The Compassionate Diet

One of the most effective ways to teach the lesson of reverence for life, is the proper observance of Kashrut. Since Judaism holds life to be sacred; it has developed a process of ritual slaughter that requires humane treatment for animals. The Shochet (one who slaughters animals) recites a b’rachah before the slaughtering process, demonstrating that Hashem only intends us to kill humanely and for the purpose of food. The separation of milk and meat teaches us reverence of life by symbolically recognizing the distinction between life and death; life is represented in milk and death in meat. Kashrut also involves removing all blood from meat, because the life of the animal is contained in the blood.

In this culture, our sense of reverence for life has been severely dulled. Destroying human life is unfortunately something that we witness everyday, for example children’s video games…seem harmless? Not when the object of the video game is to brutally kill the opponent. Movies and television programs prove to be no different when it comes to violence. Between the ages of 6 and 18, the average American youth will spend sixteen thousand hours in front of the T.V and will witness eighteen thousand on-screen murders. dramatized deaths are not the only thing that we need to be worried about... What about the documented 6 million abortions that take place each year in the United States? Abortion is clearly no longer primarily an act of desperation, but a form of birth control. Another form of death that has been plaguing the world is Genocide; from the Holocaust, to the Rwandan Genocide, to the on-going conflict in Darfur.

These are just a few of the many ongoing issues we face, and it does not seem like they will be changing any time soon. Has there ever been a time that we needed a lesson on the reverence of life then right now? There are many reasons that Hashem gave us the mitzvah of Kashrut; but one important reason that we all need at this time, is a daily and constant reminder to act with compassion, and live with a reverence for life