I just came across the following in my RSS feed and although I haven’t listened to it yet myself it certainly looks interesting. I suspect those of you who are interested in global warming, eco-Kashrut, sustainable living and organic foods may also find this interesting.

Enjoy!

PS I almost bought the audio version of this book last month.

The Ethics of Eating (July 19, 2007)

In Public Radio

Author Barbara Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves. As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking. What can climate change and sustainability really have to do my family’s daily routines? Where does the food we eat come from? And why do we resist when the healthiest choices can be a delight?

• Link
• Enclosure

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Hey this is just a quick FYI post to let people know about the Live Earth concert that is currently pretty much happening on every continent and in over 130 some countries. Neither myself or Tamara had heard anything about it until she stumbled across it on TV, looking for something to watch after Shabbos this evening. So far it’s been pretty cool it’s a mix of live music mixed with celebrity interviews and info on DIY eco-things anyone can do to help address the climate crisis. The commercials and sponsorship around the event even seem to be pretty cool running some sort of a conscious capitalism thing. In fact one of the ads was very cool because it was a service announcement telling people how to get taken off junk mail lists. Nice!

Anyhow if you’re into eco-Kashrut or the whole Tikkun Olam thing you might wanna check out this web site and flip through your TV channels to see if you can find it. We are going to watch it and I’ll try to do a follow-up post on Monday or something.

Enjoy, and if you do check it out please let me know what what you think.

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Why don’t you take a break from your own “problems” this afternoon and think about doing DO SOMETHING a little different with your time. 

Need I say more?

Big fat kisses and hugs to both Treppenwitz and Jack for getting my attention.

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I wanted to do a follow-up on a post from a week or so back on Jewish arguments for adopting a vegetarian diet. I feel that my post was incomplete and may have even misrepresented what I was trying to communicate. It was after all something of a knee-jerk reaction to some pictures I saw online. That is not to say that I was upset by them but simply that I saw the images and impulsively replied with a post of my own. So before too much time passes and I completely forget about it I would like to clarify and expand on my original point.

Although my post focused on animal cruelty and vegetarianism it’s really just one part of a larger issue and is not a black and white situation. I for one do not think you have to be a vegetarian to be ethical. Although I personally feel it is the best choice (at least for me) for a couple of reasons. First by abstaining from animal products I am better able to guarantee that I am not promoting and supporting animal cruelty. Secondly by simply adopting a more plant based diet I lessen my ecological footprint which I believe allows me to be more environmentally responsible.

Although I used a PETA video in that post I am not a member nor have I ever been. I also do not agree with much of what the organization stands for. I try to work from a moral reference point that reflects both depth and span. For example I feel that it’s unnecessary to eat animal products in modern Western society. Most of the evidence seems to show that it is in fact healthier to eat a vegetarian diet. More importantly we have all sorts of veggie product alternatives readily available, so it’s no longer a question of hunting and killing to survive.

My basic moral intuition goes something like this. I need to eat to survive however whenever I can I want to do it in a way that has as little negative impact as possible. Animals are higher life forms with cognitive abilities, instincts and have highly developed central nervous systems capable of feeling pain. Plants are lower life forms with no cognitive abilities and to the best of our knowledge are not capable of feeling pain. Therefore it is better for me to eat plants than animals whenever possible as plants have less depth.

However on the other hand if conducting medical research on an animal is going to help cure my stepfather’s Parkinson’s disease, I completely support doing so. Human beings obviously have more depth than animals therefore it is a morally acceptable choice in my opinion. However I am sure many vegans would strongly disagree with me and thats OK.

Again let me reiterate that this is my own basic sense of moral intuition and I am not saying everyone else has to do it the way I do it. For me the act of adopting a plant based diet is one way a fulfilling my commitment to Eco-Kashrut but I realize that there are other ways of meeting this commitment and for some it may not be dependent upon vegetarianism.

I do think that as Jews whether we eat meat or not we have a responsibility to think about what it is that we are doing. We cannot just assume that what we are doing is truly kosher, even if there is a label on the package.

Arthur Green in his book “These Are the Words” describes Kashrut as the following.

