ShalomVeg is the first non-denominational resource site and online community for Jewish vegans, vegetarians, activists and curious omnivores. Features include learning pages, profiles, networking tools, recipes and activism. -Read More
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“As long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace... There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is. ”
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A VEG GUIDE TO JERUSALEM - Visiting Jerusalem and want to eat vegan? This holy city has more than just falafel. We have reviewed the best places to eat and shop, and will even tell you how to say vegetarian in Hebrew.
Anyone who has been a vegetarian or vegan knows how quickly label reading becomes a force of habit. We peruse the aisles of the market, looking for chicken stock in soups, gelatin in candy, and question whether we should continue to buy refined sugar, food coloring and other products we are unsure of. Luckily we have a life saver when it comes to looking at labels; the kashrut and parve symbols written on products.
Some common kosher symbols
Before describing how these symbols can be helpful, we should first more closely examine the meaning of parve and its relation to kashrut and vegetarian ingredients. Parve (also sometimes spelled Pareve or Parevine) means that a food is "neutral" and contains no "meat" or milk products, and has come into contact with neither. The word is a designation along with the terms "Fleishik" (a meat product) or "Milchik" (a dairy product) which the kosher food industry uses to designate foods as certified kosher. While the Talmud and other collections of Jewish law have set out the specifics for what determines something as kosher, in the United States, Israel and other countries, specific certification authorities have been designated todeal with the practical matter of labeling foods as kosher. Each certification authority has its own symbol, called a "hechshur" (see examples above), some are some of which are recognized by more than others, or followed more in certain communities. However, all hechshurs make a distinction between parve and dairy.
There are many connections that can be made between the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and vegetarianism:
1. On Yom Kippur, Jews pray to the "Living God", the "King Who delights in life", that they should be remembered for life, and inscribed in the "Book of Life" for the new year. Yet, typical animal-based diets have been linked to heart disease, stroke, several types of cancer, and other chronic degenerative diseases, that shorten the lives of 1.4 million Americans annually.
2. On Yom Kippur, Jews pray to a "compassionate God", who compassionately remembers His creatures for life. Yet, there is little compassion related to modern intensive livestock agriculture (factory farming), which involves the cruel treatment and slaughter of over 9 billion farm animals in 1997 alone in the United States.
Rosh Hashanah is the time when we take stock of our lives and consider new beginnings. Perhaps the most significant and meaningful change that Jews should consider this year is a shift away from diets that have been having devastating effects on human health and the health of our increasingly imperiled planet. While many Jews seem to feel that its celebration can be enhanced by the consumption of chopped liver, gefilte fish, chicken soup, and roast chicken, there are many inconsistencies between the values of Rosh Hashanah and the realities of flesh-centered diets. Consider these points:
1. While Jews ask God on Rosh Hashanah for a healthy year, non-vegetarian diets have been linked to heart disease, strokes, several forms of cancer, and other illnesses. While we implore "our Father, our King" on Rosh Hashanah to "keep the plague from thy people", high fat, meat-based diets are causing a plague of degenerative diseases that have resulted in total U.S. medical costs soaring from $80 billion in 1970 to an estimated $1,106 billion in 1994.
There are many connections between vegetarianism and the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av:
1. Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the month of Av) commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. Today the entire world is threatened by destruction by a variety of environmental threats, and modern intensive livestock agriculture is a major factor behind most of these environmental threats.
2. In Megilat Eichah (lamentations), which is read on Tisha B'Av, the prophet Jeremiah warned the Jewish people of the need to change their unjust ways in order to avoid the destruction of Jerusalem. In 1992, over 1,700 of the world's most outstanding scientists signed a "World Scientists Warning to Humanity", stating that 'human beings and the natural world are on a collision course", and that "a great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated." Vegetarians join in this warning, and add that a switch toward vegetarianism is an essential part of the "great change" that is required.
3. On Tisha B'Av, Jews fast to express their sadness over the destruction of the two Temples and to awaken us to how hungry people feel. So severe are the effects of starvation that the Book of Lamentations (4:10) states that "More fortunate were the victims of the sword than the victims of famine, for they pine away stricken, lacking the fruits of the field.". Yet, today over 70% of the grain grown in the United States is fed to animals destined for slaughter, as 15 to 20 million people worldwide die annually because of hunger and its effects.
Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of the bestselling novels Everything Is Illuminated, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close discusses why he is a vegetarian
'Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals,' Hypathia, No. 6, spring 1991, pp. 134-137
Are we predators or are we not? In an attempt to see ourselves as natural beings, some argue that humans are simply predators like some other animals. Vegetarianism is then seen to be unnatural while the carnivorism of other animals is made paradigmatic. Animal rights is criticized "for it does not understand that one species supporting or being supported by another is nature's way of sustaining life" (Ahlers 1990, 433). The deeper disanalogies with carnivorous animals remain unexamined because the notion of humans as predators is consonant with the idea that we need to eat meat. In fact, carnivorism is true for only about 20 percent of nonhuman animals. Can we really generalize from this experience and claim to know precisely what "nature's way" is, or can we extrapolate the role of humans according to this paradigm?
Some feminists have argued that the eating of animals is natural because we do not have the herbivore's double stomach or flat grinders and because chimpanzees eat meat and regard it as a treat (Kevles 1990). This argument from anatomy involves selective filtering. In fact, all primates are primarily herbivorous. Though some chimpanzees have been observed eating dead flesh—at the most, six times in a month—some never eat meat. Dead flesh constitutes less than 4 percent of chimpanzees' diet; many eat insects, and they do not eat dairy products (Barnard 1990). Does this sound like the diet of human beings?
As we plan our menus for the upcoming Passover holiday, most of us have a good sense of what we will be eating. There are of course the traditional foods: maror, haroset, matzo ball soup (possibly made vegetarian) and plenty of crispy matzo. But there are also the dishes unique to our families: grandma’s mock kishke, dad’s sweet mandle bread, your famous locally grown, organic, hametz-free, vegan nut burgers. These “family” foods are part of the customs we look forward to most and miss when not at home, along with the stories, the singing and the community. And for some of us, part of our holiday tradition is not to eat beans, rice and corn—kitniyot--during the holiday. Most likely this is not out of a strict adherence to Jewish law, but instead is part of the powerful pull that tradition and custom has on our lives.
Rosh Hashanah is the time when we take stock of our lives and consider new beginnings. Perhaps the most significant and meaningful change that Jews should consider this year is a shift away from diets that have been having devastating effects on human health and the health of our increasingly imperiled planet. While many Jews seem to feel that its celebration can be enhanced by the consumption of chopped liver, gefilte fish, chicken soup, and roast chicken, there are many inconsistencies between the values of Rosh Hashanah and the realities of flesh-centered diets. Consider these points:
As we plan our menus for the upcoming Passover holiday, most of us have a good sense of what we will be eating. There are of course the traditional foods: maror, haroset, matzo ball soup (possibly made vegetarian) and plenty of crispy matzo. But there are also the dishes unique to our families: grandma’s mock kishke, dad’s sweet mandle bread, your famous locally grown, organic, hametz-free, vegan nut burgers. These “family” foods are part of the customs we look forward to most and miss when not at home, along with the stories, the singing and the community. And for some of us, part of our holiday tradition is not to eat beans, rice and corn—kitniyot--during the holiday. Most likely this is not out of a strict adherence to Jewish law, but instead is part of the powerful pull that tradition and custom has on our lives.
