We are on the approach to the Pentecost, also known as Shavuot. On the holiday of Shavuot there is a well known custom not to eat any meat. There is a lesser known custom of the day prior to Shavuot not to eat any meat or any milk. Both customs are of the same origin: we personally go through the process of receiving the Torah, first we are made aware that there are restrictions on what we can eat and thus we become vegans until we are told what is permissible. Next we are told which animals are Kosher (allowing milk) and only lastly we are told how to properly slaughter them.
It seems rather presumptuous to believe that we only need permission to eat mammals, fowl, fish and insects. Aren’t all God’s creatures precious? What gives us the right to kill any living thing for any purpose, including vegetation? Deuteronomy 20:19 declares a similitude between man and tree.1 Certainly, the Torah had no confusion about plants being alive. This is clear based on the simple words used for reproduction such as “seed” and “fruit.” It is worth the moment to point out that the fruit that one eats, the apple, the orange, the watermelon is the embryo of the plant; you are eating the impregnated womb: the fruit is the embryonic fluid and the seed is the zygote.
With that wonderful image in mind, you might wonder what possible alternatives to vegetation do we have? We can either eat the vegetation or we can eat the animals that eat the vegetation. And while we do have to eat to survive, don’t let vegans get away guilt free. The basic carbohydrate needed for our survival is not a protein (which are amino acids created by genetic life), it is the molecule Glucose, C6H12O6, a sugar (other sugars have other combinations of C, H & O). If one were to avoid damaging any living being and wish to survive, I can list two popular animal byproducts that are consumed: Milk & Honey. They contain proteins and sugars formed by other living beings, but they are not alive and are released from the animal naturally (water can be evaporated from a plant’s leaf, if you want to avoid microorganisms in the streams).
Putting aside this unconventional pairing of these two icons of abundance, where do we as Jews get our permission to eat veggies? And while one could look back to the verse Deuteronomy 20:19, that wouldn’t excuse our eating of vegetation for the thousands of years before the transmission of that verse. And while you might be thinking that the permission comes from God telling Adam that he can eat from any tree aside from the “Tree of Knowledge” (Genesis 2:16,17), you’d be wrong. On the sixth day (Genesis 1:29,30), God tells us who should eat what. Man, we are told should eat “grass that sprouts seeds” and “trees that has fruit that issues seed.” Animals, birds and bugs, we are told, should eat “green grasses.”2
Considering this distinction (plants that have seeds and those that don’t), one might venture back to the third day where we are informed about the different kinds of vegetation (Genesis 1:11,12). “And the land brought forth vegetation grass that sprouts seed to its species and tree that makes fruit in which its seed is contained for its species.” What we might have seen as a title head “vegetation” might, based on the sixth day, be considered a different category. If so the three groupings of vegetation are: growth, grass that sprouts seed and trees that contain fruit with seeds.
You might think I’m picking on the text, but if you don’t make this distinction, you are ignoring the first step of evolution. The step that contained only asexual reproduction. The vegetation granted to the animals and NOT to the humans would be all plants that do not reproduce with seeds, including mosses, fungi and seaweed.
With that in mind, are mushrooms Kosher? Hybrids may have come from a seed, but they contain no seeds- are they Kosher? I’m obviously not asking what the Halacha is. With a closer look at these Pesukim and a greater understanding of biology, we can wonder if we are eating what God wants.
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1. Most English translations of this verse take the Hei of the phrase HaAdam Etz Hasadeh as an inquisitive Hei. This changes the translation from “Man is [as] tree of the field” to “Is man the tree of the field?” The commentary of the Ha’Amek Davar understands it the first way. Also important to note is that there is a distinction between fruit tree and others. There are trees that have no fruit, read on.
2. If you ever have anyone claim that something is or isn’t “natural” or “the way God intended,” consider that by God’s law all animals should be vegans.
