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Home , Halakha, Kashrut

The Big and Small: Revisited Daniel Cotzin Burg Beth Am 1.4.14 ~ Parashat Bo 5774

This week, in Parashat Bo, includes a description of the final three plagues. The first of these, then, is the eighth. I’ll save you the trouble of counting them off in your head and tell you it’s locusts. Much has been written about each of the plagues. Even now, in the dead of winter, the Pesach story is quite compelling as the Jewish people’s formative story. So, the plague of Arbeh is discussed and debated. But a question rarely asked, at least in normative Jewish circles, is the following: are these locusts kosher? The answer, a very Jewish one, is “maybe.” Sephardic and Mizrahi communities, like the Yemenites, have been eating locusts for centuries. Ashkenazi authorities are less clear since their ranks have not seen the expertise required to distinguish kosher locusts from other species of insect.

All this came to a head last year in when neighboring Egypt experienced a literal plague of locusts in March, and the swarms began to make their way into Israel, a concern to local farmers. But some Israeli chefs were enamored of the whole thing, cooking up the bugs and serving the rare kosher delicacy. Chef of Eucalyptus Restaurant was one doing so. His restaurant is known for serving Biblical (which are delicious if you’ve never been there). He told The Guardian: “They taste something between sunflower and baby …I like them, but they’re desired not because they are delicious but because they are rare.” Yum. But locusts are the exception to prove the rule. While Lev. 11(v. 22) allows four types of kosher locusts, it’s with the understanding that all other creepy crawly swarming things are forbidden. So, don’t expect any surprises at lunch.

Why am I thinking about kashrut today? A couple weeks ago I was in at JTS for the Hamakhshir kashrut-training seminar. Why did I go? Partly because I am responsible for the kashrut at Beth Am and wanted a refresher… partly to be able to think proactively about kashrut in our future kitchen. But mostly I went because my rabbinate is largely about the forest. I’ll explain what I mean: I learned from my teachers, Brad Artson, Eddie Feinstein, Michael Siegel and others, that (and writ large) ought to be about asking BIG questions. The problem, we all feel, is that for many centuries we got sidetracked and started to focus on small questions that seem to many largely irrelevant. So for eight plus years of being a rabbi I have endeavored to tackle those big questions: Why are we here? What is ’s role in our lives? What is the nature or purpose of suffering? Why can’t the Cubs seem to win a pennant? I went to the kashrut seminar because, frankly, I miss the details. I miss the trees in that vast forest of Jewish aspirational living.

But here’s the catch, my friends. Think about your own professions: in medicine, science, , education, business…My guess is that each of you knows quite a bit about the minutiae, the details of your craft. If properly sensitized to big questions, the smaller ones are less – well – small. Jewish tradition is no different. We have always felt that

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the ability to tackle big questions is informed by one’s awareness of the smaller ones. That’s why historically the great Jewish thinkers, mystics certainly among them, have been experts in . A facility in Jewish law, in Jewish tradition lived in the day-to- day is a prerequisite for the grand search. was said to have the ability to ascend even to the heavenly throne and descend again unscathed. How? No one of his generation better understood the intricacies of Jewish ritual and ethical law. In other words, Rabbi Akiva understood the kashrut with regard to bugs, so he could – perhaps more than any other – begin to understand God.

So, let’s spend a few minutes today on the details. Let’s talk about those bugs – a subject we covered extensively during my training. Those whose eyes are glazing over, bear with me. I promise, by the end of my remarks, we’ll back to a big idea. And, so as not to disappoint, I do want to say something controversial, but let’s see where the small questions take us first. What does Jewish tradition say about bugs? Namely, that you shouldn’t eat them. It’s in the Shulhan Arukh (Siman 84) and other collections of Jewish law – bugs, worms, arachnids – those creatures that fit the horror film stereotype of creepy crawly things, are simply forbidden.

Not only this, but they are sort of MORE forbidden than some other things that we might consider really unkosher! Who’s heard of the concept of batel bashishim? The basic idea is that if you are making a concoction, say a soup or , and something forbidden accidentally falls into it ( into a pot or even something treif), if the volume of the forbidden additive is less than 1/60 the volume of the whole dish, it is nullified, and you can eat it. Now, don’t get too excited; this is only by accident – no seasoning your chicken soup with a dash of cream! But it does mean ex post facto one can eat treif! This principle, however, does NOT apply to bugs. There’s a concept that a b’riah, which is a complete living creature, is forbidden and cannot be nullified by its proportion to other foods. By dint of its size, bugs are in some ways more of a concern than other forbidden animals. If a tiny, nearly microscopic, bug falls into your cholent, and you can’t quickly it out, you can’t eat the cholent. And the same is true if that happens with an entire .

