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Jewish Traditions

What the pope calls a “relationship of mutuality” between humans and animals sounds to my ears similar to the ideal relationship with animals I found expressed in Judaism’s rabbinic tradition. Rabbi Moses Maimonides, also simply called Maimonides (1135–1204), was the greatest Jewish scholar of his time. It is said of him that “from Moses to Moses there has been no one like Moses.” In Maimonides’ most important work, a spiritual guidebook he entitled The Guide for the Perplexed, he spends considerable time on the virtue of compassion for animals. Explaining the reason for biblical laws that require a person to show sensitivity to the bonds between mother hens and their chicks, Maimonides explains that there is “no difference… between humanity and the other animals” in relation to the pain a mother experiences if she sees her young harmed. “For the love and the tenderness of a mother for her child is not consequent upon reason but upon the activity of the imaginative faculty, which is found in most animals just as it is found in humanity.”

Maimonides is not just speaking his own mind here, but representing an ancient and contemporary practice of compassion for animals that the Jewish tradition has known as tzaar baalei chayim. Traditionally tzaar baalei chayim has not been interpreted as absolutely requiring vegetarianism, but in the age of factory farming numerous rabbis are going vegetarian and citing this venerable principle. One such rabbi is David Wolpe, the senior rabbi at one of the largest synagogues in the world, Temple Sinai in Los Angeles, who was recently celebrated by Newsweek as the “number one pulpit rabbi in America.”

Rabbi Wolpe has emphasized that the spiritual benefits of vegetarianism and compassion for animals don’t just apply to nonhuman animals. Consider Rabbi Wolpe’s discussion of the passage from Maimonides just cited above:

There is a Jewish law that you’re not allowed to take the eggs from a nest without shooing the mother bird away. First you have to get rid of the mother bird so that she won’t see you collecting the eggs from the nest. It’s a law that’s explicit in the Torah. And there are two interpretations of that law. One interpretation following Maimonides is that it is because the bird itself has feelings and you don’t want it to see you taking the egg. The other interpretation following Nachmanides is that you shouldn’t be so coarse, so insensitive, so cruel, as right in front of a mother to take its young. Both of those interpretations are at play here. It’s not only that we shouldn’t inflict this kind of pain on animals; it’s that we shouldn’t be the kind of people who would do it.

I love this idea. Veganism doesn’t just mean we are kinder to animals; it allows us to be more like the kind of people that spiritual traditions have always encouraged us to be.

The rabbis I spoke with explained that today many Jews are vegetarian out of concern for animal welfare, but also simply as a way to participate in an ancient Jewish practice meant to transform eating into a spiritual activity, the kosher diet. As it turns out virtually all the kosher laws deal with regulating animal products—for example prohibitions against eating pigs or shellfish, or the laws of Jewish religious slaughter.

It’s very easy for a vegetarian to keep kosher and even easier for vegans.

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Veganism doesn’t just mean we are kinder to animals, it allows us to be more like the kind of people that spiritual traditions have always encouraged us to be.

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For millennia, Jewish sages have found a teaching in this: the practice of eating kosher is not simply a concession on the vegetarian ideal. A kosher diet is meant to gently lead people back to vegetarianism—back to Eden.

This is where the question, “Well, kosher is at least humane, isn’t it?” comes up. To answer this, I spoke with a couple of people who have firsthand experience in today’s kosher slaughterhouses. One of the most knowledgeable was Philip Schein. This is his story in his own words.