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[For articles on the “Sabbath of Re’eh" in Hebrew, click here]

Updated on August 25, 2022

Rabbi Dr. Yossi Feintuch was born in Afula and holds a Ph.D. in American history from Emory University in Atlanta. He taught American history at Ben-Gurion University.

Author of the book US Policy on Jerusalem (JCCO).

He now serves as rabbi at the Jewish Center in central Oregon. (JCCO).

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If we needed another biblical testimonial that the Torah is uncomfortable with the irreligious (or non-sacrificial) consumption of meat -- perchance, those who live too far from the designated centralized altar site, where the lust for meat might be satiated by making a frequent animal offering, would resort to eat such meat at home on a regular, if not on a frequent basis -- this weekly Torah portion – Re’eh – provides it thrice!  All three references to it are in a close proximity to one another, presumably for extra emphasis: ‘’Only wherever your appetite’s craving maybe you shall slaughter and eat meat’’ (Deuteronomy 12:15).  And once again five verses hence: ‘’and you say, ‘Let me eat meat,’ when your appetite craves eating meat, wherever your appetite’s craving maybe, you shall eat meat… and you shall eat within your gates wherever your appetite’s craving may be’’ (Deuteronomy 12:20-21).

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The frequent secular eating of meat is associated then with having an appetite craving, which is not normative for food like produce, eggs or milk products, foods that the Torah never associates with craving. Further, unlike a fruit or a vegetable that may be eaten whole, if so desired, the blood in meat has long been a definite verboten and it must be removed from the meat: “On the earth you shall spill it like water” (v. 16), as man has no claim on this foremost symbol of life but God alone: ‘’for the blood is the soul, and you shall not eat the soul [Animals have a soul! ] with the flesh’’ (v. 23).  This blood prohibition is reiterated, if only to make sure that we did not overlook it, or at least its reward for observing it: “You must not eat it; that it may go well with you” (v. 25).

Craving in the parlance of the Bible generally connotes obsessiveness and sinfulness, or in the words of the Jerusalem Talmud: “The evil impulse craves only that which is forbidden’’ (Yoma, 34:1).

Indeed, the woman (Eve), we are told, ‘’saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was lust to [or craved by] the eyes and the tree was lovely to look at, and she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate’’ (Genesis 3:6). Many commentators regard this eating as the ‘’original sin’’, or ‘’just’’ a sin, or at the least an act of disobedience; the first human pair (and thereafter humanity at large) would bear adverse consequences for succumbing to craving for a forbidden food.

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Such lust for food would bring about a major disaster among the Israelites at Sinai (while journeying to the Promised Land) when the people devour voraciously the multitudes of quail that swept up from the sea. Hence, ‘’the Lord’s wrath flared against the people, and the Lord struck a very great blow against the people. And the name of the place was called Kibroth-Hataavah, for there the people buried the ones who had been craving’’ (Numbers 11: 33-34).

Such craving, however, for a fellowman’s house and other properties (e.g., his field or animals of burden per Deuteronomy 5:18) is categorically forbidden, though it is a mere feeling or a state of mind which is hard to rein in unlike an action.

Evidently, this week’s Re’eh portion wants to regulate and minimize the craving for frequent meat consumption seeking to limit it to the rate ‘’as the deer or as the gazelle is eaten’’ (v. 22). Namely, only quite infrequently would man eat meat from such animals for they could only be hunted. As such their meat was not readily available for hunting them was not a surefire daily affair. Indeed, Esau, a skilled huntsman, traded off his birthright blessing for Jacob's lentil stew because he was tired and hungry upon returning home empty-handed.

Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the Chief Rabbi in Palestine a century ago wrote in his “Vision of vegetarianism and peace” that the Torah’s resorting to the word ‘’craving’’ to describe frequent secular meat consumption deliberately foretells a time which is yet to come. That time would be characterized by the moral shunning of such craving due to its being ‘’morally disgusting’’ in-as-much as humanity has already ridden itself of cannibalism for the same reason.

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Indeed, the Rabbis of yore who developed the daily system of blessings understood that it would be inappropriate, if not utterly disingenuous to bless an activity that explicitly contradicts a Torah ideal as this week’s Torah portion demonstrates. While prescribing specific blessings for bread, grains, wine (or grape juice), and for each kind of land produce, whether of the tree or of the earth, the Rabbis shunned a specific blessing for meat when eaten in and by itself. Instead, they prescribed a catch-all blessing that doesn’t refer to meat at all, likely reflecting the moral repugnancy that Rav Kook associated with eating it, an act of human lust that God frowns on at the least.  Hence, we recite for a meat dish only: ‘’Blessed are You, Eternal our God, the Sovereign of the Universe by Whose word all things came to be”.

[For articles on the “Sabbath of Re’eh" in Hebrew, click here]