Parshas Shemini begins with the consecration
of the Mishkan, and goes through the process of Moshe handing the reins over to
Aharon and his sons. The rest of the parsha discusses what makes an animal fit
to eat. In plain English, it discusses what makes an animal kosher. We are also
given numerous examples of both kosher and non-kosher cattle, birds, beasts,
and bugs.
The idea of Kosher was and still is an
original idea. While other religions have also adopted some dietary laws, and
society in general has developed a system of healthy eating, the Torah’s reason
for eating kosher is an idea of its own. The simple explanation behind it is
there are certain animals which are ‘impure’ and others who are ‘pure’. As a
holy nation special to God, Hashem wants us to only partake of animals that
will maintain our standards of purity, allowing us to stay close to Him. While
there are a few animals of which we have some idea, for the most part, we don’t
know what makes one animal kosher and the other not. All we know is what the
Torah tells us.
Still, there are certain aspects of
animal kashrus which we can understand; specifically, different characteristics
that would show certain animals to be more or less spiritual, thereby leading
to different halachos applying to them. The Kli Yakar brings several examples
of this. The first one explains the difference between cattle/wild animals and
birds. When telling us which birds are kosher, the Torah lists only the
non-kosher ones, implying that there are more kosher ones, making it easier to
tell us the non-kosher ones. While listing the wild animals however (in Sefer
Devarim 14), only the kosher ones are listed, implying there are more
non-kosher ones. He explains that birds have the ability to soar above the
ground, scraping the heavens. They are not trapped by the heaviness, the
complete physicality, of the ground. Therefore, it is easier for them to be
Kosher, pure. Animals are stuck on the ground, they have no ability to reach
above the physicality all around them. Therefore, it’s more difficult for them
to be kosher, and as a result, less of them are.
The Kli Yakar takes this idea further,
to the halachos of Shechita, Slaughtering. A standard shechita involves cutting
through both the animal’s windpipe and the esophagus. By cattle, this is a
requirement. By birds, however, if you end up only cutting one, it is still
good. Fish require no shechita at all! What is the difference between these
animals that leads to these different levels of slaughter? He explains by
building off our earlier explanation. Cattle were originally created from the
ground and spend their lives on the ground. They have the most amount of
impurity among creations, and therefore require a full shechita to remove it.
Birds were created and spend some of their time on the ground, but at the same
time, they soar above the land into the heavens. As a result, they have less
impure physicality to remove; and while cutting both is ideal, if only one pipe
is cut, the shechita is good.
Fish were created and spend all their
time in the water. Water is the closest thing we have to a physically spiritual
form of matter. There is much to discuss with water and its connection to
spirituality, but the relevant ideas to us are, that we use it to purify
ourselves in the form of a mikvah; the Torah is compared to it in the way that
we can’t survive without water, so too we cannot survive without Torah; lastly,
perhaps the weightlessness you feel in water is actually a form of separation
between yourself and the physicality of the surrounding world. Therefore, fish
require no shechita at all; there is very little physicality for them to separate
from.
These are just a couple of the ideas
discussed behind the laws of kosher animals. Many of the ideas are on a deeper
level, such as these, but there are many others out there on higher or lower
levels of understanding. However, one thing is not in doubt, there is no
shortage of wisdom to our amazing Torah.
Shabbat Shalom!
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah for Parshas Shemini
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