Meat-Eating and Jewish Identity: Ritualization of the Priestly “Torah of Beast and Fowl” (Lev 11:46) in Rabbinic Judaism and Medieval Kabbalah

In a fascinating chapter dealing with the “nature of eating” in Shulhan shel Arba, a short thirteenth-century manual on rabbinic eating rituals, R. Bahya b. Asher suggests that Torah scholars alone are fit to eat meat, based on the following passage from the Talmud: “it is forbidden for an ignoramus...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Brumberg-Kraus, Jonathan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: University of Pennsylvania Press 1999
In: AJS review
Year: 1999, Volume: 24, Issue: 2, Pages: 227-262
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Summary:In a fascinating chapter dealing with the “nature of eating” in Shulhan shel Arba, a short thirteenth-century manual on rabbinic eating rituals, R. Bahya b. Asher suggests that Torah scholars alone are fit to eat meat, based on the following passage from the Talmud: “it is forbidden for an ignoramus [am ha-aretz] to eat meat, as it is written, ‘This is the torah of beast and fowl’ (Lev 11:46); for all who engage in Torah, it is permitted to eat the flesh of beast and fowl. This passage raises many questions, especially for a vegetarian! First, why would an intellectual or spiritual elite use meat-eating as a way to distinguish itself from the masses? The field of comparative religions offers many counter-examples to this tendency: the vegetarian diet of the Hindu Brahmin caste, of Buddhist priests and nuns, the ancient Pythagoreans, the Neoplatonist regimen advocated by Porphyry in On Abstinence, or even contemporary eco-theologians, animal rights activists, and feminist vegetarians like Carol Adams.
ISSN:1475-4541
Contains:Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400011259