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[First posted November 28, 2012; about time to review!
Dr. Jordan Rubin in his book The Maker’s Diet was the first to catch our attention regarding what’s in ‘unclean meat’ when he wrote that the death enzymes “cadaverine” and “putrescine” are byproducts from the meat of unclean animals; he says they are useful in nature because without their assistance, no flesh would revert to dust. Further, that they are extremely useful in breaking down a corpse but terribly inconvenient in a living human body.
The other wake-up call came from the Seventh Day Adventists; Ellen White told her audiences “the tissues of the swine swarm with parasites” and this was before the microscope revealed the trichina parasite (a worm found in pork muscle which creates a still incurable disease).
Eat unclean meat at your own risk!!! Here’s more to whet your appetite for more information from the Creator Who created animals for food as well as scavenging animals to clean up the garbage from the earth. Know which is which! This is from Pentateuch & Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz, published by The Soncino Press. Reformatting and highlights ours.–Admin1.]
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Among the laws of purity, first place is given to the subject of food, because the daily diet intimately affects man’s whole being. The subscription to this chapter, v. 43 f, clearly reveals the object of the Dietary Laws.
God brought Israel out of Egypt to be
- a ‘holy people’,
- a consecrated people,
- ‘a people apart,
- distinguished from all others by outward rites,
- which in themselves helped to constitute Holiness.
Outward consecration was symbolically to express an inner sanctity.’
- This thought of being a ‘holy people’—
- a light supernaturally kindled, lest darkness should become complete—
- a witness to God’s sovereignty and purity lest He become utterly unacknowledged in the world He had made—
- a ‘kingdom of priests’, sanctified in themselves, and sanctified for the rest of the world’s sake–
- -this sublime thought would be daily impressed on their minds by these Commandments which separated them from other nations.
These would, furthermore, prevent that close and intimate association with heathens which would result in complete absorption.
Indeed, the Dietary Laws have proved an important factor in the preservation of the Jewish race in the past, and are, in more than one respect, an irreplaceable agency for maintaining Jewish identity in the present.
An illustrious Jewish scientist wrote:
‘It may appear a minute matter to pronounce the Hebrew blessing over bread, and to accustom one’s children to do so. Yet if a Jew, at the time of partaking of food, remembers the identical words used by his fellow Jews since time immemorial and the world over, he revives in himself, wherever he be at the moment, communion with his imperishable race. In contrast to not a few of our co-religionists, who have no occasion for weeks and months together to bestow a thought on their Creed or their People, the Jew who keeps Kashrus has to think of his religious and communal allegiance on the occasion of every meal; and on every such occasion the observance of those laws constitutes a renewal of acquiescence in the fact that he is a Jew, and a deliberate acknowledgment of that fact’ (Haff’kine).
The Rabbis were content to say that these laws belong to the class called ‘statutes,’ which must be obeyed, although the reason for them transcend human understanding, and although they provoke the derision of heathens, Jewish and non-Jewish.
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There have, however, at all times been those who have seen a hygienic purpose in these prohibitions and have held that the forbidden meats were not prohibited arbitrarily, but were unwholesome and repulsive in themselves. Modern research, too recognizes that certain animals harbour parasites that are both disease-creating and disease-spreading. Their flesh is consequently harmful to man. Such animals are excluded from the Hebrew dietary.
Furthermore, as it is in the blood that the germs or spores of infectious disease circulate, the flesh of all animals must be thoroughly drained of blood before serving for food. This is most effectively done by the Jewish method of Shechitah, and especially by the Traditional koshering of the meat before it is prepared for food.
Statistical investigation has demonstrated that —
Jews as a class are immune from, or less susceptible to, certain diseases; and their life-duration is frequently longer than that of their neighbours.
Competent authorities have not hesitated to attribute these healthy characteristics to the influence of the Dietary Laws.
In the Middle Ages, when epidemics devastated many a country, the Jews were far less affected than the rest of the population; and this immunity gave rise to the malicious accusation that the Jews had caused the plague by poisoning the wells!
Although much remains to be discovered to explain in every detail the food-laws in Leviticus, sufficient is known to warrant the conviction that their observance produces beneficial effects upon the human body.
The supreme motive, however, of the Dietary Laws remains Holiness, not as an abstract idea, but as a regulating principle in the everyday lives of men women, and children.
- ‘The Dietary Laws train us in the mastery over our appetites;
- they accustom us to restrain both the growth of desire and the disposition to consider pleasure of eating and drinking as the end of man’s existence’ (Maimonides).
- Whosoever eats forbidden foods becomes imbued with the spirit of impurity, and is cast out of the realm of Divine Holiness (Zohar).
- Rejection of the Dietary Laws has at various times been considered as equivalent to apostasy.
- The Maccabean martyrs died rather than transgress them.
At the present day, the majority of Jews continue to abstain from forbidden food, not only from personal aversion, but because ‘our Father in Heaven has decreed that we should abstain from it (Sifra). These laws constitute an invaluable training in self-mastery.
“Is there not something spiritually attractive in the idea of the Jew of this age voluntarily submitting to restrictions on his appetites for the sake of duty—forming one of a religious guild, whose special characteristic is its self-control?
It ought to be the pride of the modern Jews and every child should be taught to feel it—that his religion demands from him a self-abnegation from which other religionists are absolved; that the price to be paid for the privilege of belonging to the hierarchy of Israel is continuous and conscious self-sacrifice. the Dietary Laws foster this spirit of self-surrender. Respect for them teaches and helps the Jew, in Rabbinic language, to abase his desires before the will of his Father in Heaven’ (M. Joseph).
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