TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE

Rambam groups the laws of forbidden foods together with the laws of vows and of being a nazir, meaning that he draws a connection between Hilkhot Maakhalot Asurot and the book Hafla’ah, voluntary announcements of some religious resolution. In both cases, he sees the laws as dedicated to inculcating certain values and ideals in the people who observe them. We will have to read this chapter somewhat critically, since Rambam’s claims here are difficult in many instances.

FORBIDDEN MEATS

Rambam asserts that all forbidden foods are clearly detrimental to one’s health. For pork, fat, blood, and nevelot (animals that have died without proper shehitah—which means that they have not had a certain type of blood removed), Rambam explains the problem in their detriment to one’s health. He sees pork as too humid, full of extraneous matter (claims that rely on his view of bodily chemistry and digestion), and dirty, which goes against the Torah’s general concern with cleanliness. Fat makes us full, spoils our digestion, and makes our blood cold and thick. Blood and nevelot are difficult to digest and are harmful to the body.

Even granting changes in medicine over the course of eight hundred years, Rambam’s ideas are difficult to accept. Assuming that Rambam means something akin to these foods are not good for you, for whatever reason, is his claim that they are inherently worse for you than other foods? I remember when the Concorde first started flying, that people complained about the extra noise pollution it produced, and my father a"h pointing out that these complainants had not been able to formulate a standard by which the Concorde’s extra noise could be significantly differentiated from other airplanes. Here, too, it seems difficult to imagine that these foods are inherently more unhealthy than plenty of other permitted foods. Would Rambam think that we should prohibit any food that can be shown to have similar effects on our digestive system to pork, fat, etc.?

Perhaps Rambam would see these foods as paradigmatic, as ways for the Torah to express a value without having to list each and every qualifying example. That would mean, though, that Rambam would in fact think that we should not be eating any food with similar effects to any of the prohibited foods, a challenging claim, to say the least.

In addition, at least for blood and fat, there seems a simpler answer readily at hand. Since these parts of the animal were central to the sacrifice in the Temple, why not just say that the Torah prohibited them so that we not allow ourselves to eat the food dedicated to sacrifice to God? It seems likely to me, therefore, that Rambam’s claims do not exhaust the reasons for these commandments, although I candidly admit that Rambam may have seen his reasons as sufficient to explain the rules.

THE SIGNS OF THE PERMITTED FOODS

In a short paragraph, Rambam makes an interesting point about the signs of the kosher animals (chew their cud and cloven hoofs for animals, or fins and scales on fish). He says that these are not the reason these animals are permitted, nor is it the lack of them that causes other animals to be prohibited. Rather, these are signs of some other factor that differentiates the animal. That is not a necessary claim—I could imagine someone thinking, for example, that animals that chew their cud digest their food more fully than others, so that the animal is healthier for people to eat (or some such thing, similar to what Rambam had said about the forbidden animals). Rambam instead assumes that these physical characteristics indicate some other factor of the animal in question. Surprisingly, however, he does not venture an explanation—what does chewing one’s cud indicate in an animal; is it a sign of a cleaner, or less fatty, or what? Rambam does not say.

GID HANASHEH

Rambam says that the reason that we are not allowed to eat the sinew of the thigh (the gid hanasheh) has been given in Scripture, referring to the story in Parshat Vayishlah about Yaakov wrestling with an angel. In the course of their struggle, the angel touches him on the thigh, leaving him with a limp. The pasuk then says that that is why Jews don’t eat the gid hanasheh, because the angel touched Yaakov there.

Rambam’s assuming that that story in fact relates the reason for this commandment takes on a new light if we know his view of that story elsewhere in the Guide. In Part II, Chapter 42 (in his discussion of prophecy, a topic that might be worth our while to take up after we finish this part), Rambam claimed that this incident happened in a vision (a claim he also makes about Balaam and the donkey, and about Avraham and the three angels, each worth a discussion of its own). As others noted, Rambam seems to have believed that the vision was so vivid that he in fact limped after seeing an angel touch him on the thigh. His statement here that Jews do not eat that part of the animal’s body because of that incident means that we accept the reality of that vision to the extent that we allow it to condition how we eat even kosher animals. Rambam does not, however, discuss why that incident should be applied to our eating, what that says about eating, what it says about Yaakov’s vision, and so on.

CRUELTY LAWS

A bunch of the eating rules Rambam explains as ways to avoid cruelty. Ever min hahai, the prohibition against eating a limb cut off a living animal, is an obvious example, although Rambam also suggests that there was an element of idolatry to it. Shehitah, the laws of how to slaughter animals, oto ve-et beno, the prohibition of killing a mother and offspring on the same day, and shiluah hakan, sending the mother away, are also explained as cruelty issues. Shehitah mandates the least painful way to kill an animal.

Oto ve-et beno insures that a mother will not have to see her offspring killed before her, since Rambam understands that to cause great pain to the mother. He says that the connection between a mother and offspring is not a function of the intellect, it is a function of the imaginative faculty, and that this exists in animals just like in humans. Presumably, then, Rambam thinks that the only prohibition of killing the offspring after the mother on the same day is to make sure that we don’t do it the other way.

In the case of sending the mother bird away, Rambam mentions the issue of not causing the mother bird the pain of seeing her eggs being taken, which fits with what we just saw. He adds, however, that those eggs that a mother has already sat on somewhat are generally not the best eggs, so that people will eventually just leave the whole thing, which seems to go somewhat further, in suggesting that we shouldn’t be eating eggs at all (although he does not say that), or at least only those eggs that a mother has never developed any connection to whatsoever.

Rambam appends two interesting notes to the discussion about sending the mother-bird away. First, he notes that if the Torah attached such importance to respecting the feelings of a bird (and of animals generally), how much more should we be thinking about the feelings of human beings. Second, and more interesting to me, he notes that the gemara in Berakhot prohibits saying "Your mercies reach the nest of a bird," because the commandments are gezerot, decrees, not rahamim, mercy. Indeed, Rambam codifies this halakhah in the Mishneh Torah. This seems to contradict Rambam’s claim here.

Rambam answers that that Mishnah follows the opinion that commandments do not have a reason (a topic we discussed last year, in Chapters 26 and 31), but that he, Rambam, is explaining the commandments according to the other view, the view he accepts. The problem with this statement—and it’s so blatant that I have to assume Rambam knew this also—is that Rambam includes the rule about not saying "al kan tsipor yagiu rahamekha, your mercies reach the nest of a bird" in Mishneh Torah. There seems to be a contradiction here.

I suspect that Rambam means us to know that the reasons for the commandments here are reasons that mold us, not that express any truths about God. When we are commanded not to be cruel to animals, that is supposed to train us in a certain way, without saying anything about God. In Mishneh Torah, Rambam was codifying a correct rule about how we should speak to God, whereas here he was explaining how we should experience the mitsvah. If that is correct, he might have referred to that gemara as holding the opposite opinion—that mitsvot do not have reasons—because he did not wish to emphasize that the reasons he is giving here are for the human experience, not as a reflection of God’s experience.

There are still two more pieces to this chapter that we should spend time on—Rambam’s view of basar be-halav, the laws of meat and milk, and his perspective on vows in general and the promise to be a nazir in particular. Since Chapter 49 is long enough that it will take at least two weeks, I’ll leave this little piece of 48 for next week as well. See you then.