Noah

Permission to Eat Meat

1

After God destroyed His world by water, making a fresh start with Noah

and his family, God told Noah,

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for

you. Like plant vegetation [which I permitted to

Adam], I have now given you everything.... Only of

the blood of your own lives will I demand an

account. (Gen. 9:3, 5)

Up until this point, humanity was expected to be vegetarian. But

after Noah and his family left the ark, God allowed them to eat

everything – except other people. Why was permission to eat animals

given at this time.

Temporary Allowance

Given the violence and depravity of the generation of the Flood, it was

necessary to make allowances for humanity’s moral frailty. If mankind was

still struggling with basic moral issues – such as not murdering his fellow

human – why frustrate him with additional prohibitions on less self-

evident issues.

After the Flood, God lowered the standards of morality and

justice He expected of humanity. We would no longer be culpable for

slaughtering animals; we would only be held accountable for harming

1

Adapted from Talelei Orot, ch. 8 (quoted by Nechama Leibowitz, Iyunim Besefer

Bereishit, pp. 55–6). See also Otzerot HaRe’iyah vol. II, pp. 88–92.

GOLD FROM THE LAND OF ISRAEL

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other human beings. Then our moral sensibilities, which had become cold

and insensitive in the confusion of life, could once again warm the heart.

If the original prohibition against meat had remained in force,

then, when the desire to eat meat became overpowering, there would be

little distinction between feasting on man, beast, or fowl. The knife, the

axe, the guillotine, and the electric pulse would cut them all down, in order

to satiate the gluttonous stomach of “cultured" man. This is the advantage

of morality when it is connected to its Divine Source: it knows the proper

time for each objective, and on occasion will restrain itself in order to

conserve strength for the future.

In the future, this suppressed concern for the rights of animals will

be restored. A time of moral perfection will come, when “No one will

teach his neighbor or his brother to know God – for all will know Me,

small and great alike" (Jeremiah 31:33). In that era of heightened ethical

awareness, concern for the welfare of animals will be renewed.

Preparing for the Future

In the interim, the mitzvot of the Torah prepare us for this eventuality.

The Torah alludes to the moral concession involved in eating

meat, and places limits on the killing of animals. If “you desire to eat

meat," only then may you slaughter and eat (Deut. 12:20). Why mention

the “desire to eat meat". The Torah is hinting: if you are unable to

naturally overcome your desire to eat meat, and the time for moral

interdiction has not yet arrived – i.e., you still grapple with not harming

those even closer to you (fellow human beings) – then you may slaughter

and eat animals.

Nonetheless, the Torah limits which animals we are allowed to eat,

only permitting those most suitable to human nature.

2

The laws of

2

According to Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed III: 48), the animals permitted

for food are those most suitable for the human body, and “no doctor will doubt

this." Nachmanides disagreed, explaining that the permitted animals are the ones

FROM THE WRITINGS OF RABBI ABRAHAM ISAAC HAKOHEN KOOK

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shechitah (ritual slaughtering) restrict the manner of killing animals to the

quickest and most humane. With these laws, the Torah impresses upon us

that we are dealing with a living creature, not some automaton devoid of

life. And after slaughtering, we are commanded to cover the blood, as if to

say, “Cover up the blood! Hide your crime!"

These restrictions will achieve their effect as they educate the

generations over time. The silent protest against animal slaughter will

become a deafening outcry, and its path will triumph.

most suitable for the human soul. On Lev. 11:13, he wrote that “birds of prey will

always be impure, for the Torah distanced them [from us as food] since their

blood is warm in their cruelty… and they put cruelty in the heart [of those who

eat them].... It is likely that the animals are similarly [prohibited], since those that

chew their cud and have split hooves do not prey."