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...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
1999
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 1999, Volume: 24, Issue: 2, Pages: 227-262 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009400011259 |