Translation by Yasmine Ariel
Facing The Truth
There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “When you drink water think of the well spring.”
It is a very simple and deep practice. It means drinking water and thinking of the spring, eating salad and thinking of the garden, eating mother’s soup and thinking about mom, eating turkey and thinking about the turkey, eating yogurt and thinking about the cow, eating fish and picturing it swimming happily in the water – and then not.
Our consumer society tries to keep us from thinking about it at all. Society doesn’t want you to think about anything that gets in the way of your shopping. If seeing blood, or the killing and suffering of animals will interfere with you consuming their meat and milk, great lengths will be taken to make you forget that the “chicken” was a hen that was raised in poor conditions.
We are not supposed to think about the hen being taken against it’s will, slaughtered without understanding how or why, in some industrial slaughter house that doesn’t care about it. We will end up with clean, featherless, bloodless chicken wrapped in cellophane on a styrofoam tray.
Because of all of this, I have been saying for years that I want to learn how to butcher, and know that all the meat that I consume comes from animals that lived well. For the record, I am a pacifist, I don’t like blood, I love animals very much, and I am not sure if I can even fish.
Abram and Cattle
Thoughts became reality when I recently found myself sitting with Abram. Abram is a sheepherder, raising organic cattle for that last thirty years, and selling his herds to the meat industry.
And, now I have the chance I have hoped for: Abram offers to sell me good sheep, to teach me how to care for them and how to slaughter them. Since I cannot eat an entire sheep by myself, I started to look for partners.
The most natural thing for me was to propose the idea to my community, so I wrote an invitation on the net to the people of my tribe to take part in a conscious slaughter and feast of meat.
The Reaction
My invitation caused some positive pandemonium. Both vegetarians and meat eaters exchanged dozens of emails. Is it right to take the life of a nice sheep only to satisfy our gluttony? Is there a reason good enough to justify telling a sheep that this is a good time to die? Maybe we should have a ceremony and a special prayer, maybe even sacrifice some of the meat? And what should we do with the pelt? Maybe we could turn it into a tribal community drum?
There was even one woman who said, “Let me be in denial. I eat meat but I can’t look it in the eyes.”
Another friend sent us a link to a video that shows what really happens in the cattle industry and slaughterhouses.
There was one woman that claims to love meat, but has chosen to be a vegetarian, and must overcome her craving for meat. She believes it is not healthy or right to take advantage of weak animals, taking everything from them in order to provide for the unnecessary needs of the stronger humans.
She even singled me out personally saying, “There are some people like Ohad who are our teachers, and I think they should be stronger than the mainstream standard, although most of my friends aren’t vegetarians I’d like to see our teachers as spiritual people above the crowd. If I have succeeded in controlling myself for fifteen years, than I expect them to be even stronger than I.”
Meat Eating In Judaism
Somebody quoted Rabbi Cook, saying that in Judaism it was only allowed to eat meat during the moral decline of the “great flood period.” Rabbi Cook’s great student, the Rabbi David Hacohen, did become vegetarian. However, it seems that today those who follow the teaching of Rabbi Cook are not necessarily vegetarians.
Rabbi Nahum, from Chernobyl, writes in his book “Light of the Eyes,” that the reason Noah was allowed to eat meat was for spiritual elevation.
The glimmer of sacredness spreads through the world and is constantly ascending. When it rains and herbs grow, the glimmer rises up from being in the land and water to a level of growing things.
And when cattle eat the grass, it rises from growing to living things, and when a man eats the cattle, it rises from living to talking things. For this you have to be a human, those who live like animals, don’t raise the sacred glimmer in the meat.
Rabbi Nahum’s teacher, Habaal Shemtov himself was a butcher for a while. They say that many years after he was a butcher, a new young and energetic butcher settled in the same town. The butcher saw an old farmer that would shake his head in dismay every time he had to slaughter an animal.
The butcher came to him, and asked why he did that. The farmer said “You, the butcher, are wrong.” The butcher asked him, “How do you know how Jews should slaughter? I have studied and been ordained as a butcher, what about you?”
The old man answered, “I have seen Habaal Shemtov slaughter. He would look the animal in the eyes, pet it and whisper into its ear until it calmed down. He would cry, and then wet the knife with his own tears to sharpen it –and only then did he slaughter. And you, you just do it without caring about the animal, this is wrong.”
In the meantime my sheep is still alive and well, and I have given up meat at least once, eating humus instead. It is a terrible feeling knowing that the meat that I eat was slaughtered in a horrible way. It is probably a good idea to pass up the hormones and the antibiotics found in meat in any case. And anyway, what’s so bad about hummus?