Eco-Kashrut: The Connection between Adam and Adamah

Eco-kashrut is a fairly new movement in Jewish eating that combines the spiritual principles of kashrut with the ethical challenges that we face in our modern world. Eco-Kashrut makes the connection between adam, the human, and adamah, the earth.

In the beginning of the Torah, Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to work and to look after it (Gen. 2:15). There is a powerful midrash that picks up on this theme:

"At the time that Hashem created Adam, G-d showed him all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said to him: See my works! How beautiful and praiseworthy they are? And everything that I created, I created for you. Take care that you should not destroy my world, for if you spoil it there is no one to repair it after you." (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 7:19)

There are important questions that most kashrut authorities do not even consider before they put a kashrut certification on a product. Is a product kosher if it has been grown in poisonous pesticides? Is it kosher to drink coffee that came from a plantation where the workers are not paid a minimum wage and have harsh working conditions? Is it kosher to eat an egg which was laid by a battery chicken fed on growth hormones and antibiotics and not given the chance to go outside it's entire life? Is it kosher to wrap a product in a container that is not recyclable?

Rabbis are currently investigating the possibilities of bringing in an eco-hechsher (certification stamp) that would take into account not only the kashrut of ingredients, but the entire supply chain that created the product. In the meantime it is up to us all to do the work ourselves, and to make the right choices about the food and products that we buy.