Why Jews Should be Vegans or at Least Vegetarians

Veganism is the diet most consistent with fundamental Jewish teachings. 

Judaism emphasizes pikuach nefesh, that Jews should carefully preserve our health and our lives. Of the 613 Jewish mitzvot (commandments), 610 can be overridden if it might help save a life. The only three exceptions are the prohibitions against murder, idolatry, and sexual immorality. However, many scientific studies have linked animal-based diets to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, several types of cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. These findings are consistent with the fact that humans are very different from omnivorous and carnivorous animals, in terms of our hands, teeth, digestive systems, stomach acids, instincts, and other factors. Animal-based diets also significantly increase the chances of pandemics, with their many adverse health effects.

Judaism forbids tza’ar ba’alei chayim, inflicting unnecessary pain onanimals. Jews are to be rachmanim b’nei rachmanim (compassionate children of compassionate ancestors), imitating God, ‘Whose compassion is over all His works’ (Psalms 145:9). Despite this, the vast majority of farmed animals—including those raised for kosher consumers—are reared on factory farms, where they live in cramped, confined spaces and are often drugged, mutilated, and denied fresh air, sunlight, exercise, and any enjoyment of life before they are slaughtered and eaten.

Billions of animals on factory farms are cruelly treated, denied satisfaction of their basic instincts. Three examples: (1) dairy cows are artificially impregnated annually on what the industry calls ‘rape racks’ so that they will constantly give milk, and their calves are almost immediately taken away, with great anguish to both, (2) male chicks are cruelly killed immediately after birth at egg laying hatcheries because they can’t lay eggs and have not been programmed to have much flesh, and (3) hens’ are kept in spaces so small that they can’t raise even one wing and their beaks are painfully cut off without the use of any pain killer, so they will not harm other hens when pecking at them in frustration at all their natural instincts being thwarted.

Judaism teaches that “the human being (Adam) was put into the Garden of Eden to work the land and to guard it” (Genesis 2:15). Jews are to be God’s partners and co-workers in preserving the world. However, modern intensive livestock agriculture contributes disproportionately to climate change, soil erosion and depletion, air and water pollution, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the destruction of tropical rainforests and other habitats, desertification, and other environmental damage.

Animal-based agriculture is the prime cause of climate change for two reasons..First, cows emit methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times as potent per unit weight in heating the atmosphere as carbon dioxide during its 10 – 15 years in the atmosphere. Second, about 43 percent of the world’s ice-free land is used for grazing and growing feed crops for animals. Largely due to the substantial reduction of trees, atmospheric CO2 has passed 420 parts per million( ppm), significantly above the 350 ppm that climate experts think is a threshold value for sustainability. Reforesting much of the land now used for animal agriculture would help avert a climate catastrophe, leaving a habitable, healthy, environmentally sustainable world for future generations.

Israel is especially threatened by climate change because, among other problems, a rising Mediterranean Sea could inundate the coastal plain that contains much of Israel’s population and infrastructure, and (2) the hotter and drier Middle East that climate experts predict makes instability, terrorism, and war more likely, according to military experts.

Judaism mandates bal tashchit (that we are not to waste or unnecessarily

destroy anything of value, and that we are not to use more resources

than are needed to accomplish a purpose). Nonetheless, animal agriculture wastes grain, land, water, energy, and other resources. For example, it can take as much as 13  times as much water for a person on an animal-based diet than for a vegan diet, primarily due to the need for vast amounts of irrigation water to produce feed crops for animals.

 Judaism, furthermore, emphasizes that we are to assist the poor and share our bread with hungry people. However, about 70 percent of the

grain grown in the United States is fed to animals destined for slaughter, while an estimated nine million people worldwide die annually because of hunger and its effects and almost ten percent of the world’s people are chronically hungry. Making the situation especially distressing is that healthy foods like soy, corn, and oats, high in fiber and complex carbohydrates and devoid of cholesterol and saturated fat, are fed to animals, producing meat and other animal foods that have the opposite nutrients.

In addition,, while Judaism stresses that we must seek and pursue peace (Isaiah 34:14),  the wasteful use of resources associated with animal-based diets makes war more likely. Noting that the Hebrew word for bread  (lechem) and war (milchamah) come from the same root, the Hebrew sages deduced that nations are more likely to engage in war when there is a shortage of grain and other resources. This deduction has been proven correct many times throughout world history. 

One could say dayenu (it would be enough) after any of the preceding

arguments because each constitutes a serious conflict between Jewish

values and current practices that should impel Jews to switch to a plant based diet. Combined, they make a compelling case for change.

The diet for the Garden of Eden was completely animal-free (Genesis 1:29), as will be the diet during the Messianic period, the other ideal time in the Jewish tradition, according to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel. He based his belief on the prophecy of Isaiah (11:6-9): “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, … the lion shall eat straw like the ox, … and no one shall hurt nor destroy in all of God’s holy mountain.”

Another reason for Jews to have animal-free diets is that it makes it far easier to be kosher when a kitchen does not include meat and dairy foods. Also, there have been scandals in the kosher inspection sector that led to kosher consumers to consume non-kosher foods.

So, for a healthier you and a healthier planet, and to be more consistent with basic Jewish teachings and the kosher laws,  please consider becoming a vegan, or at least a vegetarian.

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