[Picture: Biblical meat consumption... free bible images]

[For articles on the “Sabbath of  Shemini" in Hebrew, click here]

The article was updated on March 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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In Last week’s Torah portion Tsav (Leviticus 7:26-7), where the only opportunity to consume meat was in the context of bringing an animal offering to the Sanctuary, Israelites folks were warned, as Noah was (Genesis 9: 4) when God permitted him to consume animal flesh, to categorically abstain from consuming blood together with the flesh. Indeed, any meat slaughtering outside the sacrificial system was deemed as shedding blood, i.e., ‘’the murder of a human being’’, plain and simple, as Everett Fox renders it.

[Picture: Biblical meat consumption... free bible images]

Though the prohibition on blood consumption is not immediately repeated in this weekly portion, Sh’mini, where the dietary laws are dilated on extensively, it is repeated anew in Moses’ repetition of those dietary laws to the new generation of Israelites poised to enter the Promised Land. Therein, the prohibition against the consumption of blood returns in large writ: ‘’Only: the blood you are not to eat’’ (Deuteronomy 12:16); this banning of any traces of blood in meat requires nine repetitions in the Torah as a whole.

Blood is the foremost symbol of the creature’s soul given to it by the Creator. Or as Orthodox Rabbi Yitz Greenberg posits: “Blood is seen as the carrier of life. The prohibition is a reminder that the ideal remains not to take another life. Not consuming blood is humanity’s acknowledgment that it is violating the sanctity of life” when it does do so anyway. Why, it is only the aleph, the first Hebrew letter, that distinguishes between dam (blood) and adam (a person), thus reminding us of the close relationship, etymologically and otherwise, between all blooded and ensouled living beings. Perchance, such a reminder might mitigate one’s frequent craving for animal flesh.

[Picture: Biblical meat consumption... free bible images]

With the increase, albeit unsustainable, proliferation of meat consumption worldwide, even in places where such consumption was small or rare, as it was among the biblical Israelites, Sir David Attenborough, in his powerful first-hand account of humanity's impact on nature ‘’A life on our planet’’ (2020), also supports humanity’s atavistic -- little, or no meat at all -- diet as God had ordained to all creatures (through the end of Noah’s flood), observing: “We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters... If we had a mostly plant-based diet we could increase the yield of the land… (where) nature is our biggest ally.”

[For articles on the “Sabbath of  Shemini" in Hebrew, click here]