Torah Bites for Your Table: Parshat Shemini

Hi Friends

I hope that everyone is having an enjoyable festival of Pesah, and that everyone's Sedarim were meaningful and insightful. I will hopefully be sending Pesah Bites this Sunday, but today I will write about this week's parasha of Shemini, which also happens to be my Bar Mitzvah Parasha.

One of the things that I love about Parshat Shemini are the laws of kashrut, the traditional Jewish dietary system. While many of us are familiar with some of the basic permissions and prohibitions of this system, we oftentimes forget that the rabbis attempted to endow this system with some type of spiritual meaning in order that we might "chew by choice" (I had to throw a corny joke in there...my apologies).

My favorite example of this is the Torah's specific prohibition against eating the hasidah, which is identified as the stork. The name of the stork in Hebrew means "the kind one," and the Talmud comments that the stork is called "the kind one" in Hebrew because it always helps out its friends (BT Hullin 63a). However, if the stork is known as "the kind one," why does it happen to be a prohibited animal?

In commenting on this question, Rabbi Yizhak Meir Alter (the Hidushei Ha-Rim), who is considered one of the first Hasidic masters of the early modern period, comments that a stork is not considered kosher because it only helps out its friends, limiting their kindness to their fellow birds. Given this reality, the stork cannot be considered kosher, because it does not recognize the fundamental truth that goodness and kindness is meaningless if it is only limited to ourselves, but rather must be extended to the many circles of influence in our lives.

Whether or not we agree with Rabbi Alter's commentary (after all, it's hard to know if a rabbi could really understand a bird's helping patterns), this commentary teaches us something profound about why we ought to observe mitzvot, in the first place. It is far too easy to assume that we ought to observe mitzvot for advancing our own place, when, in reality, we have the obligation to observe mitzvot for advancing everyone's place. Our task is to see a life of mitzvot as one that brings goodness not only to ourselves, but to the entire world. May we each have the merit of creating that type of life in our families and communities for generations to come.

Shabbat Shalom,
Josh

1. Parents: What are you doing to help your children think about seeing outside themselves, and understanding the needs of other people?
2. Children: What was a time when you did something for another person's sake, and not only for your own? How did you feel about doing it?
3. Seekers: What do you think about Rabbi Alter's prohibition against eating the stork? Do you think his reason seems genuine, or that he is attempting to justify an obscure prohibition?