Parashat Tzav

[Drasha delivered 28 March 2026]

In today’s portion, we are warned of the consequences for eating fat or blood:

• 7:25 If anyone eats the fat of animals from which offerings by fire may be made to GOD, the person who eats it shall be cut off from kin
• 7:27 Anyone who eats blood shall be cut off from kin.

The first question is, what’s wrong with fat? Rambam¹ differentiates chelev (suet) which surrounds the organs and can be separated from the meat, and shuman (marbling) which cannot. Only chelev is forbidden. As usual, the Torah provides no explanation or justification, but various theories have been put forward, the primary one is that fat was considered the "choicest part" of the animal and therefore belonged to God. How do we know fat was the choicest part? Because in Genesis², when Pharaoh tells Joseph to bring his family to Egypt he uses the phrase “chelev ha'aֽretz.” meaning the best part of the land.

The prohibition against consuming blood is mentioned seven times³ in the Torah. At the time of Creation, humans were only allowed to eat plant life, not creatures with souls. Only after the Flood did G‑d permit the consumption of meat, admonishing Noah: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat… You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it.”

Rashi⁴ said that because blood represents the nefesh (soul or life-force) and that blood is placed on the altar to atone for the human soul, then blood is too sacred to be consumed as food. Rambam⁵ said that consuming blood could coarsen the human soul, making a person more cruel and less spiritually sensitive. Maimonides⁶ said the prohibition was partly to distance Jews from the idolatrous practices of surrounding nations who believed drinking blood would grant supernatural powers. (If that sounds crazy, please ask your Christian friends about Holy Communion.)

So how do you remove all blood from meat? The scientific answer is: Meat doesn’t contain blood – blood is contained in veins and arteries, and the shechita is designed to drain the blood before it is butchered. The red in meat comes from the protein myoglobin, which is different than hemoglobin in blood, but both bind to oxygen giving it the same red colour. That said, the “kosher” method of removing blood is to roast the meat over an open flame or soak it, salt it and rinse it. Liver must be roasted then soaked three times. Kidneys are also problematic but kosher butchers usually get around this by selling the hindquarters, including the kidneys, to non-kosher butchers.

As for the punishment, the term Kareth is translated as “cut off from kin” but it has been variously defined as dying young, dying without children, being denied a portion in the world to come or straight up being murdered. There are thirty-six⁷ laws whose punishment is Kareth including: eating chametz during Pesach, certain sexual violations, ritual impurities, a man's refusal to be circumcised or anyone who sins deliberately.

These are just two references in Torah which ties Judaism to food and from which we derive the laws of kashrut, meaning “fit [for consumption].” Others include:

• In Genesis⁸, after Jacob struggled with the angel: “Therefore, the children of Israel may not eat the displaced tendon, which is on the socket of the hip.” This is the sciatic nerve, or Gid Hanasheh, and it is why kosher butchers sell the hindquarters rather than try to remove this.
• In Exodus⁹: “You shall be holy people to Me: you must not eat flesh torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.” The word the Torah uses for "torn by beasts," t'reifah, is the origin of the Yiddish word, t'reif. This is also why the food you feed your pet does not have to be kosher (but you still can’t give your pet chametz during Pesach).
• Also twice in Exodus¹⁰: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.“ More on this in a minute.
• The next portion, Shemini, goes into details about what animals can and can’t be eaten.

In November 1885¹¹, a group of Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and explicitly called for a rejection of laws which have a ritual, rather than moral, basis. For kashrut, they wrote, “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” They rejected the notion that food laws were divine commands or necessary for ritual purity and viewed them as a barrier to social integration with non-Jewish society.

Today, many progressive Jews have chosen to reinterpret, rather than reject, kashrut based on ethics, sustainability, and personal spiritual meaning. This is often tied to Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world.¹² This may include eating vegetarian, not buying battery laid eggs, focusing on sustainable food sources, or considering the animal and/or labor conditions of food producers.

This is not new. The twelfth-century commentator Rashbam¹³ (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), believed the injunction against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was not about mixing meat and dairy but instead was intended to teach tzaar baalei chayim, sensitivity to the pain of animals. As he wrote: "It is disgraceful and voracious and gluttonous to consume the mother's milk together with its young…. The Torah gave this commandment in order to teach you how to behave in a civilized manner."

One of the key tenets of Progressive Judaism is to find what is spiritually meaningful to you, and Torah recognises that what you consume – and its cost to the planet – must surely be one of the most important spiritual choices you can make. Rabbi Simeon Maslin¹⁴, past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, wrote, “I view our family dining table as a mizbei-ach m'at, a miniature altar…it is a sacred space which connects us to God and to the history of our people.”

Food for thought. Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

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1. https://www.sefaria.org/Ramban_on_Leviticus.3.9.1.↩
2. Genesis 45:18↩
3. Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 3:17, Leviticus 7:26, Leviticus 17:12, Deuteronomy 12:16, Deuteronomy 12:23, Deuteronomy 15:23↩
4. Rashi, Leviticus 17:11.↩
5. Nahmanides, Commentary to Leviticus 17:13.↩
6. Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:46↩
7. https://www.sefaria.org/Keritot.2a.1↩
8. Genesis 32:33↩
9. Exodus 22:30↩
10. Exodus 23:19↩
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Platform↩
12. A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World (2007) https://youtu.be/Y9RxmTGHZgE↩
13. https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/spirituality/civilized-diet↩
14. Ibid.↩

Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach

[Drasha on Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach, 4 April 2026]

Chol Hamoed means “the weekday of the holiday” and the Shabbat that falls during Pesach is Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach We’ve been reading from Leviticus but during Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach we go back to Exodus. Not to the parts about Passover, of course, but to just after the incident of the Golden Calf.

