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00:06:44We started the series with bread that symbolizes the essence of earthly life,
00:06:48all nourishment, the beginning of our civilization,
00:06:51and we are closing it with you, my darlings,
00:06:54with what we call meat.
00:06:58The Jewish people have come a long and turbulent way in their relationship
00:07:01to meat. Our sages tell us that there was a prohibition on
00:07:05all slaughter of all animals until after the flood. The Book
00:07:08of Leviticus imposes upon us laws of kashrut
00:07:12that protect animal welfare and restrict our ability to eat
00:07:16any types of meat that we may desire. On the other hand, meat
00:07:19becomes the focus of worship in the Temple, which becomes
00:07:23a kind of feast, a kind of endless celebration. To this day,
00:07:26this dual relationship is reflected in our relationship as modern
00:07:29Jews to meat. On the one hand, most of us are addicted
00:07:33to meat, and on the other hand, Israel is one of the world's vegan
00:07:37capitals. So, like today, Jews wrestle
00:07:41with their moral relationship
00:07:43to meat.
00:07:48Without food, there is
00:07:49no life.
00:07:55The texts of the ancient Jews who lived here reflect their food
00:07:58that they inherited, just like us, from their parents and from the empires that passed
00:08:02through this region. Basmata
00:08:05in Aramaic.
00:08:08This, ladies and gentlemen, is Chef Assaf Doctor, who researches
00:08:12contemporary local cuisine, and this
00:08:15is Jeremy Fogel, Doctor of Modern Jewish Philosophy. I haven't
00:08:18eaten a fish like this since the period of the Mishnah.
00:08:22Together we embark on a journey following ancient
00:08:26Jewish food. Amen, amen to that. Tell me, what's your problem?
00:08:45Doctor Jeremy Fogel, yes Doctor Assaf Doctor, we are reaching
00:08:49the moment, the moment you tried to prevent all season, a meat
00:08:52episode. And I'm taking you to the cattle farm of
00:08:55Itamar Gilad, who I must say, I wish
00:08:59you knew or would know the love of a woman as Itamar
00:09:03Itush loves his sheep and his cattle. You mean to say
00:09:06that you wish me someone who will fatten me for a year and then slaughter
00:09:10me? What a year that would be. And we will reconstruct
00:09:14the cooking of a whole lamb. Ofir will prepare you majadra
00:09:18because he has a rare majadra and I know you like it. I also prepared a surprise.
00:09:21Oh come on, yes, of course, because I notice that you are delving
00:09:25into the writings. I am studying, you are studying the canonical texts of
00:09:29this people. What have you prepared for me? Uh, we invited
00:09:32Professor Yehoshua Berman, Professor, yes,
00:09:35who researched the Temple sacrificial cult. You know this
00:09:39is a topic I love very much. I am starting, I smell something here.
00:09:44What you smell is actually
00:09:47the junta, the priestly caste
00:09:51that approaches God through the slaughter of animals
00:09:54in the ancient Temple, slaughter, slaughter,
00:09:57slaughter, breaches, wherever there is power, capital
00:10:00power, roasted meat, medium rare. So here we
00:10:04are approaching, look what a beautiful
00:10:05place.
00:10:11To Itush.
00:10:14Hello, how are you? How are you, brother? Welcome,
00:10:17Jeremy Fogel, Itamar Gilad,
00:10:21the parents and atoms of lamb farming in Israel, at least in my opinion, the entire industry
00:10:25of meat that you have so abhorred in recent years has turned chicken
00:10:29for a shekel and hamburger for five shekels, destroying everything we know about
00:10:32raising animals for food. And Itush came and turned
00:10:36this thing from a food production unit back to its roots,
00:10:39how a herd of lambs should really be raised. Itush, what do you do differently?
00:10:43I really try to do it as close to nature as possible. They go out to pasture every day,
00:10:47all year round. Lambs stay with their mothers. They suckle. This is an unusual thing
00:10:51in the landscape. Most of them wean them from their mother right at birth and raise them
00:10:55with a bottle so that the mother can continue to produce milk. We leave them to suckle like in nature
00:10:58for 45 days. She stops producing milk, and then we wean the
00:11:02lamb. We also came to eat a little today, and we, I'm less
00:11:06hungry. I need to prepare Jeremy majadra, so I'm going to set up the amazing
00:11:10charola.
