Parashat Noah and Keeping Kosher without Defined Kashrut

Shabbat Shalom! In this week’s Torah portion of Parashat Noach, God tells Noah to take pairs of all the animals on Earth onto the ark, male and female, so that the species will not go extinct as the Earth is destroyed. First, God says to take two of everything, but in the next chapter (Genesis 7) as more details unfold, God says to take 7 pairs of every clean animal, and one pair of every not-clean animal.

What does clean and not-clean mean? The Hebrew used is not the same as would be used for, say, clean and dirty laundry (naki). It uses the word “tehora” for ritual purity, meaning the “clean” animals in this case are ones suitable for sacrifices to God or are considered Kosher. And yet, at this point in the Torah, Kosher laws have not yet been given, only one animal sacrifice has been made, and it’s unclear how Noah would know what was clean or not-clean. It also seems worth noting that the Torah literally says “tehora” and “lo tehora” or “ein tehora”, meaing “pure” and “not pure” or “without purity”, rather than using the typical opposite term of “tamei”. So although these verses imply some sense of what would be considered pure in the mitzvot ahead, they also imply that perhaps the full scope of what it meant to be pure/impure was not yet known.

It is generally believed that the first humans did not eat meat, and were only officially allowed to eat meat after the flood. Some midrashim even point to cruel methods of animal-eating as some examples of the violence of the generation of the flood. Commenting on Parashat Bereshit, the Talmud says, “The First Earthling was not permitted meat for eating, as it is written, ‘...to you it will be for the eating. And to all the animals of the earth…’ and not [written] ‘the animals of the earth for you.’ And when the children of Noah came [out of the ark] it was permitted for them [to eat meat], as it is said, "as the green herb I have given for you all" (Sanhedrin 59b:13-14).” The 13th century Rabbi David Kimchi from Provence even went so far as to suggest that in the beginning, all animals ate only plants, even those which we would recognize today as predator animals. But after the Flood, God says to Noah, “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat.”

This verse says “every creature,” and leaves out the concept of “tehora,” again drawing confusion about what the Torah means in chapter 7 and how Noah understands that. I will say on this matter, that I grew up eating “every creature,” or at least all the ones Americans generally eat, including treyf. I became a vegetarian at 12 and started eating meat again while in Israel at 20. Transitioning to keeping Kosher was not only easier in the sense that coming from vegetarianism, I was adding things back into my diet rather than restricting them, but it was also spiritually easier than diving fully back into eating anything. It made sense to only add certain dishes, and to keep kosher as a way of continuing to practice mindfulness over my animal consumption after years of refusing to eat them at all. It is not clear that this was the case for Noah, but I offer this anecdote as perhaps a look into Noah’s kashrut, despite the apparent reality that the laws of Kashrut were given many generations later.

At the beginning of this year (as in January, not as in Tishrei), a friend and fellow rabbi responded to a tweet asking if porgs (the vaguely penguin-esque creatures from Star Wars Episode VIII) were kosher. This led down a jackalope hole of what other fantastic beasts may or may not be Kosher. While looking further into that topic for our Fantastic Jewish Beasts and Where in the Text to Find Them event, I also purchased a book called “The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals.” It’s not unlike the original book of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in that it is extremely short and reads basically like a short field guide to imaginary creatures, but then with the added element of determining whether or not Jews could or should eat them. For the most part, the answer is no. Don’t eat Fantastic Beasts. We’ll talk more about which ones and why on October 28th, but that seemed to be the answer for the majority of the creatures in the guidebook and in the Twitter thread, including the imaginary animals discussed a whole sideline conversation about what would be Kosher for Jewish dragons specifically. Several of the contributing writers to the guidebook, and the comments coming from the other rabbis jumping into the Twitter thread suggested that this type of conversation is not new or unusual. As long as humans have been eating meat, and as long as these myths and folklore have existed, people have pondered what could be on the menu, whether it is Kosher, how it could be caught and slaughtered, what it would taste like, how it should be served. It seems that if these are the conversations humanity seems to have been having for the last thousand years or so, then it’s not so far fetched that 3000 years ago, before Kashrut existed as such, humans were still in some fashion wondering, “Is this ok to eat? How can I eat it? Is it capture-able and able to be domesticated? Is it pure? Will it make me sick, physically or spiritually?” And if they determined that it was edible, could be domesticated, could be killed in a humane way and served in a manner than separated it’s intelligent predator from the knowledge that this too was once alive, then it was “clean”, or “tehora”, even if more specific identifiers for the pure and impure status had not yet been recorded.

This Shabbat, we bless all our animals. The ones we have loved as companions, and the ones that have nourished us. The ones that we have seen in zoos, and the ones we have only seen in our imaginations. Some animal-lovers prefer to stick to the vegetarian lifestyle, while others recognize distinctions between different sorts of animals. However you love your animals, however your diet, may you take the time this Shabbat to appreciate all the ways in which the animal kingdom, real and imagined, has served humanity, and may we give thanks to the Creator of all who has made a world with such diversity in creatures. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.