Shavuot, Meat, and Moral Responsibility |
Shavuot is upon us: the opportunity to relive the giving of the Torah, recommit to fulfilling its precious laws, and indulge in blintzes and cheesecake.
The dairy foods of Shavuot are often treated as a charming custom – an added minhag for a holiday with few notable symbols. Yet in the modern era, this practice may carry a deeper meaning than we often recognize.
One explanation for eating dairy on Shavuot is that when the Israelites received the Torah at Sinai, they were not yet prepared to keep the strict laws surrounding meat. These included detailed requirements governing which animals are kosher, how animals must be slaughtered according to the laws of shechita, how blood must be removed, which utensils must be used, and the separation of milk and meat.
In addition to kosher dietary laws, the Israelites were also commanded to uphold tza’ar baalei chayim (preventing animal suffering) and bal tashchit (the prohibition against waste and needless destruction).
Taken together, these laws teach us that eating meat is not to be taken lightly. The mitzvot surrounding meat are not merely technical regulations. As Rambam explains, the mitzvot are given le’tzaref et habriyot — to refine human beings morally and spiritually. The Torah’s many restrictions surrounding meat seem designed to cultivate restraint, reverence, compassion, and self-control.
And perhaps that is exactly why the tradition of eating dairy on Shavuot is so striking. At the very moment we commemorate receiving the Torah – a moment of heightened moral and spiritual awareness – we symbolically step back from eating meat, the food most heavily regulated by moral and halachic responsibility.
That tension raises a question we rarely ask directly: what does it mean to treat meat with the seriousness the Torah demands?
In earlier generations, the question hardly needed asking. Meat was less available, expensive, and typically reserved for Shabbat, holidays, and other celebrations.
But in modern affluent societies shaped by abundance and consumer culture, meat is produced and eaten in quantities unimaginable to earlier generations. According to FAOSTAT data compiled by Our World in Data, Israel and the United States each supply........