00:11:16A woman named Limor came here, an animal
00:11:19welfare advocate, that's what interested her. And when she came here after a year of touring the country
00:11:23and looking for farms, she turned to me and said: "Listen, this is the first farm that really lives
00:11:26up to its name." She actually wanted to do in Israel what they do in Europe, without preventative
00:11:30antibiotics, without hormones.
00:11:33Meaning, even before she established the Israeli standard, you were
00:11:36at the standard.
00:11:43What are you putting on our lamb here? I was looking for something
00:11:46to moisten and add flavor from things that were
00:11:50here then, so it's herbs like savory and sage and pomegranate
00:11:54juice. And grape molasses. I know we have some
00:11:57mention in the scriptures about fruit juices, we have mention of date
00:12:01honey and apple wine
00:12:04and unripe vinegar. Yes, unripe vinegar, we know that's sour grapes,
00:12:08it's basically unripe grapes. In the end, we want it to be tasty, that's the Creator's
00:12:11job. You bring them into existence, you slaughter
00:12:15them. I say that I'm basically babysitting for God, I'm watching over
00:12:19the animals that live here and get into trouble and have a hard time and are not well, so I want
00:12:22to say that at least my audience.
00:12:25I see how he reacts and appreciates, since the war I only serve
00:12:28lamb. Every time we get one lamb from Itush. I
00:12:32and Ofir and the team have to divide it and break it down, we show
00:12:35more respect to the animal, the audience reacts to it much better, with much more
00:12:39respect. All the effort I put in here is worth it so that in the end someone knows
00:12:43what this is. Tell me, what do you really think about veganism or semi-veganism or
00:12:47about all these movements? It hurts my business.
00:12:50Jeremy, give me a piece of beef, to make it a demo, do you have
00:12:54anything handy? These are quotes yes, we have a stew
00:12:57from the Tosefta, with a mixture of wheat and beans
00:13:00and torn meat, there is a mixture of wheat, how does that sound to you, they say
00:13:04that the krob, there was some kind of kale here, I really love kale and beans and green chickpeas, we are again
00:13:08in season, so I think we will make some kind of beef with seasonal green
00:13:11garlic and shallots with
00:13:13spring onions,
00:13:21Ah, oh how warm, how is it progressing? Are you
00:13:49enjoying the fruits and vegetables more, or,
00:13:53welcome.
00:14:25We want to understand from you, Professor Berman, the cult
00:14:28of sacrifices in the Temple, this is something that I think is a bit foreign to us, what is called
00:14:32an altar, the altar, where do we even begin? It
00:14:36is truly inconceivable to us, how is it related to drawing near to the Creator?
00:14:39After all, if we pray or go
00:14:43into isolation in the forest, these are things of the spirit,
00:14:46whereas man and the
00:14:49and the intestines and this meat, how can
00:14:53it possibly be related to something that is sublime? The peak, the peak of
00:14:57holiness, the peak of closeness to the Creator.
00:15:00Aaron, yes, enough with that, come on, yes, okay, you
00:15:03no, let's see if he turns into a snake, oh, that's
00:15:06a coincidence, to draw near to the Creator, so a sacrifice is
00:15:10from drawing near, yes, of course, wow, of course, I wouldn't
00:15:13have thought of that, yes, yes, yes, certainly, there are two directions, one
00:15:16of them is that I sacrifice myself to the Creator,
00:15:20so by being present at the sacrifice in the Temple, through the animal
00:15:23I can see what happens to it, what they do to it, how they raise it
00:15:27to the Creator. That is one direction. Another
00:15:30direction, the owner of the sacrifice, the one who brings the sacrifice,
00:15:34eats a meal there in the Temple, with God himself.
00:15:38And it's beautiful that I can sit with Him at the table as I sit with you.