Kashrut literally means “fitness,” referring in this case to fitness for eating, though the term is also used in many other areas of Halakah. Kosher (or Kasher in the Sephardic and modern Hebrew pronunciation) means “fit” to be eaten or used to prepare food.

Industrialization has made food both abundant and cheap but it has come at an expense. We have for the most part removed ourselves from the process so much so that we no longer even know what it is that we are eating. We no longer can claim to know what impacts the food we consume is having on the environment, how animals are being raised or even on our own health.

I will not go into cruelty issues here but I am going to suggest that the traditional Kashrut system does not take into account many of the new realities of food production. But because of this I (and many others) believe  it is now essential that we add a new set of criteria to the Kashrut equation, in order to meet the needs of the 21st century. For example Kashrut has no way of dealing with GMO’s and I doubt that the OU is taking into consideration any possible environmental impacts when they certify a plant.

Green’s defines Kashrut as something being fit for eating and I believe that in the 21st century we need to expand this from fit for eating to fit for consumption. We are a society of consumers we consume food, services, products like clothing. We buy vehicles which in turn consume gas and we give little thought to whether or not what we are consuming is actually fit for consumption.

This is why people like Reb Zalman are promoting innovations such as Eco-Kashrut so that we can begin thinking about whether or not the things we use are actually fit for consumption.

Oops it seems I have strayed a little off-topic, so let me bring it back to food.

Regardless of whether one wants to look at consuming plant based foods or animal products we need to come up with a better system for better assessing whether or not to these foods are in fact fit for consumption. I do not have any definitive answers and I am not claiming to be an expert but I personally believe that we need to update our approach.

• We need a system that takes into consideration not only the old criteria but also important new ones.
  
• We need to take into consideration whether the food we are consuming is healthy for us and unfortunately the current kosher system does not do that very well.
  
• We need to update the kosher process to ensure that the foods we eat are not promoting obesity, cancer, diabetes or a host of other illnesses.
  
• We need a system that insurers a minimum standard of animal welfare is met and unfortunately a Kashrut that allows for the current factory farming cannot meet such a standard.
  
• We need a system that promotes Environmental Responsibility with regard to all aspects of food production. Including pesticide use, ecological impacts of growth as well as food transportation and storage.
  
• We need a system that promotes economic sustainability and fair trade. We need to ask ourselves if food that is produced by workers who are exploited or live in poverty is indeed fit for consumption.

Kashrut is meant to sanctify eating and create a sense of holiness but how can this be done unless the above conditions are met?

Humanity has evolved and become much more complex than it was even a mere 100 years ago. We need an ethical system that reflects this new complexity because anything short of this in my opinion only diminishes us in the eyes of G-D.

And with that I will end this long-winded rant and wish you all a pleasant Shabbos.

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Note: this post originally started off as a comment on another blog but I decided to expand it into a post of its own.

As a progressive Jew I’m sympathetic to Michael Lerner’s work but having said that something about him just doesn’t grab me. I don’t own any of his books, although often times when I walk into a bookstore I feel like I should be picking up the Left Hand of G-D. I have on several occasions spent 20 to 30 minute in-store sessions flipping through the pages but the book just always winds up back on the shelf. I’m not exactly sure why but I guess there’s some subconscious red flag that keeps popping up and preventing me from making the purchase.

Like I mentioned above I am sympathetic to what Rabbi Lerner is trying to accomplish both with his book and with his Network For Spiritual Progressives (NSP). I certainly agree with the basic tenets of the NSP and view them as things I can stand behind on both ethical and spiritual grounds.

For those of you unfamiliar with the tenants here they are.

Basic1. Changing the Bottom Line in America

Today, institutions and social practices are judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. That’s the Old Bottom Line. Now Here is the NEW BOTTOM LINE for which we advocate: We believe that they should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace, and to the extent that they enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings in a way that honors them as embodiments of the sacred, and enhances our capacities to respond to the earth and the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

2. Challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right

Educating people of faith to the understanding that a serious commitment to God, religion and spirit should manifest in social activism aimed at peace, universal disarmament, social justice with a preferential option for the needs of the poor and the oppressed, a commitment to end poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and inadequate health care all around the world, and a commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, environmental protection and repair of the damage done to the planet by 150 years of environmentally irresponsible behavior in industrializing societies.

3. Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture

Challenging as well the extreme individualism and me-firstism that permeate all parts of the global market culture. We will educate people in social change movements to carefully distinguish between their legitimate critiques of the Religious Right and their illegitimate generalizing of those criticisms to all religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. We will help social change activists and others in the liberal and progressive culture become more conscious of and less afraid to affirm their own inner spiritual yearnings and to reconstitute a visionary progressive social movement that incorporates the spiritual dimension, of which the loving, spiritually elevating and connecting aspects of religion has been one expression (but so has the group-in-fusion experience of the movements of the 30’s and the 60’s and the communitarian aspirations of many other efforts–social healing and health care, progressive summer camps, the wide appeal of service and service learning, the women’s spirituality movement etc).

from the Network of Spiritual Progressives website

Yet somehow I just can’t escape this feeling that there’s an underlying one-sided holier than thou aggressiveness that permeates the Network as well as Rabbi Lerner’s work in general. I don’t think it’s intentional so maybe the term infected is a more accurate descriptor. I just seem  to get this sense of us versus them and vilifying the other side, which in this case would be the right and religious right. In fact to the point that they (the right) are pure evil and don’t hold any piece of the truth. I’m certainly a liberal and left of center by nature but I don’t think that means that there is nothing of value in what the right is trying to accomplish.

So I must unfortunately agree with Ken Wilber when he writes about Lerner’s Left Hand of G-D on page 297 of his own new book “Integral Spirituality”.

“His latest book, the left hand of G-D, is even more polarized and more intensely green than usual, so in my opinion, this is not looking promising.”

I’m far from being a guy who has a handle on my own judgmentalism and I certainly can be aggressive. I guess I just have higher standards placed upon organizations like the SPN and community leaders such as Rabbi Lerner.

All of that being said I do believe that the work being done by Lerner and his organization is important and worth checking out. I’m just convinced that it all still needs some fine tuning if it’s actually going to make a difference.

Regardless of whether you’re going to buy the book or not if you’re interested in this topic, you might want to check out the following 80 minute video lecture by Lerner which in my opinion does a decent job summarizing the book.

Be well

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Andrew Cohen the man behind WIE and self proclaimed Spiritual Guru was in Israel last September on some kind of teaching tour. During his visit he took some time out to participate in an interesting interview which discussed among other things, Israel and what Cohen refers to as “Evolutionary Spirituality“.

I’ve known of Andrew Cohen and his work for about six or seven years thanks to a friend who talked me into buying an issue of his What Is Enlightenment magazine. Coincidentally (or maybe not, who knows) that issue also turned me on to Don Beck and Spiral Dynamics which is something I’m hugely interested in but that’s a topic for another post.

While I’m off-topic I might as well mention that Ken Wilber also recently did an interview (phone) with a journalist from Israel. I meant to post about it while Tamara was here but to be honest several of his comments aggravated me so much I decided not to bother for the time being. Let’s just say that I didn’t feel he came off all that “Integrally Informed” about Judaism and I basically figured that if I didn’t have anything positive to say, I might as well not say anything at all. However maybe I can come back to it later on this week and try tying it into this post. Who knows?

Okay let’s try to get back on track with this here post…

At least on the surface much of Cohen’s Evolutionary Enlightenment shtick resonates with me and I believe that many aspects of his Evolutionary Spirituality are quite compatible with Judaism, at least the more liberal/progressive expressions of it. However many things about the man and the way he personally manifests in the world just doesn’t work for me. I suppose there are several reasons for my cautiousness about him but they aren’t relevant to this post, so I won’t bother going into them. For me the bottom line is that Andrew Cohen is right on the mark about a few things which are IMO both important and worthy of exploration. I don’t have to accept him as enlightened or as my spiritual teacher in order to benefit from his views, so I see no need to throw the guru out with the bath water.

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