Cruising, Keeping Kosher, Cruelty and Kindness
I recently returned from a fabulous cruise to the Caribbean . I always enjoy getting away, not just for the relaxation and ability to recharge, but also because on vacation I meet people I wouldn’t meet everyday, allowing me to interact positively with other kinds of people of different backgrounds, faiths, and countries. Being observant gives me the opportunity to strengthen my own beliefs and give some thought to my own practices.
Keeping Kosher on a cruise ship is very noticeable. Our food looked very different from everyone else’s, as it arrived in double-wrapped plastic and we ate it on paper plates. But it tasted delicious. It is inevitable that we were asked some questions about our unusual eating habits.
It’s useful to have a helpful answer to those questions, and I love the following explanation, which I heard from my husband. (Keeping kosher and kosher supervision is not about the food “being blessed by a rabbi” as many who are unfamiliar with kashrut mistakenly believe.)
“Kosher” means “fit” or “proper” and “treif” means “unfit.” One reason for the kashrut laws is that it prevents us from ingesting things that have their root in cruelty. This idea translates into rules about animals that we eat, which are all herbivores; separating milk and meat, which is rooted in the biblical command not to cook the calf in the mother’s milk, since this would be especially cruel; and ritual slaughter, which is the least painful method of killing an animal. Kosher supervision ensures that the final product that we eat does not violate any of these standards, so that we take nourishment based on kindness, not cruelty.
Jewish law is very concerned that we not eat something which has its roots in cruelty. In a sense, we are what we eat. It also makes sense that if our food should be so carefully prepared, so too should our actions be steeped in kindness, not cruelty.
It is gratifying to work for the JCPA, which is steeped in these same traditions – the idea that we want to make our society a just society, not steeped in cruelty, but in kindness.
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As an aside, here’s a link to an interesting article about how China is now using Kosher certification to try and prove that their food is safe.
