Parsha Inspired Menu - Shemini

The laws of kashrut originate in the Torah, though what we practice in our current lives is a lot more involved and detailed than the relatively sparse verses in the Torah. What takes 1 pasuk in the Torah - "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk" - becomes pages and pages and pages of rabbinic interpretation. Nonetheless, the practices we follow today have direct links to passages in the Torah and in our Torah reading this week we have one of the more comprehensive passages that help dictate what kashrut is. In Shemini, we get the detailed listing of what animals are permited or forbidden (sometimes it says you can eat this category or specific creature and

sometimes it does the opposite, saying what you can't eat.) This parsha covers land mammals, creatures in the water, birds, and insects.

Interestingly, despite this section covering a lot of kashrut ground, the Torah's rules of kashrut are not all in one place. We get the meat/milk separation earlier (in Shemot), earlier in Vayikra we get prohibition against eating the blood of the animal as well as certain fats, later in Vayikra we are told not to eat animals that died (vs. slaughtered), and then we repeat sections of these in Dvarim. I never really thought about how spread out these were until I was listening to the Pesach Shabbat torah reading, which draws from Shemot, and the last line of the Shabbat reading is לֹֽא־תְבַשֵּׁ֥ל גְּדִ֖י בַּֽחֲלֵ֥ב אִמּֽוֹ, You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk. And next week we will read the list of animals, but these are not next to each other in the Torah, just in the calendar as it plays out this year!

I read a commentary about the separation of these rules in the Eitz Chayim chumash that spoke to me. To summarize, it suggested that by having these rules spread out, we can view it as an acknowledgement that keeping kosher can be done in stages. There are a lot of rules and a person might not be able to take them all on at once (for any number of logistcial or spiritual reasons.) By having these rules spread out, we can feel encouraged to say "I'm going to do this one thing and see how that works and then I'll consider what to do next." I think spoke to me because it matches how I went about it. I grew up in a kosher home and we ate "kosher style" out, without asking too many questions (like is there beef stock in that French Onion Soup, btw the answer is almost always yes!) When I was 14, I made the personal decision to get a little stricter, so I cut out eating non-kosher red meat. It meant that I had to be even more thoughtful and conscious of the food decisions I was making, which is much of what kashrut is about. After a few years of that choice, I cut out chicken too, and so on. I find it meaningful and it works for me. But I am not sure how it would have gone if I went from 0 to 60. I am grateful that I felt it was a good choice to try it in stages and not feel like it was an all or nothing type of option, because then I might have chosen nothing.

So, for #Parshainspiredmenus this week, I am just focusing on this one section of the parsha with two dishes. The first is referencing the criteria for creatures from the sea, which must have fins and scales. I wanted to allude to the kosher foods without being literal and I found a shingled potato dish from Ruhama that looks a little like the scales of a fish, as they lean up against one another.

For the second dish, I was thinking about land mammals and the all important split hoof (to be kosher the animal has to have BOTH a split hoof and chew its cud.) So, in thinking about split hoofs, I thought about split peas and recommend as a second side dish, this Split Pea Curry.

Shabbat Shalom & B'Tayavon!