 After we advertise this series, someone approached me and challenged me and said, well why would anyone come to a talk on this kind of a topic? Why in the world would anyone want to be a vegetarian? And I said that there was a couple of years ago someone published the top ten reasons for being a kosher vegetarian. And the number one reason, two words, buttered challah. So, enough said. When we think about it, eating is probably one of our lives primary activities. So much of our lives are spent preoccupied thinking about what we're going to eat, shopping for food, preparing our meals, eating our meals, cleaning up afterward. If you think about it, just in average day how much of our time and energy and thought processes are spent upon eating. And what's interesting is that within Jewish teachings we have in our Bible, the very first story in our Bible is a story about eating. We all know it doesn't turn out that well. That the first commandment given to mankind, Adam and Eve, is that they can really eat from all the trees in the garden. But there's one tree that they're not to eat, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And we know they eat from that tree and as a result we're still suffering now thousands of years later. One of the last great Hasidic thinkers who passed away in the year 1900 of Sadiq Haqqo'in of Lublin, in his very important, say fair, Pre-Tzadik, suggests that the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was not so much in what they ate, but really in how they ate it. And Ruh Tzadik suggests that the tree of knowledge is not really a tree, but it's a way of encountering the world, a way of taking from the world where we take without much consciousness. It's eating for the sake of eating, without really eating for any higher purposes. And for many of us, even for those of us who keep kosher, we don't give much thought to eating, other than the fact that we're going to eat and what we're going to eat, but we don't really think so much about what is eating all about, what does it mean, what is the purpose of eating, other than satisfying our hunger. And that's precisely what Ruh Tzadik is saying, that eating for the sake simply of satisfying our hunger, he says, that's the paradigm sin in the Garden of Eden. That was the paradigm mistake that human beings made, was to really disengage their consciousness from what they were doing. And so the Bali Musar and the Hasidic masters have always taught that one of the greatest areas for human spiritual work and for human spiritual activity is in getting a handle on our eating and how we eat, and thinking about our eating, and raising our eating up higher and higher to different levels. And really, we hear from many of our teachers, one of the great rabbis who passed away tragically recently, Shemshan David Pincus wrote in an article that eating is potentially one of the highest spiritual activities, one of our greatest spiritual activities. Only if our minds are engaged. And so the purpose really of tonight's discussion, and we're just going to be able to really touch the tip of the iceberg tonight, is to really begin to think about eating and how we eat, and some issues that revolve around our eating. We know that the Garden of Eden was a place that was characterized by total harmony between God, between mankind and between the animal world and between the world of nature. That was the essence of the Garden of Eden. All of the elements, everything there somehow existed in harmony. They got along perfectly well with each other. Even the battle of the sexes didn't exist. Man and women got along perfectly. And we know that at one point all of that ended. What we always have in our literature, the Garden of Eden is held up as a paradigm for paradise, for what life could be like ultimately. And so we all have a vision, a Jewish vision, actually other religions share this as well, of a utopian future at the end of history we call the Messianic Age. But the paradigm for what the world will look like in the future goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. So if we can understand what life was like back in the Garden of Eden, we have a bit of a taste of what life will be like in the future Messianic world. We're taught in our Bible and in the Talmud that the original diet of mankind was vegetarian. The Talmud says in Sanhedrin 59b, that Adam and Eve were not permitted to eat meat. They were not allowed to eat meat. As it is written in Genesis 1.29, God says, See, I have given you every seed-bearing plant and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit. To you, it shall be for food. And the Talmud goes on to say, Yes, it shall be for food, but not the beasts of the earth. They shall not be your food. So we're taught that the very, very first diet that human beings were given was a non-meat-centered diet. And the famous commentary to the Torah quoting his father the Rush, the Torah points out that God instilled in the hearts of every human being a distaste for eating meat and a revulsion for taking animal life. That somehow that was implanted into our human natures. However, we know that ultimately this prohibition didn't last forever. And ultimately permission to eat meat was given to Noah and to his family after they emerged from the ark after the flood that destroyed the entire world. The question is why was that changed? Why did God give human beings permission all of a sudden now to eat meat when from the beginning they were not allowed to eat meat? And the rabbis really struggled to understand what really changed. Why do they now have permission to eat meat? The barbunel suggests something very mundane. He says that after Noah and his family emerged from the ark the plants and the trees had been destroyed and they weren't available