00:15:41I'm going to check my sacrifice for a moment and... I'm a farmer,
00:15:44I bring up fruits, vegetables, maybe a lamb,
00:15:48maybe a dove. I am interested in sacrificing so that I will be forgiven
00:15:52for my sins, how does this process work? There are different
00:15:55decrees within the Temple. If it is a meat offering, the owner of the offering,
00:15:59the one who brings the offering, lays his hands
00:16:02on the lamb, for example, or on the sheep you brought
00:16:06with you. Your identity is metaphorically
00:16:09transferred to the sheep. So I transferred my identity to the sheep. What happens, boy? You need
00:16:13to cook the meat first before it goes up on the altar, and then there are
00:16:16pieces that go up on the altar, and there are pieces that go to the priests, there are also
00:16:20parts that go back to the owner of the sacrifice and he supposedly
00:16:23feasts just like we do here, but together with the Creator.
00:16:27What's fascinating about this series is that through
00:16:30nutrition, through food, we get a glimpse
00:16:34into the very earthly lives of the Jews who lived here.
00:16:38And you know, life is also political life, everywhere
00:16:41there is power, sooner
00:16:44or later, corruption will come. When we prepared
00:16:48for this episode, the parallel was striking, the story of Eli who was
00:16:51a high priest and had children, we
00:16:55today have an expression called "nepo baby," do you know what a nepo
00:16:58baby is? I can understand, who are these nepo babies, what are their names and
00:17:02what did they actually do? So one of them is called
00:17:05Phinehas, that's a priest's name.
00:17:07Already from the Torah, the second name here is Hofni, so maybe
00:17:10Hofni grabbed a handful, took a handful, yes, a handful
00:17:14of dollars, a handful for himself, yes, these are two who were born into
00:17:18this elite, with a silver spoon in their mouths, yes, exactly, exactly, yes, they
00:17:21remain, they remain, spoiled children, this is what happened
00:17:25to steaks every day.
00:17:29The most scathing criticism in the book of 1 Samuel, there is still no
00:17:33temple in Jerusalem, but there is a tabernacle in Shiloh, and of course
00:17:36there are sacrifices. What was described there was that the entire
00:17:40priestly system was utterly corrupt, and it is written: "And the priest's
00:17:43servant came, while the meat was cooking, with the three-pronged
00:17:46fork in his hand." He had a huge trident,
00:17:50looked like a devil, what would he do? "And he struck
00:17:53it into the basin, or into the pot, or into the kettle, or
00:17:57into the pan; all that the fork brought up, the priest
00:18:00took for himself." Meaning they stole. Yes, because the priests wanted
00:18:04to eat meat, tasty meat is barbecue. Who wants
00:18:08boiled meat? You take a steak and boil it
00:18:11in water? That's a recipe to ruin your steak. But first you
00:18:14boil it in water and then you grill it? So that's how it was on the altar. Yes, but
00:18:18the priests wanted steak. I understand. Yes, they
00:18:22wanted to "save," in quotation marks, yes? the steaks so
00:18:25they could make them as we are doing here
00:18:29behind us. I can understand them. Yes. So the people were
00:18:32trying somehow with pleas. "I don't care how much
00:18:35you take, just do what I need."
00:18:59Their father,
00:19:03Eli the priest, and it is written, "And Eli was very old," he probably could no longer control them.
00:19:07"And he heard all that his sons did to all
00:19:10Israel, and even more than that, and how they
00:19:13lay with the women who served
00:19:17at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting." Apparently, women
00:19:21who wanted to visit the Tabernacle had
00:19:23a payment, an entrance fee, but not in
00:19:27money. Yes, I tell you,
00:19:31this is the first place in history that we have sexual
00:19:35assault. Oh my God, yes. In the next
00:19:38chapter, Israel went out to battle against
00:19:42the Philistines, from this area we are in,
00:19:45yes, yes, and they lost, a great many
00:19:48in Israel fell, 34,000. But why did the people of Israel
00:19:52suffer such a great blow, so many people, so many people? Ah, because they
00:19:56let this happen. Oh, oh, wait, you're
00:19:59right, exactly, exactly. The question is why, because they said
00:20:03to themselves, "But we must atone for
00:20:05our sins, we must."
