Why Bother?
 
There is no blinking at the fact that today following the Hebrew diet takes effort for anyone who is not a recluse.
 

By Herman Wouk

There is no blinking at the fact that today following the Hebrew diet takes effort for anyone who is not a recluse. The eating habits of the majority confront one everywhere: in restaurants, in trains and planes, at the homes of friends. Holding to the diet calls first of all for clarity of purpose, then some will power, and certainly an elastic sense of humor, to survive and return the venerable comedy on the subject.

It seldom occurred to our forefathers to ask the question which comes at once to the American intelligence, "But why keep all this up?" For them, there was far more dislocation, intellectual and physical, in searching out a piece of pork, or a shrimp, and eating it, then in eating the way Jews did. These patterns were a part of the satisfying sense of an old proud identity which a Jew had; and, at rock bottom, there was the instinct that the Mosaic law was the will of historic Providence for the Jewish people. The American community, re-examining its heritage, runs a curious questioning eye across the whole range of Hebrew practice. This causes discomfort and even anguish to parents and teachers, who are not always ready with answers to questions they themselves never asked.

In the West among the more assimilated groups, large numbers of Jews no longer hold to the diet, whether through choice, indifference, coercion, or lack of knowledge. But the majority of Jews in the world still follow the broad pattern of the laws. A very large group observes them with exact care. In the United States, after what seemed for a while a mass flight that would extinguish the practice in a generation, the laws have taken firm hold, and it appears that observance is increasing.

Part of this is surely due to the fact that keeping up the laws is becoming easier. The production of kosher foods has emerged as a large competitive modern industry. With frozen meats in mass marketing, it is becoming almost as simple to keep a kosher home as not. There also seems to be a slow steady tendency of the Jewish community - under a swirl of many movements - toward its center of gravity, the Mosaic law. Immediately, this trend would seem to contradict the law of increasing conformity to the way of majority. But social laws are not astronomic laws. People can learn things and change their motions, as planets cannot. In the United States one does not necessarily become most like Jones by eating as he does, but by behaving as he does. Speaking very generally, Jones is a man who practices his religion and respects people who practice theirs.

This is to suggest that in the main the American Jewish revival of religion is so far a social change rather than a religious or intellectual one, just as the original drift from the faith was. But for those who want Judaism to live, a revival on any basis ought to be welcome to begin with. Presumably in time the substance can take the central place.

Nobody can argue that the present state of kosher supply is wholly satisfactory. Conflicting guarantees, lack of sure control by a recognized bureau of standards, contradictory opinions on popular brands of food, rumor and gossip on doubtful points in place of published fact, these are persistent troubles of the churning changeover from old methods to new. People who give up observance like to cite one or another of those snags, but such rationalization is not serious. In general our ancient Hebrew diet remains as clear-cut as it was when Moses gave it to us. It is not a regime for hermits. It offers us meat and drink in great abundance and variety. The limit of luxury is one's purse and good sense, not the law. If we want to follow the diet in good faith, we can. The further improvement of supply is up to the community, exerting its force on the suppliers.

Foods of marginal hygienic value seem to be the only ones the Torah left out of our diet. Certainly Jews have survived for thirty centuries most healthily without eating snakes, pigs, worms, shrimps, or turtles. The kosher rules are on the side of cleanliness and purity, even if "kosher means pure" is less than the whole story. But the most important thing seems to be that a pattern exists in the daily act of eating, a pattern that Jews have shared since Sinai. It is a community bond and a reminder of personal identity that comes whenever a man gets hungry. It is a daily commitment in action to one's faith, a formal choice, a quiet self-discipline. The Jew who travels undergoes inconvenience, and with it a forcible reminder of who he is and what his home ties are. There is no doubt that the food laws work. They are social instruments for keeping the Jewish nation alive, and psychological instruments for preserving the identity of individuals.

Adapted from This is My G-d