for eating. And so they had to be given this alternative diet because they wouldn't have been enough food. It's an answer that leaves me a little bit dissatisfied because if that's the reason that the diet changed that should not have been an ongoing permission because as soon as the plants revitalized and there was now back to having trees and plants they should have gone back to the original diet in the Garden of Eden. The Orhachaya Makadosh, a famous Kabbalah says to me also mysteriously that the reason Noah and his family were given permission to eat animals was because they had saved the animals. They're the ones that brought them onto the ark and took care of them for all those months and months on the ark. And so because they took care of the animals now they're given permission to kill and eat the animals. Which again to me doesn't quite make sense because you were so nice to the animals now we're going to allow you to kill them and eat them. And so we have many different suggestions that the rabbis offer to explain why now all of a sudden after they emerge from the ark they're given permission to eat meat. Rev Avram Yitzchakakohen Cook who was the first chief rabbi of the pre-state Israel suggests that the reason that mankind was given permission to consume flesh after coming out of the ark was really a temporary concession. It wasn't really the ideal but it was a temporary concession to mankind's corrupted nature. The entire flood was brought about because God noticed that the world had become incredibly corrupt and mankind had become incredibly degraded. And mankind was not able to live according to the ideals that God originally intended. And so Rev Cook suggests that this permission to consume animals was partially given in order to allow human beings to have now an elevated state of who they were compared to the animals. Originally there was an equation between animals and human beings and somehow some of the commentary suggests that that might have been the mistake of Cain when Cain refused to sacrifice anything other than plant life. And that somehow the equation of human beings with animals ultimately degraded human beings. And so what Rev Cook suggests is that now we're given permission to eat animals to show that we are not on the same level of animals. And that we would now be able to concentrate on fixing our interpersonal relationships, our human relationships. That will be the focus. And Rev Cook felt that if we were prohibited from eating animals after the flood it may have been too difficult to challenge for human beings to face. It may have been too difficult for us to restrain those passions and so we were given license to indulge in those passions. But even Rev Cook and others who accept this premise point out that the ideal never changed. The ideal was to remain the same that the utopian vision is that human beings don't eat meat. And that therefore when we look to our prophets in the Bible who describe the Messianic age in the future they seem to be describing a reversion. The world reverting to its Edenic state where people did not eat animals. So for example in the prophet Hosea in the second chapter prophet writes in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creeping things of the ground and I will abolish the bow and the sword and war from the land and I will let them lie down in safety. And somehow even the animals will be able to live in peace in the Messianic future. And the prophet Isaiah in the 11th chapter seems to indicate that in the future even the animals themselves will revert to being vegetarian. The prophet Isaiah says that the lion will eat straw like the ox that no longer will the animals be carnivorous they also will revert to a vegetarian diet. Even when God gave human beings permission to consume meat after the flood it was not an unconditional permission. They were not just told you can kill anything you want eat whatever you want do whatever you want they were given a very important condition the condition was they couldn't eat everm in a hay they couldn't eat the limb of a living creature so they couldn't just take an animal, rip off an arm or a leg and start eating it before the animal was killed. And so some of the commentaries point out that even going back to this point in history even non-Jews were given a requirement to have some kind of painless slaughter of animals they have shchita like we as Jews have but they have a similar requirement to slaughter animals in a way that is basically painless but the animals have to be dead before people consume their flesh. It's interesting that apparently humanity had become so low and had sunk in so low before the flood that that's exactly what people were doing they were so brutal that they were taking animals and just ripping off the limbs of a living animal and eating them. So God says to the human beings if you're going to eat animals after the flood you cannot do this. This cannot be done. Now what we find in the Torah incredibly is that there are more teachings in our Bible about how we are to treat animals than how we're to treat our own children. The Torah focuses much much more on the treatment of animals and on the treatment of human beings. The book of Proverbs chapter 12 tells us that the righteous person is someone who regards the life of their beast. The righteous person is very concerned with the treatment of their animals and so we have in the Torah many many instructions on the treatment of animals. I'll just share a few of them with you. We're told that on the Shabbat not only are we to rest but we have to also allow our animals to enjoy the rest of the Sabbath. It's an incredible thing when you think about it that we have to make sure that our animals under our jurisdiction are given the opportunity to relax and