D'var Torah - April 6, 2010
D'var Torah - "Food and other Boundaries" Parashat Shemini
-Leviticus 9:1 - 11:47, April 9-10, 2010
Rabbi Mark S. Kram, Temple Beth Or, Miami, FL
Professor Rachel Adler*wrote recently about Parashat Shemini in a way I’ve never thought of. She looked at kashrut as a way of setting boundaries with regard to eating and hinted at what boundaries we have, create or maintain in other aspects of our lives.
As I am writing this during Pesach, I can’t help but sense at each meal OR any time I want a snack, I determine what’s “within the bounds” of Passover eating in my own practice and what’s “outside of those bounds.” Although I don’t keep kosher, I certainly understand its purpose and effects. I witness some of these results during Pesach. It keeps me closer to home – where matzah is plentiful and I don’t have to wonder about what’s in the ingredients of the restaurant foods I am consuming. It also reminds me that I’m a Jew – that I’ve determined as Professor Adler characterized, that matzah is a boundary, a g’vul in Hebrew, and I choose not to cross it. (Of course, last year traveling in Germany for Passover with my family I did revise one particular intake habit – even if ONLY for that Passover!)
We each set boundaries in our lives. For example at work – when, even though the work is never done, we decide to stop. At home, hopefully we place a boundary on our busy, active, hectic lives and say ENOUGH for now when it’s time to put ourselves into Shabbat space and time.
Professor Adler wrote that,
“Nachmanides explains, “Restrict yourselves [ P’rushim y’hiu ]. Sanctify yourself with what is permitted to you.” [In other words] we should be sparing and use what is permitted us in a holy way. What way is that? It is eating mindfully and reverently. It is appreciating our fruits and vegetables and grains, and buying those whose growing has not polluted the earth with toxic pesticides, which also harmed the people who cultivated them.”
Keeping kosher remains an option for us – a boundary of what we eat and what we do not eat. (Weight Watchers is another form of dietary control.) But so is ethical eating, setting our own standards for consumption and for avoiding foods and other products whose production harms our health and environment, oppresses labor, or enables mistreatment of animals**.
Let’s make pro-active decisions and set positive boundaries for ourselves so that we keep our values and our integrity intact.
Shabbat Shalom!
*Professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles.URJ Reform Voices of Torah, 4/13/09.
**Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman, URJ Reform Voices of Torah, 4/13/09.