Food on Yom Kippur

Here is my Yom Kippur sermon:

The Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, said, “When you eat and take pleasure in the taste and sweetness of your food, bear in mind that it is the Eternal One who has placed into the food its taste and sweetness.  You will, then, truly serve God by your eating.”

Oy, what’s the rabbi doing?  Talking about food on Yom Kippur?  I’m already hungry, and it’s only the morning service.  What am I going to feel like when we get to Yizkor?

Yes, today, on Yom Kippur, I am going to make a gutsy move and talk about food.  I am either going to make my rhetorical point brilliantly, or you might just chase me out of town.

So, here I go.  Food is an essential part of Jewish life.  Much of Judaism is celebrated around the table—Shabbat, the Pesach seder, eating outside in a Sukkah, latkes, humentashen, and of course, there is not eating on Yom Kippur.  Food is not only a Jewish topic.  Food is always in the headlines—usually it’s a scary headline.  Just recently we saw that eggs could make you sick or even kill you, or before that it was spinach and peanuts and beef.   Food is also huge in other areas of the media, not just the scary news media.  The Food Network is teaching us all to be gourmet cooks, and it seems like every other show on the Travel Chanel is food related.

American culture is obsessed with diets, but also big portions.  We love to eat, often quickly, and in the car.  We also love the supermarket, where we can get any kind of food from anywhere in the world at any season and any kind of food-like edible substance like Twinkies or frozen sausages on a stick wrapped in a chocolate chip pancake or Bacconaise.

While most of us here have a huge supermarket near us with healthy and unhealthy food at relatively reasonable prices, many people in America do not have the same access to food.  In poor neighborhoods all throughout the US, you will be hard pressed to find a grocery store.  Tons of fast-food and convenient stores, but not the same thing you find in well off suburbs.  I think that it is amazing that in America, in poorer urban and rural areas, obesity and malnutrition are huge issues.  Someone can be obese and malnourished at the same time.  One huge factor causing this is a lack of access to good, healthy food.  Healthy food, like fruits and vegetables, are expensive.  Processed food that one can buy at convenience stores is cheap.  One can buy a McDouble cheese burger at McDonalds for $1.  (This is a cheap way to feed a financially struggling family.)  In fact, according to food writer Michael Pollan, this food is artificially cheap, largely because of government subsidies to corn growers and industrial meat growers.  Healthier options like fruits and vegetables only got .37% of federal food subsidies between the years 1995 and 2005.  Not 37%; .37%.

Part of the problem with our wacky food culture here in America is that we don’t really know where our food comes from (unless of course you are a farmer).  Sure, we know where we buy it, and some groceries tell us the origin of our produce, but we don’t really have a relationship with our food.  Seasons don’t mean anything to us.  We can purchase asparagus anytime of the year.  If there is a drought or blight, we in America can still buy what we want. 

Our ancient Israelite ancestors had a relationship with their food.  Much of the Torah is filled with agricultural laws.  The ancient worship system in the Temple was based on sacrificing crops and animals from the herd.  A few weeks ago in the synagogue we read in the Torah about the elaborate ritual the Israelite would perform when he brought the firsts of his crops to the Temple to dedicate to God.  He gave thanks to God for his yield.  He knew how tenuous his whole life was.  If it didn’t rain, and those who have been to the land of Israel know that it doesn’t rain that much, his family might not eat.  He had a relationship with the land, the weather, his crops, the food that came from his crops, and all of this led him to his God the creator of all.  This whole system brought wonder and thanksgiving.  Our ancestors could truly say before they ate, “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haOlam, haMotzi lechem min ha’aretz.  Blessed are You, God, the One who brings forth bread from the earth.”

Yes, I know what many of you are thinking.  Most Jews (except a few in Israel) are no longer farmers and herders.  The stereotypical Jewish mother wants us all to be lawyers and doctors.  True, but it wasn’t that long ago when Americans, Jews and non-Jews, knew from where their food came, knew what produce was fresh in what season.  People did not expect fresh asparagus shipped from South America in autumn. 

Jews, for the last 1800 or so years when we were not predominately farmers, also had a another relationship with our food—a commanded one.  The Jewish food laws, kashrut, were laid down in the Torah and expanded upon in Rabbinic literature.  Jews generally knew what foods were permitted and what foods were forbidden, what dishes and utensils to use, and how meat needed to be slaughtered.  Keeping kosher created a food culture that kept Jews together and distinct as a people. 

But, in the nineteenth century with the advent of Reform Judaism, especially in America, Jews religious relationship with food started to change.  In 1885 in Pittsburgh, a group of Reform rabbis wrote, “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”  They were saying that times have changed, now that we Jews live in an open and free society, we do not need to separate ourselves from our gentile brethren in areas such as food.  As they wrote, “We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men.”  Many Jews jumped at this opportunity to not have to keep kosher, and today, most Jews do not as understood by the classical Jewish sources.