rest and not have to work and reign Rome free and just enjoy the natural beauty in which they're living. There is a general prohibition in the Torah called the Yisr of Tsar Baal-i-Chayim the prohibition of causing any unnecessary pain to an animal. And the Talmud says in Bubba Metsia attracted Bubba Metsia that this prohibition of causing pain to animals is deorisa. It's a biblical prohibition. So when we cause pain to animals it's not just something that's not nice. This is a biblical prohibition on the level of any other biblical prohibition eating pork or working on the Sabbath. The Torah tells us in the 23rd chapter of Shamos of Exodus that we're required to relieve an animal that's struggling under its load even if the animal belongs to an enemy. Can you imagine that? You see that there is an animal that your enemy person that you would never talk to person that you hate but their animal is struggling under a heavy load and is in tremendous pain you're obligated to go over to that animal and help unload the animal to relieve it of its burden. The Talmud tells us in Tractate Brachot that we are not allowed to eat until we first feed our animals. Any animals under our jurisdiction that we own, that we're responsible for we have to first feed those animals before we eat anything. It's an incredible thing. The rabbis teach us that we're not allowed to purchase an animal unless we will be able to feed it properly. In Dvarum chapter 22, Deuteronomy 22 we're taught that we cannot plow our fields with two different animals with an octan and a donkey, for example. Why would that be? There are several reasons in advance. Number one, when you have two different sized animals it's annoying both to the bigger animal and to the smaller animal. The smaller animal is being schlepped by the bigger animal and it puts a strain on the smaller animal and the bigger animal has to deal with this nutnik that's not being able to work as hard. And so both animals are frustrated. But some of the commentaries point out that another problem is that if you have this ox and this donkey the ox chews its cud. The ox is always chewing and chewing and chewing. The donkey is going to get jealous and the donkey is going to think this guy is always eating. This guy has always got food in his mouth. So to that point at Kedekah we're told we cannot plow with two different sized animals together because it will be annoying to both of these animals. Also in the 22nd chapter of Dvaram we're taught the famous rule that if we see a nest with eggs and we want to take some of those eggs we first have to send away the mother bird. We're not supposed to allow this mother bird to see the eggs being taken away. In the 22nd chapter of Iikro Leviticus we're taught that we are not allowed to kill an animal and its young on the same day. Kosovo Espino. It would be cruel to wipe out entire generations of animals on the same day. And also some of the commentaries point out if you're going to kill an animal and its child on the same day it's quite possible, again, that the parents are going to see the destruction of their children. Maimonides points out that animals have feelings and they're bothered if they see their own children being killed. In the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy of Dvaram we're told that when we have an animal that's treading our fields for us we can't muzzle the animal. You can't muzzle it so that it's not able to pick up some of the corn on the ground. It's going to be allowed to freely eat the stuff that drops on the ground. You know that in Italy, going back not too long, they would muzzle human beings that were plowing and taking care of the ground. They didn't want people to pick up some of the stuff that fell down. We know that if we're going to eat animals the Bible tells us that we have the animals in a particular way. It's called shchita. When I was studying for the rabbinate in Israel I had to spend six months learning how to slaughter animals. And the laws of slaughtering animals are incredibly complex. And I remember that we had to learn the laws of the knife and one of the rules of the knife was that it had to be perfectly sharp. The shchita knife had to be perfectly sharp. And there was a fellow downstairs from where I was living that was learning to be a shochet. I was never interested in being a shochet but there was a fellow downstairs who was learning and he had a shchita knife. And after I learned the procedure for checking the knife to see if it had any nicks I asked him if I could check his knife, if I could see what it's like. So he gave me his knife and I ran my thumb both the nail and the fleshy part over this knife. I did it for about five minutes. I closed my eyes. I tried to be as quiet as I could. I tried to be as sensitive as I could and I couldn't feel anything. It felt like it was smooth as glass to me. I handed the knife back to him and he said to me the knife was checked that day and they found three piggy moat three nicks in this knife that disqualified it from being used as a slaughtering knife. So they went to extraordinary care to make sure that the knife was as sharp as possible and the procedures for slaughtering the animal and slaughtering the animal rendered the most painless possible death possible. A rabbi's prohibited hunting for pleasure or for sport. The Noh de Bihuda, Yechazka Landau said that for a Judas is cruel and barbaric to think about even hunting down animals for the purpose of sport. The Talmud tells an amazing story that Rebuta Nussi, Rebi the compiler, the editor of Ola Ramishnayus, Rebi was hunting outside and he saw that there was a calf that was being taken for slaughter and the calf broke away from its handler and the Talmud tells us the calf ran over to Rebi and hid in his robes. So