Vegetarianism

Rav Kook wrote much in favor of vegetarianism. His essay “Chazon HaTzimchonut VeHaShalom” (“The Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace”) is well known, but there are additional places where he wrote on the subject. The basis, according to the Rav, is that one should not eat meat, but this is still not an instruction for the many, because the world is not yet repaired. In an unrepaired world, a person's mercy toward animals is liable to become an opening for the loss of the proportions and the distinctions between man and beast. And therefore we must aspire and act toward a world in which we will not eat animals, but will know how to distinguish between man and beast, and not to equate them.

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