What Is Gods Veiw On Eating Animals

Genesis 9:three -- Permission to Eat Meat?

At Jewish Veg, we stand up on very solid theological basis when we say that meat-eating is frowned upon past God, according to the Torah.

Let'south look directly at Genesis 9:3, the verse that Jews have cited countless times over the millennia to justify the eating of meat.

Aye, Genesis nine:three does quote God as saying, "Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat."

But when yous look at the poetry in its context, information technology is clear that God is only grudgingly giving humans this permission.

Consider, first of all, that the granting of this permission occurred immediately after The Flood, immediately after homo beings had sunk to such a depression point of immorality that God deemed information technology necessary to eradicate life and beginning over.

In the same chapter of Genesis, God promises to never over again unleash a flood of such proportions. But, to keep that promise, a disappointed God would have to lower the standards for humankind's beliefs, to brand some concessions to our baser instincts.

This is the context in which the permission to eat meat is granted.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the starting time Chief Rabbi of State of israel during the British Mandate era, offered this interpretation of Genesis 9:3:

Because people had sunk to an extremely low level of spirituality, he wrote, information technology was necessary that they be given an elevated paradigm of themselves as compared to animals, and that they concentrate their efforts into first improving relationships between people. If people were denied the correct to swallow meat, they mig ht eat the flesh of human beings due to their disability to control their lust for flesh, according to Rav Kook. He regards the permission to slaughter animals for food as a "transitional tax" or temporary dispensation until a "brighter era" is reached when people would return to vegan diets.

It'due south been about 3,000 years. Haven't we reached that "brighter era"? Shouldn't this temporary dispensation have expired long ago?

Chapter 9 conveys God'due south dim view of meat-eating in other ways.

Remarkably, the permission to eat meat is accompanied by a curse. We're told in Genesis ix that the animals, who were created to be Adam's companions, will at present "fearfulness and dread" humans.

With meat-eating now permitted, animals feel that humans are interim with "animosity and evil designs," in the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchick, one of the most prominent of the 20th Century.

Then there are the effects of meat-eating on longevity.

Co-ordinate to the Torah, people adhering to the vegetarian diet that is prescribed in Genesis i:29 lived phenomenally long lives before The Flood. Genesis 5 tells united states of america that Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan and Methuselah all lived past their 900 th birthdays. Subsequently the permission to eat meat is granted, longevity declines precipitously.

Abraham, for instance, died at the relatively tender historic period of 175.

Whether yous have these ages literally or non, the point is the steep reject in longevity among meat-eaters.

Then at that place's fact that in Genesis nine itself, God states no fewer than v times that the Divine covenant applies to animals every bit well as people. God does non want united states to remember of animals as furry or feathered vegetables. Animals are much more that in Jewish thought. In fact, they have souls and they praise God, too.

Lastly, Genesis 9:iii cannot be understood apart from Leviticus 11, in which the laws of kashrut are laid out.

What is the overarching message of Leviticus 11? God wanted to make it difficult for us to eat meat, in hopes that nosotros wouldn't eat as well much of it. Yous can merely eat sure animals slaughtered under certain conditions.

And fifty-fifty and so, information technology's not the Torah ideal of Genesis 1:29.

Source: https://www.jewishveg.org/jewish-values-in-action/permission-eat-meat

Posted by: galazmagentleed80.blogspot.com