Eco-kosher as a practice of mindfulness and intersectionality

Eco-kosher as a practice of mindfulness and intersectionality

Innovations in Jewish Life Collections

2023

Gregg Drinkwater, Hilary Kalisman, Samira Mehta, Maggie Rosenau

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English

In a 1988 essay in Tikkun Magazine, Waskow elaborated on several key Jewish values that he felt should and could be combined with the traditional laws of kashrut as part of a global eco-kosher movement. Jewish law, for example, values not oppressing workers (oshek, in Hebrew); respecting animals (tza’ar ba’alei hayyim); protecting the planet (leshev ba’aretz); respecting one’s body (shemirat haguf), and so on. Renewal Rabbi Simcha Raphael further proposed that the eco-kosher movement could also be one path toward interfaith dialogue and community building between Muslims and Jews through joint efforts to consider shared religious values around kashrut and halal (the Islamic system for determining appropriate food choices). [5]

Rabbi Raphael and many other Jewish leaders emphasized the shared commitments to hospitality in both Islam and Judaism, and Biblical teachings about sharing food and water with travelers and strangers (teachings mirrored in the Koran and in the Arab culture from which Islam emerged). For these leaders, then, mindful engagement with food and eating could also help build interfaith bridges and play a positive role in defusing conflict between Jews and Muslims.


[5] Kashrut and Halal – Sharing of Sacred Food and New Directions for Jewish-Muslim Dialogue in Post-9/11 America, Simcha Raphael, produced for a course on the “Ethics of Kashrut” with Rabbi Jill Hammer, May 2009.