Rebi looks at this animal and says what do you want from me this is what you were created for Talmud says that for 13 years he had excruciating stomach pains until one day there was someone in his house that was cleaning the house and maybe it was a maid or someone and she saw there was a weasel in the house there so she took a broom and she was going to whack the weasel, she was going to give it a zetz and hit the weasel and Rebuta Nussi stopped her and said no it says in our Bible that God's mercies are upon all his creatures and it's at that moment that his stomach pains subsided but one of the principal teachings of the Torah is the idea of the Halachla Bedrachov we're supposed to walk in the ways of God, we're supposed to pattern our lives after God we're supposed to model our lives after God and so we're told that God is merciful to all his creatures that should be our attitude as well we know that for example on Yom Kippur we don't wear leather shoes and there are more of Moshe Israelis points out that on a day when we're pleading for our lives mercy for our lives it wouldn't make sense to wear shoes that have to have an animal slaughtered to wear on our feet so we don't wear leather shoes there are more says on Yom Kippur and we have hundreds of laws in our tradition about the treatment of animal but I should point out that these laws are not primarily because of animal rights it's not so much that the animals have rights from a Jewish point of view the Torah doesn't want us to become cruel the Torah is concerned about our character development so it's our responsibility primarily which the Torah is seeking now what does this have to do with being a vegetarian I was once struck by the fact that we go to such extraordinary lengths to make sure that the animals we're going to eat are killed painlessly extraordinary lengths to make sure that in that last second of its life when it's being killed that it's killed in the most painless way possible a shochat has to go through incredible training and we go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that the act of shlita is as painless as possible and at the very same time however we don't take much care and concern with how that animal that's about to be slaughtered is treated for the months and weeks and years leading up to that slaughter and I always found this very very out of sync because if we really are concerned with the feelings of this animal we shouldn't only be concerned for how it feels during the last second of its life when it's being killed and so if we spend a little bit of time thinking about the kind of industry today that we need for slaughter it's not like it used to be when our great great grandparents were living on a shtetl and they might have had an animal that they raised and finally the time came to kill it and they killed it they probably had to cry as they were doing it our literature always tells us that the shochat when they would moisten the knife they would moisten the knife with their tears but today we don't eat animals like that they are crowded into facilities where they're not given any chance to roam freely they're often crowded into horrifying conditions they're not treated properly they're often fed a very poor diet they're often injected with all kinds of steroids and antibiotics and so the question is for sensitive Jews can we be comfortable consuming such meat can we be comfortable consuming animals that have been mistreated and there are many ways in which their fate can be improved you know their law in North America is often that the animal is not supposed to be standing on the ground where its blood will be spilled so what often happens in slaughterhouses is the animals are hoisted off the ground they're shackled and they're hoisted off the ground can you imagine two or three thousand pounds steer just being dangled by its hind legs it's probably pretty painful and so there are special holding pens that can be used that would make that process much much more painless and we should make sure that in the kosher slaughter industry that's what's being done routinely we can speak for quite a while about the importance of being sensitive to the feelings of animals but we know that in Judaism the ultimate value is human life we have a principle in Judaism called pikuach nefesh that virtually every law in Judaism can be violated except for the big three murder and idolatry and sexual immorality but aside from those three rules every law can be violated in order to save a human life we can work on the Sabbath we can eat non kosher food we can do the same on Yom Kippur human life is considered to be the greatest value and so we know for example that for 40 years as the Jews left Egypt they didn't circumcise during those 40 years in the desert because they were required to break camp and to stop and to go at a moment's notice and to travel after going through this kind of a surgical procedure could have been dangerous and so because of that danger we didn't circumcise for those 40 years the brisker rub of Chaim of Brisk was often accused of being very lenient when it came to the Sabbath laws because he would allow certain things to be done on the Sabbath and he would respond by saying I'm not lenient when it comes to the Sabbath it's very strict when it comes to the laws of saving a human life so we have many many stories in our tradition one of the most famous is that there was a cholera outbreak in Europe many many people were dying and the doctors determined that the Jewish people would have to eat that Yom Kippur because their strength was necessary otherwise they would have succumbed to this disease but people didn't want to eat on Yom Kippur so they decided to eat and we'll be able to somehow make it through and so Robi Israel Solanter