The question of kashrut – or Jewish dietary law – has been the topic of conversation in our home recently. So, I went searching for some guidance and I found a book called The Sacred Table, an anthology of 50 articles that examine a liberal rethinking of Jewish dietary law. In it’s pages, I am hoping to find some practical ideas for developing a new personal kashrut. I will, of course, report back after I’ve had a chance to review the book.

In the meantime, some background on why this issue – what we eat and don’t eat as Jews and why – seems to be coming to a point recently for our family.

First, our children attend a Jewish day school where they are being taught dietary traditions, while being surrounded by real-life examples of Jewish dietary practice. The gaps between the former and the latter can be large, prompting the expected questions from inquisitive youngsters who don’t miss much. I am often at a loss to rationally explain our own family’s dietary customs, let alone explain why other people eat what they do. And despite assumptions to the contrary, Jewish dietary practice – even within the broad movements of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox – show wide variations.

Our family’s approach to kashrut observance has evolved based our personal histories. I grew up in 1970s Reform Judaism, a time when kashrut was not terribly popular, even scorned, as a communal practice among liberal Jews. We observed no kosher laws, with the exception of trying to eat matzah for the duration of Passover. I still remember awakening to the smell of bacon on Saturday mornings. So, when I met my wife Leigh-Anne and we chose to make a Jewish home together, her suggestion that we try to maintain some kosher observance in the home made sense on the surface – yet felt strangely foreign.

Thus, we adapted our own set of rules. There was to be no pork or shellfish cooked at home, nor consumed anywhere else. We would attempt to not consume dairy and meat in the same meal – so cheeseburgers were out. Chicken presented an unusual dilemma, for while it was technically meat it was clearly not meat in the same sense that kosher law forbids cooking a calf in its mother’s milk. Chickens, after all, do not produce milk. So chicken became its own distinct type of meat in our home, not of a species that produces milk and therefore not subjected to the milk/meat separation rules of kashrut. Hence our predilection for chicken tacos with grated cheddar cheese and sour cream. But I digress.

Lately, for reasons that are not entirely clear, our status quo surrounding dietary practice in our home has started unraveling. Suppressed longings – whether for good bacon or a fresh lobster – may be playing a part. But so too is a growing aversion to tradition for tradition’s sake. As I look at my communities and the broader world around around me, I see an unsettling degree of entrenchment in tradition. This takes the form of orthodoxies and fundamentalisms and extreme interpretations of traditions that I don’t see serving my interests as a tolerant moderate, an open-minded liberal and a committed egalitarian.

And then there’s the simple matter of logic and common sense. Here we are at the beginning of the 21st century facing a changing global climate, a deficit in social and economic justice and numerous significant threats to the very food production system itself.

If I am what I eat, then what should I be eating – and why? This is the question every human being should be asking themselves – Jew and non-Jew alike. This is not the time to be eating as you always have for tradition’s sake day-in and day-out, without questioning the ethical implications of your actions. Considerations of our own personal health and the health of our life-supporting ecosystems should be at least as important considerations as those of our traditions.

No matter what we choose to eat, we need a rationale – which is precisely what kashrut has been for Jews going back many generations. But to what end? What overarching purpose or social good does traditional Jewish dietary law serve?

Going forward, we face new challenges – as individuals and human cultures - requiring new dietary guidelines and rationales. I feel like I need a new kashrut.