In an American history discussion group, Professor Langer was trying to explain how society's ideal of beauty changes with time. 'For example, he said, 'take the 1921 Miss America. She stood five feet, one inch tall, weighed 108 pounds, and had measurements of 30-25-32. How do you think she'd do in today's version of the contest?'
The class fell silent for a moment. Then Freddie piped up, 'Not very well.'
'Why is that?' asked Professor Langer. 'For one thing,' Freddie added, 'She'd be way too old.'
In this week’s Torah portion Shmini states that there are two signs by which we identify a kosher species of animal. The first sign is that it has split hooves. The other is cud-chewing. A kosher animal has multiple stomachs. It eats grass or grain, chews it, swallows it, brings it back to its mouth to chew again, and then swallows into a different stomach. An animal that does this is a ruminant. The process is called rumination: the animal regurgitates its food from the first stomach to its mouth to be chewed and swallowed again. This regurgitated food is called "cud."
The Torah then lists four animals that possess only one of these signs, and are thus not kosher. They are the camel, the shafan, the arnevet, and the pig. The first three while chewing their cud, do not have split feet, and the pig while having split feet does not chew its cud. These animals are also classified as non-kosher.
There is something fascinating displayed here.
How does an ATM work? You insert your card and enter your PIN. The machine gives you money. Does the Torah have a PIN?
Yes: The kosher laws in this week’s portion. They contain information that only one and only the Master who created the Universe could know.
As mentioned, after presenting the two kosher signs for animals, the Torah goes on to list the names of four animals that only have one of the two signs. Why? The law is already clear: Look at an animal. Look at its feet. Look at the goo in its mouth. If the foot is split and the mouth is pasty, bon appétit.
To teach you that if you find an animal with split hooves, and you know for sure that it is not a pig, you can deem it 100 percent kosher, because it for sure also chews it cud. There is no other animal in the world—outside of the pig—that has split hooves and does not chew its cud.
Yet that is a gutsy thing to say. What happens if you discover another animal with only one sign? Oops.
Why does the Torah stick its neck on the line to tell us there is only one animal that has the kosher sign of split hooves, but not the other sign of chewing cud? All we have to do is find a second animal with that one kosher sign and we know the Torah is wrong! All we need is one more species, at any time in existence, that does not chew its cud yet has split hooves and we know the whole Torah is a farce. You can close up the religion.
Certainly, in Moses’ time, the Jews were not able to identify every existing mammal in the world. The Torah, according to all accounts and theories, was written thousands of years ago, scores of years before the discovery of the Americas and Australia. The author of the Torah keeps on quoting G-d. The most foolish thing such an author can do is write a statement that will be easily disproven in the future. That would undermine his entire thesis that the Torah is a Divine document, absolutely true.
Did the author travel to every jungle on earth, to every island and forest, to ascertain the identity of every single animal alive? And when did he write this—thousands of years ago, knowing full well that he has no way of ascertaining the identity of every single animal?
Moses was in a desert with millions of Jews, living in a time when the tolls for scientific research were primitive. How, in the Middle Eastern desert, would he dare to make such a claim, which can be easily refuted in a day from now when someone comes across another animal.
It would be like you would in antiquity come out with an outlandish statement after catching 20 species of fish in the name of G-d: there are no fish larger than two feet. You got to be a moron to write such a thing when tomorrow morning a fisherman might discover a larger fish!
Yet here is a remarkable fact: Zoologists today have identified over 5,400 different species of mammals the world over. They range in size from Bumblebee Bats that is about 1 inch long to Blue Whales that is 108 feet long. And still, there is only one – the pig – that has the kosher sign of a split hoof.
The Talmud concludes: This refutes those who question whether the Torah was given by G-d. Unless Moses was quoting the Creator of all the animals, who knows the truth about every animal on earth, he would have never written such an audacious statement that only the pig has split hooves but does not.
But what about the pig? The pig is the only animal listed that has split hooves but doesn’t ruminate. The Torah doesn’t include an extinct animal to cover in case a new animal with a split hoof that doesn’t ruminate is discovered. And scientists have classified thousands of animals since the Torah was written. Pigs are still the only animals that have split hooves but don’t chew their cud. Incredible.
The split hooves represent the notion that we can distinguish between two directions—the past and the future. This quality embodies the trend of Always moving forward, making progress.
Chewing the cud represents the regurgitation of the past. The food that you have already eaten is not assimilated and disposed of; you bring it back up again, and again, and yet again for regurgitation.
Here we will appreciate a basic aspect of Judaism, and the calling of the Jewish people to communicate this message to the entire world, to all of humanity. We are a nation that not only recalls our history; we actually live, breathe, and even "eat" our history. In Jewish tradition and culture, the past is vibrant and alive. We light Shabbat candles just as Sarah lit them 3600 years ago. We eat crunchy matzah as our ancestors did 3300 years ago etc.
We chew our cud. We live our past. For us, the principles, values, and ideals of the Torah are timeless and eternal. The fresh waters of the mikvah, the glow of the Shabbat candles, the majesty of the tefillin, the depth of Torah, the wisdom of our kosher diet, the commitment to tzedakah, the dedication to Jewish education, the study of our sacred texts, the mezuzah crowning our doors, and the fanatical love for another Jew, have not diminished. But we also have split hooves. We believe in the future. We cherish progress, we are excited about every new scientific discovery, we marvel at every new secret of G-d’s universe that is disclosed by the human brain, we embrace the incredible opportunities and blessings of the modern world—as long as they build on our glorious, wise, and majestic past, rather than disregarding and undermining it.
Our greatest glory lies never in the past, but in the future yet to come: the coming of Moshiach very speedily in our days.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
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