the leader of the Musur movement decided that instead of just announcing to his community that they're supposed to eat this Yom Kippur he ascended the Bima on Yom Kippur, made Kiddish and ate in front of the entire congregation he wanted to demonstrate that when it comes to saving human lives that's the priority the book of Dvarim verse 9 and 15 tells us you've got to guard your lives very very carefully and so we have a general mandate within the Jewish tradition of doing that which is necessary to preserve our lives the Gamorim Babakama tells us that we're prohibited from hurting ourselves in any way our body is not ours to hurt it doesn't belong to us the Gamorim Dvarim Deuteronomy chapter 22 verse 8 tells us that if we have a building with a roof we're required to put up a parapet around that roof a maca because we want to make sure that God forbid no one should fall off the roof and the rabbis extend that requirement to saying that anything that's dangerous we've got to protect against we can't keep dangerous animals that are not chained properly we're not allowed to have a swimming pool if someone is falling in it's got to be covered anything that might be dangerous we have to take care of the Gamorim says in Chulen page 10 A Hamura Sakantem de Isura that we have to be more stringent when it comes to danger than even when it comes to different prohibitions now when I first learned that Gamorim I didn't really appreciate its repercussions but it didn't take me long to realize what this is saying we have to be more careful when it comes to whether or not something is dangerous than to whether or not it's kosher and I realized how careful we are when it comes to making sure the food we eat is kosher we want to read every ingredient to make sure there's nothing in there that might might be non kosher and we have an incredibly rigorous kashris industry that ensures that everything we eat is 100% kosher if not 1000% kosher and I realize at the same time that we're doing that and it's important to do that I asked myself about my own life how careful am I to make sure that not eating stuff that's going to hurt my body do we take as much care to make sure we're not consuming things that might be harmful to us that might be harmful and I realized I grew up in a home which probably wasn't different than many homes where we had meat six nights a week and often as a lunch as well my mononies tells us that most diseases are caused by a poor diet we know very well that heart disease and cancer are taking countless lives in our society and we know that the causes of these ravaging diseases range from high cholesterol levels to high blood pressure to the consumption of different toxins that render our bodies vulnerable to these diseases and so the question is is the kind of diet that we are consuming in North America a diet which is prone to optimal health can we make improvements in the way we eat in the kind of foods that we eat Nachmanides the Ramban says in Exodus chapter 23 quoting the verse in the Bible and you shall serve the Lord your God and he will bless your bread and your water and remove illness from your midst and Nachmanides says through them, through your bread and your water meaning through your food I will free you from disease when your food and drink are good Nachmanides says when they're good and healthy they won't cause disease and sickness on the contrary they will heal you when your diet is a healthy diet it will both prevent illness and it actually will heal you if you are ill the Talmud has a tremendous amount of practical advice about health issues there are dozens and dozens and hundreds of statements in Talmud that suggest what is healthy what's not healthy we have an amazing story in the Tanakh Daniel we're told and his three friends Mishal Azari and Hananya were thrown into a prison and the prisoners were given the regular kind of food chicken wings whatever they were given to eat and Daniel didn't want to eat this food obviously it wasn't kosher so he said to the guards listen let's do an experiment for 10 days we won't eat any of that food that you're feeding everyone else you'll just give us vegetables to eat and it says in the book of Daniel in the end of the first chapter that after those 10 days all the other prisoners have been eating the hamburgers or whatever else they were eating and Daniel and his friend were just eating the vegetables and it says in our bible guess who looked much better and much healthier just after those 10 days Daniel and his friends back to the Garden of Eden when we were put on this planet the Torah tells us that we were put here to work this planet and to protect it and to watch it and to guard it and so the Midrash tells us that after the creation of Adam and Eve it's a very striking and a very beautiful Midrash that God took Adam and Eve by the hand and led them around the Garden of Eden and showed them how beautiful it was and said to them I want you to see and to notice how incredibly beautiful this world is that I put you in and he told them the Midrash says be very very careful not to harm or damage this planet not to harm or damage this world because if you destroy it there will be no one here after you to fix it up anymore the rabbis teach us that we were made partners with God in the creation of this world we were made partners with God in the creation of the world God created this world and left it up to us to be stewards to manage to work this world but we were given this world on trust Talmud says something very interesting the Talmud in Brachot contrasts two different verses one verse in the Bible says Hashemayim, Shemayim, Ladanay and Haaretz, Dantan, Levne, Adam the heavens belong to God but the earth he is given to human beings but the Talmud says but there's another