Kosher Cheeseburgers and Treif Rabbis

Kosher Cheeseburgers and Treif Rabbis

Have you seen this? Food engineers have created something amazing. It looks like meat, tastes like meat, and you can serve it as a cheeseburger. Best of all? It’s Kosher. Orthodox Kosher. That’s perhaps why the name of the producer is called, Impossible Foods. The meat is not meat at all. It’s plant based, completely vegan, and looks delicious!

For those shackled by the constraints of a legally bound and religiously sanctioned diet, this news is liberating. It opens the discussion for many more questions regarding the new technologies of cellular agriculture and other genetically modified food production. We have to meet the ever-growing food demands and mounting environmental concerns emerging from our production of food on this planet. Earlier this year, other pioneers in Israel manufactured food that looks and taste like pork and some rabbis have already declared that it too can be Kosher.  The world is filled with wondrous sights, indeed.

Last week, the Orthodox Union (OU) gave their hekhsher (Kosher certification) to the Impossible Foods vegan burger. They looked beyond the appeal of their product to validate its fitness for certification, even when the ‘meat’ appears to bleed like other meat.  There is no concern for “ma’arit ayin” (“the evil eye of misperception). In the 21st century pabulum, modern technologies are conforming to Jewish law and opening the doors to unprecedented levels of interaction and connection between Jews and the world around us.

But, wait. Have you seen this? Last week, news agencies broke information involving the Rabbinate in Israel disqualifying an Orthodox rabbi’s letter certifying the status of a conversion candidate. The letter implies that his ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a Modern Orthodox school in New York invalidates his fitness to certify another person’s Jewish identity. This is not the first of such proclamations made by the Rabbanut in Israel, especially toward Modern Orthodox rabbis. But, Orthodox Jews excluding other Orthodox Jews? Impossible!

Search a little deeper and some of the arguments relate to the more progressive nature of Modern Orthodox rabbis; those who permit the ordination of women to become rabbis, who acknowledge same-sex partnerships, and who even express a toleration for intermarried couples searching for meaningful connections in a traditional environment. The Rabbanut cannot validate the authority of these Orthodox trained and practicing rabbis because they have fallen down the slippery slope of modernity, a world in which there is abundant tolerance for the diversity of human experience, and by extension religious expression.  These voices have categorically rejected Conservative and Reform Jews for the same reasons, and now there are voices rejecting Traditional Judaism too.

There seems to be a disconnect here in the function of traditional Jewish practice. It’s okay, even celebrated, when something that looks treif can be made Kosher, but something that is Kosher can be made treif because of the way it looks. These two situations together smack of duplicity and narrow-mindedness. It’s not simply that something looks one way but is actually another. It’s the fundamental recognition that religious life is about binding the community together. Rejection of qualified leaders of the tradition is antithetical to the entire project. This rabbi wants to bring another Jew closer to God and her people. How can anyone deny that goal as being anything less than genuine?

Most of us non-Orthodox Jews have long since turned the other way and rejected the traditional positions of rabbinic leadership. At best, the Committee of Jewish Laws and Standards in the Conservative Movement has been the beacon of light in the non-Orthodox world, forever contending with the “Tradition and Change” banner which has been the hallmark of Conservative Judaism for centuries. New systems of practice are continually developing as we evolve as communities and a people. Sadly, our world breaks down when divisions like this emerge and are left uncontended.

I wonder what it would look like if the leaders of the many streams of Judaism sat down to discuss these deep and abiding conflicts and reach some consensus. I’d gather that Reform Rabbis and Haredi Rabbis have a lot more to share than to divide.  Maybe this is the voice of the pluralist, who recognizes that the diversity of human expression has value. Maybe this is impossible thinking. But, then again, we’re making Kosher pork and Kosher cheeseburgers. Maybe such thinking isn’t impossible at all.

- Rabbi Joshua Hoffman