So, here we are.  We as Americans seem to have lost our relationship to where our food comes from, and we as Jews have lost our sense that Judaism, especially Reform Judaism, cares about what we eat.

That is why, today, on Yom Kippur, I am challenging us to reestablish a healthy relationship with our food—a holy relationship with our food.  I am asking us to do this because the food we eat greatly affects us and our planet.  We as Jews need to be concerned about food because of the Jewish concepts of shmirat haguf, protecting one’s body, bal tashchit, literally “not destroying” which means taking care of our environment, and tzedek, justice.

I would like to start with tzedek, justice. 

While the platform written by our Reform founders in 1885 seemed to absolve Reform Jews of all food issues, in reality the Movement has very much been involved in food.  To cite an example that many of you might remember or may have been involve with: In 1969 the then Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Movement’s congregational organization, passed this resolution:

 WHEREAS, like other farm workers, the grape pickers of California and Arizona do not enjoy the benefits of the National Labor Relations Act or other federal legislation mandating a collective bargaining process.

These grape pickers, among the poorest working people in our land of plenty, have appealed to the conscience of the country to support in their desperate struggle to secure a collective bargaining agreement with the growers of table grapes. We cannot stay indifferent to their appeal, nor to the right of other farm workers to a fair share of the fruit of their labors.

THEREFORE, THE 50TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UAHC RESOLVES:

1.      to urge the Congress of the United States to extend collective bargaining rights to farm workers by an appropriate amendment to the National Labor Relations Act:

2.      to affirm its support for the grape pickers of California and Arizona by urging all its members and affiliates to join in the boycott of table grapes from those states until a collective bargaining agreement has been reached;

3.      to call on the Commission on Social Action to help all UAHC congregations and affiliates in the implementation of the boycott until such action is taken by the Congress of the United States.

We have here the Reform Movement suggesting a limit on what we eat because of justice issues.  By not eating grapes, a Reform Jew was following the mitzvah, the religious obligation, of not oppressing the worker.  As it says in the Torah: “You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow Israelite or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay out the wages due on the same day, before the sun sets, for the worker is needy and urgently depends on it; else a cry to the Eternal will be issued against you and you will incur guilt.”  Again, in 1976, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the organization of Reform Rabbis, called on all Reform Jews to eat only grapes and lettuce with the United Farm Workers’ label.

            The food we eat is very much related to justice issues.  A few years ago I was outraged when Argriprossesors, one of the largest meat processing companies in the country, and the largest kosher meat company, was charged with illegal child labor, hiring illegal immigrants, and was fined for violations of labor laws.  Kosher means fit.  Is our food kosher if it is not ethically produced?    An organization started by the Conservative Jewish Movement and given support by the Reform Movement, called Magen Tzedek, “Shield of Justice,” asks this question.  They plan to give a hechsher tzedek, a just kosher certification, to food companies that meet Jewish ethical standards of wages and benefits for workers, care for animals, and concern for the environment.   

            The food we eat is very much tied to justice--from workers rights to access to healthy food for the poor.  As Jews with our strict ethical demands, doing something as elemental and animal as eating is a great way to get us to act.  Like the Reform Movement called on it members to think about ethics and food in the 60’s and 70’s by supporting the United Farm Workers, I call on us to find out about the ethics of our food.  We can support organizations like Magen Tzedek that do the investigation for us.  Some great Jewish resources to help you are the website of the organization Hazon, and the Union for Reform Judaism’s new website, Just Table, Green Table.

            Having a holy relationship with our food can help our health help us follow the principle of shmirat haguf.  Last year in Toronto, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, in his Shabbat sermon to the Biennial convention of the URJ, asked Reform Jews to cut back on the eating of red meat.  One of his reasons was for health.  It is well know that red meat is high in cholesterol, and some studies link eating large amounts red meat to certain diseases.  And, Americans consume a lot of red meat.  The average American eats about 67 pounds of beef annually out of 195 pounds of total meat consumed.  Every year we eat more, we have double our consumption in the last fifty years, and it goes without saying that we eat way more than our ancestors.  In the book of Exodus God capitulates to the complaining Israelites who wanted to eat meat by giving them meat.  But, God was really punishing them, because the people ate so much meat that they got sick.  Rashi, the great medieval commentator notes about this incident, “The Torah taught proper conduct, that meat should not be eaten to the point of being satiated.”  Jewish tradition has a ambivalence about eating meat.  It was seen in Genesis as a concession to humanity’s darker urges after the Flood, and many great sages hold the vegetarianism of the Garden of Eden to be the ideal.  And against popular perception, Jewish law does not hold that one needs to eat meat on Shabbat and holy days.