00:20:09Whatever it is, that's the most important thing. And if there's
00:20:12a little corruption, okay, we're willing
00:20:15to tolerate corruption. Is the criticism directed at
00:20:18the corrupt or at the ones who enable corruption, which is us, Jeremy
00:20:22and I and... Both, both, and I think these things are really
00:20:26important for us
00:20:27today too. A wonderful
00:20:31piece of beef. Ofir, please come. Okay, thank you very much. Wow,
00:20:35wow. Itush and Ofir. Sit
00:20:37next to me.
00:20:40You know, Joshua, you spoke about drawing near to God.
00:20:43Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers, said
00:20:46that drawing near to the divine is a path to a true encounter. So
00:20:50here we are, toasting to our true encounter, a true one that also brings
00:20:54us closer to the divine no less than to each other, and to each
00:20:57other, to life, to life, to closeness, amen.
00:21:13The moment I saw corruption before my eyes, wow, it's an amazing moment.
00:21:17Every day I wake up and open a newspaper. We live in a corrupt
00:21:21and terrible era. I try to make amends, at least in my surroundings, to try
00:21:24to be fair and honest, but corruption breaks
00:21:27out. I had a summer where I worked as a waiter on the beach
00:21:31in Tel Aviv, and there's a thing
00:21:34that's already quite corrupt by nature, that restaurants
00:21:38set up on Saturday along the entire beach,
00:21:41and families arrive and are supposedly not allowed to bring food from home, they're
00:21:45supposed to order from the restaurant, and of course
00:21:48the people of Israel are a stiff-necked
00:21:50and rebellious people who don't obey, which are qualities that have very positive aspects
00:21:53as well. People come with all the picnics, with all the Friday
00:21:57evening food, and then they order Coke or Coke and fries.
00:22:01You, unfortunately, as a waiter who does these shifts, have to come and say "No, you
00:22:04can't, you can't." And there was always the thing with grandmothers
00:22:08who tempt you, who say "Come taste the jachnun." And then you eat
00:22:11the jachnun, and then you yourself are already corrupt, and then, like, the deal
00:22:15gets much better, so you say "Okay, fine, eat whatever you want, but
00:22:19just order more."
00:22:20and sweet season, we really appreciate the end, not
00:22:27You realize, Jeremy, that we are really at the end of our
00:22:29short
00:22:32life.
00:22:34No, thank you.
00:22:38Oh, how delicious!
00:22:41Ah, okay, Doctor, you sent me to cook three
00:22:45tongues in mustard. Look, I don't want to take moral
00:22:48responsibility for this, but our story
00:22:52is connected to our mythological father, Abraham our Patriarch, who was, Abraham
00:22:55our Patriarch, yes. So the mythological father sits at the entrance of his
00:22:59tent, he's not, one must say he's not at his best, because although he looks fine, he's
00:23:03100 years old, he circumcised himself, he circumcised himself. And then
00:23:06three angels come, handsome
00:23:09men, smelling good. He's very excited, he runs
00:23:12to them, runs to them and tells them, "Take a piece of bread, I'll give you some bread, come
00:23:16eat," and so on. And then they come and he sends Sarah to make
00:23:20cakes, and he asks the young man to bring him a tender
00:23:23and good calf that he will cook for them.
00:23:27Now, the Sages say, "one calf,"
00:23:30"tender" (two), and "good" (three). Three
00:23:34calves. So the Sages claim that Abraham serves the angels three
00:23:37tongues because they want to praise his generosity. According
00:23:41to the Sages, he makes them the tongue in mustard.
00:23:44Mustard is food for kings, that was exactly it. The Sages see
00:23:48mustard as something important. We know this because gifts
00:23:51to priests are given in mustard. Wild mustard is everywhere. Now you
00:23:55travel around the country and you see these beautiful yellow blossoms. That's actually
00:23:58mustard and it was actually here back then. You can
00:24:02see the produce that we painstakingly
00:24:05gathered mustard seeds from the field,
00:24:08from the wild. This is their fermented
00:24:11stage. This is the final product. Start with that.
