Holocaust Remembrance Day, Parashat Shemini

We stand on the eve of Parashat Shemini, and on Holocaust Remembrance Day. A portion of sacrifices, of fire, of blood, of a holiness born out of contending with the materiality of life. And a day on which the depth of hatred, evil, and human cruelty is exposed.

Rav Kook wrote of a vegetarian vision for the future, of a moral world in which animals will not be killed at all. But he knew that reality is still far from it. He saw the eating of meat as a moral descent forced upon humanity after the Flood, and understood that killing would not be prevented if it were not regulated, and therefore meat was permitted. Out of that understanding, he saw in the animal sacrifice not lust nor a mystical cult, but a moral repair. An attempt to elevate the act of killing that already exists for the sake of eating, and to turn it into an encounter of responsibility, of awareness, of sanctification. The sacrifice comes to refine what has become a crude routine, and to bring it into a framework of meaning and of boundaries.

How absurd is a morality that feigns piety toward animals, when the human being has not yet finished his accounts of blood with his fellow human. When enlightened and cultured nations support the murder of Jews, and forge a distorted morality for the tears of murderers, and speak of compassion for animals as if they had already solved the problems of humanity. On such a day, in such a portion, we remind ourselves: justice precedes mercy. Repentance precedes sentiment.