EATING BLOOD AND LOVING IT

Many years ago, in the era prior to cell phones, microwave ovens and color TV, I used to help my mother kasher meat. If that sounds odd to you because, you might reason, isn’t meat just kosher once you buy it, the answer is it is, but that’s because today it has already been soaked and salted. Not so in the 1950’s. Back then, you would wash off the meat, submerge it in tepid water for half-an-hour, remove it and cover it generously with kosher salt, both sides, replace the meat on a perforated board, propped up at about a 20 degree angle, and let it sit there for one hour.

The whole purpose of these actions was to drain it of all blood, for as we learn in the Torah—

 

Lo tokhlu al hadam…Don’t eat anything with its blood… (Leviticus 19:26a)

The blood is regarded as the life of the animal and we dare not consume the flesh with the life intact.

The respect that Judaism nurtures for life is famous. These seemingly simple rituals point to bigger ideas that make a difference in how we live. In respecting life as we do, Jews should never turn their heads away from another person’s pain, or take animal life viciously, or treat subjects like abortion or euthanasia lightly, and so forth. And actually, the whole issue of rumors and whether we become accessories to their distribution also falls into the category of not eating blood. Rumors which kill others emotionally and spiritually, and could kill others even physically, should never be spread by anyone, especially Jews.

So here’s something to think about. The next time you receive an e-mail about someone who has been mistreated or hurt, a university that has made some outrageous decision, a country that has become particularly abusive, take a look at that e-mail and ask yourself a few questions:

Do you know who wrote this?

Do you know if it was ever distributed in a reputable publication?

Is it dated?
Are its claims substantiated by references to established research volumes?

If your answers are “No” to any one of the above questions, chances are someone has just sent you a slanderous, defamatory, piece of gossip, based on nothing except the author’s prejudices. Material like this is designed to spill blood, an individual’s or an institution’s. It makes no difference—the intent is murderous and the author wants you to eat the blood.

Don’t do it. Take the article, submerge it in your trash file, and don’t send it on to anyone else. Unless you can yourself verify the truth of that article, in distributing it, you become an accomplice to an immoral act and violate the Torah’s prohibition against eating blood.