00:24:14So let's go back to the text for a moment. So he told the young man. "Take the
00:24:18tongue." So he will go personally. The young man Ofir, he told Ofir
00:24:22to bring him a tender and good calf,
00:24:25and on this the Sages say afterwards that he actually promises
00:24:28them a piece of bread, and in the end he gives them
00:24:31meat and cakes and butter and milk. That
00:24:35means he is a person who speaks little. Wait, wait, butter and milk? Oh, okay, both
00:24:38and also before the giving of the Torah, we are before kosher. He speaks little
00:24:42and does much, which is a sign of a righteous person, as opposed to a wicked person
00:24:45who speaks much. Fine, perhaps this
00:24:49will be served at our concluding meal. Oh,
00:24:51woe is me!
00:24:58Wow, listen, wow, how
00:25:01delicious!
00:25:06There's a philosophical question that fascinates me, Dr.
00:25:10My ancient Greek friends, Socrates,
00:25:13and after him the Stoics, would argue that it's enough to be
00:25:16a good person, to have virtue, arête, to be
00:25:20happy, okay. But then Aristotle would come along and say, "Okay, that's
00:25:24a necessary condition, but not sufficient." You might be a very good person,
00:25:28but somehow your kids turn out to be jerks, bad kids,
00:25:31bad kids who plunder you and humiliate you and embarrass you,
00:25:35and you are left miserable in such a situation. Bring us to our context,
00:25:38I want to talk to you about a rebellious and defiant son. Now, what is a rebellious
00:25:41and defiant son? It's a category of a jerk kid who takes
00:25:45money from you, embarrasses you, it really ruins your life, a biblical jerk,
00:25:49a biblical jerk.
00:25:51The one whose parents are supposed to bring him to the city elders
00:25:55and then they stone him, they stone him, they kill him, they kill him. No,
00:25:59yes, really, really, a very late activation, yes, but they kill
00:26:02him. Okay, how do you decide a child is rebellious? What, is there a criterion?
00:26:06Oh, now the Sages present a criterion that I don't think
00:26:09you'll exactly like. A slice of meat,
00:26:12which is 230 grams in total, it's a hamburger patty, what
00:26:16size? And half a log of Italian wine, which is, say,
00:26:20300 cc of imported wine, two glasses. Stoning, what?
00:26:23Stoning, stoning, stoning, stoning. I would be weighed 13 times a day.
00:26:27Jeremy, you're condemning us to a halachic state and Torah law, I don't understand. God forbid, God
00:26:31forbid. Why? What? Here, see how beautifully we live in the Holy Land. Okay,
00:26:35so, so what? Look, the point is that this again indicates that excessive
00:26:39meat eating is perceived as a particular problematic
00:26:42focal point of corruption. This again reflects the complex
00:26:46relationship that Judaism has towards meat, and therefore
00:26:49we are going to discuss all these issues with Rabbi
00:26:52Avraham Stav. I think he is waiting for us in the forest somewhere, so let's
00:26:56go.
00:27:06I don't believe it, how
00:27:08beautiful! Rona, is this your first time
00:27:12in Eilat? Everyone's in Eilat.
00:27:15Amazing. That was a dish,
00:27:18a dish,
00:27:20a hot dish.
00:27:27No, I'm in a relationship, goodbye.
