Torah
March 21, 2008
Blood Pudding
Rabbi Yitzchak Jaffe
Special To The Jewish Times
As I sit down to write this Dvar Torah, I am brought back to my days of living in Israel. When I was on a program there, I met a guy from Wyoming. I assumed this fellow was Jewish. I was pleasantly surprised to find out he was actually not Jewish, but seriously interested in converting.
Now, this guy, like I’m sure happens for many a potential convert, was inches away from making his big decision, but there was one HUGE thing he couldn’t get past, one thing preventing him from going over the top and joining the Chosen People.
When I asked my students at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School what they thought this one thing might be, I heard a whole slew of different answers: Maybe he was afraid of a bunch of restrictions. Maybe he was worried about financing his new super-kosher double dish kitchen. Perhaps he feared anti-Semitism. Perhaps he didn’t want to be a part of a nation that has experienced so many tragedies. Or maybe he was not yet circumcised. ... Need I say more?
All excellent suggestions, but none of them was the big fear of my Wyoming comrade. No, his objection was something a little more, well ...
He looked off into the distance, his eyes filled with desire and dare I say lust, and a small bit of saliva formed at the corner of his mouth as he muttered these words which I will never forget: “Blood pudding. I just couldn’t imagine never getting to eat blood pudding again.”
Blood pudding, as he then went on to explain, was made by cooking blood, most often from a pig or a cow, until it was thick enough to congeal when cooled. I think I speak for us all when I say, “YUCK!”
It is in Parshat Tzav that we are taught, “You shall not consume any blood, in any of your dwelling places, whether from fowl or animals.” And me, a Jew from New York, had to go all the way to Israel to meet someone from Wyoming to understand this law.
The Rambam, Maimonides, famous for his rational explanations for just about everything, speaks of an ancient ritual whereby idolaters would consume animals and connect together with their spirits by simultaneously consuming the animal’s blood. We have this prohibition, to oversimplify the matter a bit, to demonstrate our absolute abhorrence of such a practice.
The Ramban, Nachmanidies, looks at the matter quite differently. According to the Ramban, when humanity was permitted to eat meat they were not given permission to eat the animal’s soul, which lies within the blood of the animal. He states that the soul of the animal does not belong to mankind, but is rather a possession of God Himself. We, in essence, return the soul to God when we sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice on the altar. So the blood is a spiritual entity not for our own use, whereas the flesh without the blood is entirely ours.
At first glance, many people have a hard time swallowing some of the practical explanations of Maimonides. Most people do not enjoy the over-rationalization of apparently spiritual concepts, seeming to prefer the lofty over the pragmatic, especially since it’s often hard to find meaning in anachronistic ideas.
This is also how I felt when I saw these two explanations. But recently my friend from Wyoming made me give this idea a second look, and to glance into Maimonides through 21st century eyes. For most Jews, when you tell them there’s a prohibition of eating blood, they grimace in disgust. Why? It’s almost instinctual for us. It’s, well, not Jewish. And whether it’s weird idolatrous practices of Biblical times or some blood pudding in Wyoming in 2008, maybe the Torah was just telling us all along: Don’t eat blood. It’s just not Jewish.