Now, for those of you sighing, this would be an appropriate moment to remind us of the fundamental value of kashrut – of sanctifying the ordinary, of mindful eating, intra- communal identification and sensitivity to the source of our . For the sake of time, I won’t do so now and trust, instead, that the meta-questions will remain for a future conversation. For the sake of this drasha, I will simply state that I don’t disagree with the principle of avoiding bugs…whether I fully understand the reason isn’t really the point. Much of halakha makes sense – the psychological benefit of , the communal import of bikur holim, the intrinsic rightness of the , but plenty of mitzvot don’t make sense, and our tradition assumes this distinction. While a few scholars ( being the most prominent in recent years) say there is no human justification for ANY of God’s , the thrust of normative Judaism divides mitzvot into two categories: - laws that make sense and Chukim - those whose meaning is beyond human understanding. You’ll never guess which category includes the restriction against eating bugs! So, though I cannot explain why accidentally

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consuming an entire tiny insect is more prohibited than the chance consumption of , I stand by the tradition. You will not go home from shul today saying Burg told us to eat bugs. Or bacon.

However, I do want to share a growing discomfort. It has to do not with the letter of the law but the lengths to which some modern kashrut agencies are going to ensure one doesn’t violate it! It’s not uncommon these days to find some of the following foods either banned entirely or permitted only in frozen, hekhshered form: raspberries, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, strawberries, and the list goes on. Why? Because we have discovered in our day that these and some other foods have a high likelihood of bug infestation. Even if one washes thoroughly and checks these foods for insects, it is quite possible to miss a sheretz or two and, as we’ve heard, one is enough.

The sentimentalists will say…“our bubbies would wash and rewash their lettuce. They would sift through each grain of rice!” That may be true (though I suspect it was not as often true as the sentimentalists suggest), but we live in a different time. Today, many of us come from nuclear, not extended, . There aren’t bubbies sitting around waiting for the rice or flour to arrive for inspection. And women, thankfully, play a different role. We have many dual income households. Many, many in America today are desperately trying to balance time for work, children, and aging parents and are still committed to taking Judaism seriously, including kashrut. For me, the salient question is: do we celebrate these people or castigate them for not spending enough time with each fold, each leaf, each grain of rice! Not only are we letting the perfect be the enemy of the great, I believe we’re dangerously close to condemning the future of kashrut, nee ritual Judaism, to a level of reductio ad absurdum rarely if ever before seen in our history.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend, though, is what I see as a fundamental subversion of one of kashrut’s most important roles – to create better awareness of our bodies and our planet. We know that broccoli and raspberries are healthy. In a world of mechanized food production, of chemical additives and hyper-processed fast foods, we know fruits and and whole-grain foods are important. The bug-seekers say “too bad – the law is the law,” proving once again it is quite possible to be right and wrong at the same time!

Two questions we might ask: What’s the risk? What’s the reward? As the new year begins and headlines continue to focus on Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks, we and the Intelligence community are reminded of a core principle: So many times in life we must consider the cost of being right. Let’s start with the cost of being wrong. We eat something small, unintentionally, and with no known health risk or, to be right, we spend precious time on what I would call excessive bug-checking. Or we waste energy and resources on plastic bagging, freezing or worse, ban certain vegetables altogether. Remember, I’m not saying “go eat bugs” or even “don’t check for bugs.” This summer, I had a truly wonderful experience harvesting and washing lettuce at the Whitelock Community Farm. I spent a long time double-washing the lettuce and checking for bugs; we Jews aren’t the only ones who care about such things. It’s gross. But, how far are we

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willing to go? I have not encountered such a t’shuvah/responsum, but there’s a part of me that wouldn’t be all that surprised if some rabbinic colleague has specifically banned open-mouthed bike riding. No one is disputing the reality of bugs. They exist. The issue, for me, is the threshold for failure.

What’s at stake? The cost of being right could be nothing less than the whole of kashrut, perhaps halakha – too much “small” (read: arcane and irrelevant) leaves us lacking a sense of the “big” (read: things that truly matter). And more, the focus, even obsession, with the possibility of failure has some disturbing consequences, namely an almost endemic distrust of the world. I don’t think I’m exaggerating here. When we fear, almost pathologically, the nearly invisible, we are more inclined to fear the other. So many kashrut agencies in our day ban handled by non-Jews, dairy manufactured by , baked by Christians. Why? Because five hundred years ago it was thought that eating non- bread led to too much mixing with the goyim. I’m not talking about supervision. It’s reasonable to expect experts in Jewish law to check in, as mashgichim, on food production. Hekhsherim, kosher symbols, in a world of literally unpronounceable chemically rendered ingredients, are a good thing. I’m talking about the possibility that since, once-upon-a-time pagans regularly offered libations, all non- boiled should now be off limits despite their completely kosher ingredient content!

Look, I could give you many more examples, but the point is: as a rabbi who believes in healthy eating, in sustainability at least as an aspiration, how can I tell people it’s virtually impossible to eat things that grow in the earth! Remember I said we’d get back to the big question? The question for us, in our day, might well be whether we see ourselves as not only Jews, but worthy occupants of the world. The fear of failure, a tone bordering on xenophobia, our distancing ourselves from the other, all push against the best of Jewish potential. Yes, it’s cute that locusts are kosher, but certain approaches to Jewish ritual are almost plague-like. And I, for one, feel pretty strongly that while Judaism need not always make sense, it should try to do more good than harm.

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