Parashat Shmini

Profane to Sacred

Rav Yosef Tzvi Rimon

Founder and Board Chairman, JobKatif

This week’s parasha details foods including specific animals, birds and bugs that are prohibited to the Jewish people. Food is something that nourishes the body, therefore it seems as if the Torah is guiding us in good health.

The Abarbanel, a late commentator on the Torah from Italy, writes that the Torah is not coming to build a nutrition pyramid for us, but rather, it aims to teach us how to save our souls. That is why G-d says, “Don’t make your soul an abomination by eating bugs.”

In Vayikra 20:24-26 when the Torah adds even more prohibited foods, it is again coming to teach us something very important: “I am Hashem, your G-d that has separated you from all the other nations. So too, you shall make separations between pure and impure animals…you should not abominate your souls from an animal, a bird or anything that crawls on the ground, which I have separated for you as unclean. You shall be for me holy because I am holy and I have separated you from the other nations to be mine.”

From here we see that the reason that we separate from certain things is to make us separate from the other nations.

Rav Soloveitchik discusses these ideas in his book Halachic Man (p.207-217). He says that prohibited food is an example of all things profane in the world. Most of our work we do in this world is included amongst the profane. Therefore our duty is to bring in sanctity and uplift the mundane to something more holy, ethical and pure.

Separating from these foods shows us that also in life there are things we have to abstain from in order to live a sanctified life.

With the help of G-d we will be successful with our task and continue to uplift this world.

Shabbat Shalom!