Why Do Jews Keep Kosher?
The Answer of Why Jewish People Avoid Eating Pork
Jews have been following the kosher dietary restrictions for thousands of years. Many religious and secular organizations have investigated the kosher dietary restrictions and found many benefits to keeping kosher in the mind, the body, and the quality of life today and during the times of the first Jews in ancient times.
Health Benefits of a Kosher Lifestyle
Many modern Jews and especially followers of the reform movement view kosher restrictions as primitive and out-of-date in the modern age of sanitation and scientific knowledge. However, following the kosher dietary restrictions can have many health benefits.
Separating milk and meat within each meal is an easy way of lowering cholesterol and caloric intake. There is also some evidence that the nutrients of meat and diary are more easily absorbed when digested separately. Also, the body's arteries and heart will definitely appreciate a diet that cuts out bacon and honey glazed ham.
Slaughtering animals with kosher restrictions requires such sanitary conditions and produces such clean meat that many kosher butchers and slaughterhouses are excused from many USDA regulations.
Kosher Restrictions Aided the First Jews Thousands of Years Ago
Health is not the only motivation behind kosher law. A significant portion of the kosher restrictions have no effect on a person’s health. Many Rabbis’ theorize that these non-health-based kosher dietary restrictions are to the benefit of the Jews when they were nomadic thousands of years ago. The Torah may have been helping the Jews survive as they traveled through deserts and other barren lands.
Camel and pig are "treif," or "unkosher," but there are no major reasons why these animals would be less healthy than a "kosher animal" like a goat. Perhaps the camel was restricted because it is more beneficial as a means of transportation and wealth then as food. Pork may be deemed unkosher because it takes more food to raise then it yields in meat when slaughtered. These restrictions may have been what helped Jews before the modern survive era during nomadic travel and forced migration.
Respect for Animals and Staying Kosher
Aside from being a vegetarian, following kosher dietary laws limits the amount of meat one can eat and also gives the animal a respectful and painless slaughtering. Whereas in many cases slaughtering can be a long and painful death for the animal, the Torah commands that animals must be killed painlessly as possible and respectfully.
In most cases the animal is killed instantly by severing the spinal chord and then draining the blood afterwards. In many unkosher slaughterhouses, the blood is drained from the animal while it is alive and then it is officially slaughtered after the animal’s artery has been opened.
Kosher Restrictions in the Torah
Despite the many side benefits of keeping kosher, the vast majority of Jews that keep kosher do so because the most holy Jewish text, the Torah, has commanded them to keep kosher. The laws in the Torah do not specify any reason. Most Jews, especially those belonging to the orthodox movement, don’t need a better reason, despite all of the discovered benefits of the kosher laws.
Readers May also enjoy Basics of Conservative Judaism and Basics of Reform Judaism.
Sources:
- Kosher.com
Why Jews Keep Kosher
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