"G-d’s Chosen Diet" in New Voices Web Wire

Veggie Jews founder Pete Cohon has an article titled "G-d's Chosen Diet: Veggie Jews Promotes a Kashrut Revolution" in the latest New Voices Web Wire issue. The piece is a great introduction to the Jewish case for vegetarianism, touching on Bliblical support for vegetarianism as well as what's wrong with animal agriculture and even kosher slaughter.

Click here to read the full article. The last few paragraphs follow:

Though contemporary methods of animal husbandry and slaughter might conform to the letter of kosher laws, they violate the spirit of the law, which enjoins against tsa'ar ba'alei chayim, a mandate not to cause pain to any living being.

Many Biblical passages make it clear that a Jew is to treat animals with compassion. It is noteworthy that G-d only allowed the eating of animals after the great flood due to the human demand to do so because all vegetation had been destroyed. But it was G-d's plan from the time of the Garden of Eden that humans eat a vegan vegetarian diet of beans, nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables (see Genesis, 1:29-31). If we really want to be closer to G-d, why not move beyond kosher to G-d's chosen diet, rather than the one G-d reluctantly and temporarily allowed?

Judaism has changed enormously over the millennia. We went from animal sacrifice during the days of the Temples in Jerusalem to synagogue prayer after the destruction of the Temple. It was a change so radical that we became a virtually different people, one that was able to survive the centuries and flourish to become a moral light to the world.

Now the time has come for the next big leap, one that is not at all radical compared to the changes through which we've already been: the leap to a cruelty-free diet, the leap back to the diet that G-d intended for us. Veggie Jews was created to help us get there.