How We Eat

Going through old posts, and I found this one from a couple of years ago.  Timely!

Rachel Adler begins her d’var Torah on this week’s parasha with this:

Just now, American society is reexamining the way it eats. Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manefesto , advises distinguishing between food and some of the poor imitations for food that we currently ingest (New York: Penguin Group, 2008). He suggests that we not eat too much and that we eat mostly plants. That’s easier said than done. Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life , advocates eating only what is local to reduce our carbon imprint on this overburdened earth, to circumscribe the boundaries of our appetites and become locavores (Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver [New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008]). It appears that boundaryless eating is not respectful either of our bodies or of animals or of the earth or its products. Parashat Sh’mini , in Leviticus 11:1–23, lays out dietary laws for the people of Israel. We are counseled to restrict ourselves, to practice, one might say, a kind of purity law about diet. Somewhere in eternity, Levitical priests are smiling. “What a novel idea!” they whisper to one another.

This is so timely.  The way America eats is scrutiniezed all over the media these days.  Food blogs proliferate.  “Farm to table” eating is the trend of the decade, and farm shares, or CSAs are popping up all over the place.  It is the right time to reexamine our spiritual connection to food and eating.