verse in the book of Psalms which says that the earth and everything in it belongs to God but the Talmud says which way isn't is the earth given to human beings or does the earth belong to God it seems that these verses contradict so the Talmud says it's not a contradiction one verse is speaking before we make a blessing and one verse is speaking about after we make a blessing which means that the world belongs to God it's not our world and until we make a blessing there's knowledge that it belongs to God and it comes to God as a gift to us if we use it if we take it we're actually stealing so the world is not for us to use as we please it's given to us under certain conditions and there are many laws in our Bible which are designed to teach us that the world ultimately does not belong to us the Shabbos for example says that our ability to create and to change the world is constricted it's limited we're told just six days you can work but then there's a seventh day where you've got to stop your work stop your work because you're not the masters of this world you're to emulate God the Shemitah year the year of the sabbatical where we're told that on the seventh year we can't use our fields and plow and harvest we don't have the right to just use everything when we want to because we say it's ours the Torah is constantly telling us the world belongs to God and we use it according to his permission and according to his instructions and so one of the great laws of the Torah one of the most central principle laws of the Torah is the law which says we are not allowed to wantonly destroy anything of value in this world the Torah teaches us this law in a very unusual context the Torah speaks about the laws of going to war and you can imagine when you're in a war situation things are very tense and you're not necessarily at your best behavior and often people will do whatever it takes to do to win the war so the Torah tells us if you're engaged in a battle and you're laying a siege to a city and you want to build ramparts or you want to build siege equipment or you want to build catapults you want to build stuff to be able to conquer this city the Torah says you're not allowed to chop down a fruit tree to do it you imagine there are people that are in the middle of a war and they need equipment they need wood because they're fighting for their lives and they want to conquer this city and the Torah says that tree you can't touch my rabbi told us an amazing story that during the war in Lebanon when the Israeli forces fought in Lebanon there was a platoon of Jewish soldiers they happened to be religious soldiers and they were hungry in the middle of the skirmish and there was a there was a tree, I think a cherry tree there was something that they were passing by and they wanted to take some of the cherries and their rabbi who was the chaplain of the group said you can't take the cherries we're not here conquering this land we're not here to conquer this land you just can't take whatever you want so we have a principal in the Torah those are fruit trees, you cannot destroy those fruit trees and the rabbis went on to extrapolate to teach that we are not allowed to destroy anything of value for no purpose whatsoever we're required to protect the Earth's natural resources and we have to use the resources of this world efficiently one of the reasons is that wars are often fought because of natural resources oil supplies, food supplies people often will fight other countries because they want to control the source of these critical supplies and so when you think about it if we're not using the Earth's resources responsibly and if we're not using the Earth's resources effectively we're putting ourselves in the positions where maybe wars are going to be fought over these issues and so why are we mentioning this tonight because we have to feed our planet and the question is what is the most efficient way of feeding a planet the amount of land it takes to raise beef for consumption is tremendous and the question is would that land be more effectively used for producing crops like soybeans and the question is could we get more bang for our buck by having a non meat centered diet and how about the causes of pollution the use of water that it takes to raise beef and other pollution that comes as a result of the beef production industry and so when we think about the question of the kind of foods that we consume we should be thinking about the collateral damage what are the effects of our diet upon the environment and upon the efficient use of the Earth's natural resources I'm not coming tonight with answers to these questions these are questions that have been raised by people who have studied these issues in much more depth than I have but I think as thinking Jews what we need to do is to not ignore these issues that it would be who of us to give some thought to the question of our personal health to the question of how animals are treated to the question of how the Earth's natural resources are being used to the question of what kind of a world will ultimately become a more peaceful and harmonious world our task in this world as human beings is to fix the world that we're living in God created a paradise God created a Gan Eden God created a Utopia and we're told that history is moving back to the Garden of Eden history is moving back to return to paradise but we're the ones that have to ultimately take that journey and so our task, our historical responsibilities as human beings and as Jews is as we describe tikkun olam, the fixing of this world and not small part of that revolves around how we relate to food our relationship to food and to our own diets has a tremendous impact on our own personal spiritual lives and on the status the health of the world at large