-to-date safety equipment and proper training being made available to workers using dangerous machinery.”
One objection to certifying for eco-kashrut, according to Pinsker, is a possible increase to food cost, but, he said, “The benefits in terms of a healthier food supply and the knowledge that insistence on eco-kashrut and ethical kashrut standards means reduced injury, death and lifelong damage to workers are matters of conscience.”
Over the last few years, many groups are helping to sensitize the Jewish community to these issues.
“Rabbi Morris Allen, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, has had an enormous influence [with] his development of ethical kashrut policies that are being widely adopted within the meat-packing and food-processing industries and have generated strong responses from Orthodox kashrut supervision organizations, who were at first critical of the demand for a magen tzedek [the Conservative movement’s ethical food production certification],” said Pinsker. Orthodox supervision organizations have since organized an equivalent of the magen tzedek as well.
In his essay on eco-kashrut and environmental standards, Waskow asked, “Is it eco-kosher to eat vegetables and fruit that have been grown by drenching the soil with insecticides? Is it eco-kosher to drink Shabbat Kiddush wine from non-biodegradable plastic cups?... Is it eco-kosher to destroy great forests, to ignore insulating our homes, synagogues and nursing homes, to become addicted to automobiles so that we drunkenly pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, there to accelerate the heating of our globe?
“We can light a blaze to consume the earth or we can make a holy altar of our lives, to light up the spark of God in every human and every species,” Waskow concluded.
In Pinsker’s view, eco-kashrut “is a long overdue and wise application of already existing policies and practices within Judaism, including Jewish labor law and environmental practices. The domains of Jewish environmentalism, ethical labor practices and kashrut fit together spectacularly.”
Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.
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