Kashrut

            The body is not merely the house of the soul.  The body is the physical, visible manifestation of the soul.  The body is our soul speaking, desiring, weeping, walking, weaving, loving, dreaming, playing and nearly constantly: eating.

            In the physical world, our bodies are built of food.  In eating and digesting food, we nurse at the breast of the earth.  We bring into the miniature world of ourselves the substances that will become our bones, our blood, our nerves, and the electrochemistry of our thoughts and emotions.  A most fundamental decision we can make about who we will be is the choice of what we will eat.

            Like all cultures, Judaism sets markers on the substances of the material world proclaiming "eat this, not that"--teaching that what we eat, and how we eat, will determine who we are, and the religious quality of our life. 

The word kosher marks a particular food as "fit to eat," and brings to bear a vast collective memory dividing the world into "edible" and "inedible."  That treasury of memory arises from a few simple but profound queries: What is this substance?  How did it emerge from the earth?  If it was once alive, who cared for it? Who killed it? When it died, did it suffer?  Would my ancestors eat this food? 

            When we pause to ask these questions, as we choose which substances to take into our body, we see in the mind's eye our human ancestors and our mother earth.  Then the act of eating nourishes our physical self, but also nurtures and maintains the life-sustaining connections between one soul and another.