            Cutting back on red meat can help your cholesterol, but I want to add to what Rabbi Yoffie said, to give other reasons that cutting back on all meat is shmirat haguf, healthy living.  Most meat in America is grown on industrial farms that keep the animals in very tight quarters.  To use the example of cattle, they are fed corn and soy because they are cheap and we have an abundance of them and they makes the cattle fat.  But, cattle do not naturally eat corn and soy.  They eat grass.  So, these cattle often get sick, and the stress of living in close quarters does not help.  Corn fed cattle have 80% more E. coli in their guts than the more natural grass fed cattle. So, the cattle are given antibiotics and hormones.  Scientists are now beginning to study the effects of these antibiotics on us.  There are similar situations when it comes to chicken farms.  Hence, the salmonella outbreak in our eggs. Cutting back on meat, or only eating the rarer solely grass fed variety can help.   

            Judaism is a tradition concerned with the whole self, including a healthy body, but cutting down on meat can also help foster a healthy environment.  This brings us to our third principle, bal tashchit, protecting the environment.  I am quoting Rabbi Yoffie from his biennial sermon, “The meat industry today generates nearly one-fifth of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change throughout the world. According to a U.N. report, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas than all transportation sources combined. And the preparation of beef meals requires about fifteen times the amount of fossil fuel energy than meat-free meals”  Plus, I would add, there is all the waste from the huge factory farms that has to be disposed of, often in our water table.  Yoffie continues, “Professor Gidon Eshel of the Bard Center has suggested that the effect of reducing our collective meat consumption by twenty percent would be comparable to every American driving a Prius instead of a standard sedan. And this twenty percent reduction is something that every one of us - every Jew, every family, every synagogue - can do.” 

            To the reduction in meat, to help our environment, we can add eating more pesticide free food, and locally grown food that has not traveled huge distances by truck or ocean liner spewing carbon to arrive in your supermarket.  We live in California where much of the country’s best food is grown.  It is fairly easy to eat local food that has not traveled great distances.

            Our preschool students are doing it with their garden at CBI.  During the summer we had the first harvest of cucumbers.  I remember with joy the look of excitement on the children’s faces when they got to eat the literal fruit of their labor.  They got to experience living Judaism as they learned the blessing for veggies and got to eat their delicious produce.  They experienced the spirituality of food.  They had a holy relationship with their food.    

One great way to eat in a way that is local and environmentally sustainable is to join Congregation Beth Israel’s CSA at the UTC Mall Farmers’ Market.  CSA is community supported agriculture.    When one becomes a member of a CSA, one supports local farmers that grow sustainable produce while being kind to the environment.  By becoming a member of our CSA, you will be able to weekly pick up a box at the UTC Mall of fresh and in-season fruit and vegetables.  You will meet and have a relationship with the farmers and their workers and know from where your food comes.  The farms that you support will help you expand your eating options by supplying you with healthy food that you might not have ever thought of cooking.  Instead of eating on the go, cooking healthy food at home (especially for Shabbat, which will be easier because of Beth Israel’s new service schedule) helps bring family and friends together.   Also, periodically I will be at the market teaching about Judaism and ethical eating as a way to create a community of members of CBI concerned about sustainable living.  I think it will also be a great outreach effort of CBI to show the San Diego community what we are about.  

By being a member of the Beth Israel CSA we will be supporting these local farms: Eli's Farm, Carlsbad Strawberry, Santiago Farms, Riva Farms, Peterson Farms, B Street Growers, and Tomorrow’s Organic Farm.  By knowing the origins of our food, we create the holy relationship with our eating while we are cognizant of how our eating is related to tzedek, justice, shmirat haguf, healthy living, and bal tashchit, stewardship of the environment.  When we say hamotzi before we eat our wonderful meals, blessing God as the One who brings forth bread from the earth, we will understand the holy process of people in partnership with the Creator who made it possible for us to sustain ourselves. 

For more info on the CSA, please read October’s Tidings or go the Social Action page on our website.  This sermon is kicking off our Tikkun Olam/Social Action Committee’s year of sustainable living.  Sustainable living through food will be a big theme this year as we continue to feed the hunger through the CBI Hunger Project, and the capstone of the year will be our Sustainable Living Expo in the spring.

In the haftarah that we just read a few minutes ago God says through the prophet Isaiah: 

            “ . . . this is the fast I desire.  To unlock fetters of wickedness, the shackles of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; To break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the poor into your home. When you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin.”  If I can be so bold to tweak the words of the prophet, “No, this is the eating I desire.  Eating that does not oppress the laborer or damage your body or destroy the earth.  Holy eating.”

            The Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, said, “When you eat and take pleasure in the taste and sweetness of your food, bear in mind that it is the Eternal One who has placed into the food its taste and sweetness.  You will, then, truly serve God by your eating.”