Moses says to God, “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways”¹ followed by “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”²

God has so far spoken to Moses from a burning bush³, turned a staff into a serpent, brought about the ten plagues, freed the Hebrew slaves, parted the Sea of Reeds and “had come down upon [Mount Sinai] in fire”⁴ to speak to the Israelites. Moses has spent 40 days on Mount Sinai talking to God and God had written the first ten commandments on stone tablets. Yet only now does Moses ask to see God.

We can interpret this in two ways: Either Moses has established a strong relationship with God and wants to take it to the next level, or, despite everything that’s happened so far, Moses still does not trust God. There are arguments for both sides.

The verse before this portion, Exodus 33:11, says, “God would speak to Moses face to face [panim el panim], as one person speaks to another.” In Numbers, God tells Aaron and Mirian, “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth [Pe el Pe], plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds God’s likeness.”⁵ In Deuteronomy, after Moses dies, it says, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom God singled out, face to face [panim el-panim]”⁶ These passages speak to a very close relationship and it seems natural that Moses would want to put a face to the name.

I had a similar experience in 2013 when I received an unsolicited email from someone I’d never met, a woman in New Zealand, a country I’d never heard of. (Coincidentally, I was on holiday in Israel at the time, though I was in the Negev, not on Mount Sinai.) After some back-and-forth emails, I said I wanted to have a video chat and she said, absolutely not, no way, not going to happen. I said something along the lines of I’d have to stop communicating because I didn’t want to be catfished by a 40-year-old guy living in his mom’s basement. She reluctantly agreed to a video chat and, long story short, I moved to New Zealand and married her.

But I digress.

As for Moses still not trusting God, remember at the burning bush, after God lays out the entire plan for freeing the Israelites, Moses says, “Please…make someone else Your agent.”⁷ God becomes angry, ignores Moses’ request and continues telling Moses what to do. That sort of bullying does not engender trust.

And when Moses accepts the task and is on his way to Egypt with his wife and sons, one night God seeks to kill Moses! Zipporah saves Moses when she takes a flint and cuts off her son’s foreskin.⁸ Not the sort of thing you see at a trust-building workshop.

Later, after God gives the Israelites manna, they cry out, “If only we had meat!” Moses complains to God, not for the first time or the last time, “Why have You…laid the burden of all this people upon me?” God replies rather testily, “[I] will give you meat and you shall eat…until it comes out of your nostrils”⁹ Then Moses responds sarcastically, “The people who are with me number six hundred thousand foot soldiers [alone]... Could enough flocks and herds be slaughtered to suffice them? Or could all the fish of the sea be gathered…to suffice them?” God responds just as sarcastically, “Is there a limit to God’s power? You shall soon see whether what I have said happens to you or not!” None of this speaks to a close collaboration between friends.

And the final straw was at Meribah, after Miriam dies and God tells Moses, “Order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses strikes the rock, twice. God reacts badly: “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Even at the end, when Moses pleads with God, “Let me…cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan,” God says, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!”¹⁰

Either way, whether Moses trusts God or not, he asks to see God and God partially agrees, saying “I will make all My goodness pass before you…. But you cannot see My face, for no mortal may see Me and live.”¹¹

As God does this, God says about himself, “God! God! a Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

From this narcissistic run-on sentence the sages derived the 13 attributes of God:

1. Compassion before a person sins
2. Compassion after a person has sinned
3. Possessing the power to bestow kindness
4. Merciful [helps people avoid distress]
5. Gracious [God saves people from distress once it has overtaken them]
6. Slow to anger [God is patient with both the righteous and the wicked. He gives people time to reflect, improve, and repent instead of punishing sinners immediately]
7. Abundant in kindness
8. Truthful (fulfilling His promises)
9. Keeping kindness unto thousands (of generations).
10. Forgiving iniquity [corruption of the heart],
11. Transgression [a willful sin] and
12. Sin [sin committed out of apathy or carelessness]
13. And pardoning. [If one repents.]

According to Maimonides, these attributes are not qualities inherent in God, but rather are methods of His activity.¹² In other words, God does not possess human emotions or passions, but these attributes outline God’s ways of governing the world.

Similarly, in the Talmud¹³ these are called derakhim (ways), which calls back to the beginning of today’s portion: “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways.”

Maimonides goes on to say that by imitating God's goodness we become, in a sense, agents of divine rule and providence. Perhaps we experience God’s presence through the goodness we create in the world.

These attributes are central to the S’lichot (prayers for forgiveness) and High Holiday services, often recited as a plea for divine mercy. The Talmud¹⁴ explains that God showed Moses a vision of Himself "wrapped" like a communal prayer leader, promising that whenever the people would sin, they could call upon these attributes to evoke mercy.

At a superficial level, we’d all like to “see” God, but I will finish with a warning from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

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1. Exodus 33:13 ↩
2. Exodus 33:18 ↩
3. Exodus 3:2 ↩
4. Exodus 19:18 ↩
5. Numbers 12:8 ↩
6. Deuteronomy 34:10 ↩
7. Exodus 4:13 ↩
8. Exodus 4:24-26↩
9. Numbers 11:4-23 ↩
10. Deuteronomy 3:25-26 ↩
11. Exodus 33:19-20 ↩
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Attributes_of_Mercy ↩
13. Sifre, Deuteronomy 49 [ed. Friedmann, p. 85] ↩
14. Rosh Hashanah 17b ↩