00:27:30You're a kind of
00:29:16Oh, look who's sitting here, a thinker in the middle
00:29:19of the ancient and holy forest. Shalom,
00:29:22greetings! So, Rabbi Avraham Stav, Doctor
00:29:25of Philosophy, a profound thinker, an Israeli hero,
00:29:28a publicist among publicists. We are here because among the five books
00:29:32he wrote, the last one is about Jewish vegetarianism, which deals with this entire
00:29:36complex relationship that we are examining: Judaism and meat. Where, why,
00:29:40when? I want to listen to a fascinating conversation ahead of us. Sit
00:29:43in my shady spot. Sit, Rabbi. Let's
00:29:47cut straight to the chase, as the Sages called it. It was forbidden
00:29:51to slaughter any animal until
00:29:53the flood, and then it changed. First of all, this is a fascinating
00:29:57phenomenon that has almost no parallel in the Torah,
00:30:00that something was once forbidden and then
00:30:02suddenly it is permitted. Generally, the Torah only forbids more and more things. Adam
00:30:06was forbidden to eat meat, and suddenly this thing is permitted after
00:30:10the flood, and the question is why. After
00:30:13the flood, all vegetation was destroyed, so there was no choice but
00:30:16to eat meat. But it could be that the transition that occurred
00:30:20at the time of the flood was a different transition, perhaps a moral transition. Let's say
00:30:24humans we don't touch, but animals are more flexible.
00:30:27"What advantage does man have over an animal?" This is a verse that
00:30:31distances us from animals. Is this also related to meat consumption?
00:30:35Absolutely. In those very same verses, the prohibition of murder
00:30:38of human beings and the permission to eat animals are intertwined.
00:30:42Can you tell us a bit about the significance of blood in the biblical world? Blood is a
00:30:46very, very mysterious story. It is perceived as that which holds
00:30:49life itself. Therefore, when a sacrifice is offered on the altar,
00:30:53the blood of its soul is offered, because I am essentially sacrificing its life, and its life
00:30:57I am forbidden to eat. In the past, a sacrifice was to take
00:31:01the best of what I had on my farm for
00:31:05months, perhaps years. I felt some emotional connection to it, and I take
00:31:08almost a family member and bring it to the
00:31:11Temple. There is an act here that I think is very deep, very
00:31:15significant, which I would not be happy to give up.
00:31:18I regret that we gave it up, even if it had costs,
00:31:22you would be happy if we returned
00:31:25to a physical cult of offering sacrifices? I would be happy
00:31:28if we reached a place where this cult could
00:31:32uplift us, could advance us. Don't you think there is a process
00:31:35of a certain spiritual progress over the ancients
00:31:39who knew a pagan world where animals were slaughtered
00:31:42in all the temples in the entire region, not only?
00:31:47I live in this world, I see how spiritual, the forms
00:31:50of entertainment, the forms of shopping, the forms of eating,
00:31:54I'm not sure that the abandonment of the
00:31:57sacrificial cult right now symbolizes some spiritual
00:32:01elevation of humanity that no longer needs
00:32:03visuals and no longer needs the tangible. I want
00:32:07to tell you that if you think the offering of sacrifices will invalidate this whole
00:32:10shopping thing, then wait and see what malls
00:32:14will be like for shopping.
00:32:45Meat eating? That's a very good question, because very often it goes hand in hand. Meaning,
00:32:48the moment we create a situation where people eat
00:32:52meat only once every one or two weeks, as many
00:32:55rabbis and thinkers have said to eat only on Sabbaths or
00:32:59only on holidays, if we create such a situation, naturally the
00:33:02meat industry will be a much more humane industry, as it's called today. Rabbi,
00:33:06you who wrote the book "Jewish Vegetarianism," are you
00:33:10yourself a Jewish vegetarian or a vegetarian Jew? So I'm glad
00:33:13you asked if I'm a vegetarian.
00:33:16Because if you had asked if I was a vegetarian, the answer would have had to be no. Jewish
00:33:19vegetarianism is to relate to meat eating as something not trivial,
00:33:23not something you do on the way. So how does that manifest in your
00:33:26life? When they ask me before reserves or
00:33:30before a flight, what meal do I request? I always request a vegan meal. I arrive
00:33:34and there are piles of meat left, so I eat the meat. Meaning, I
00:33:37try to see how I can ensure that fewer
00:33:40animals are slaughtered, but I don't
00:33:43lightly refrain from eating them. If they have already been slaughtered, that's an example. You too are a bit
00:33:47of a Jewish vegetarian, right? I I think every person
00:33:50in the world, especially in a time of such excessive abundance and hunger in other
00:33:54places, needs to reduce it. Rabbi,
00:33:55הרב'.