Kashrut: Vocabulary of the Soul
In memory of Helen Nash, z”l
For six years, Helen Nash z”l and I learned the weekly Torah portion together. Every week, we opened the text, asked questions, laughed, and sometimes found ourselves puzzled. When Helen encountered a particularly mysterious passage, she would pause and say, with unmistakable charm, “That is very peculiar.” She died last December, and I miss her dearly.
Helen was a celebrated cookbook author and a culinary artist. She understood that food is never only food. How we prepare it, present it, and share it can express beauty, discipline, memory, generosity, and love. Her Jewish commitments reached far beyond the kitchen, through her devotion to family, community, and sacred acts of philanthropy. It feels especially fitting, therefore, to reflect on kashrut in her memory.
Deuteronomy 14 introduces its dietary laws with a declaration: “You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God.” Israel is called an am segulah, a treasured people. Treasured does not mean better. It means beloved. It means bound by relationship. The people precious to us are not precious because they are superior to everyone else. They are precious because they are ours, and we are theirs.
This is the spiritual key to kashrut. The Torah does not say, “You are better, therefore this is what you may eat.” It says, “You are Mine, and this is how you will eat.”
Many explanations for kashrut have been proposed, including health, ethics, and communal cohesion. Each may illuminate some aspect of the practice, but none explains why one animal is permitted and another forbidden, why fins and scales determine which fish may be eaten, or why meat and milk must remain apart. The details can feel, as Helen might have said, peculiar.
Perhaps their strangeness is part of their power. Kashrut is not a scientific conclusion. It is a Jewish practice, one that inscribes belonging into the ordinary rhythms of life. Every meal becomes an occasion to remember who we are. Before satisfying hunger, we pause. We pay attention. We make distinctions. We inherit a pattern and add our lives to it.
Rabbi Jay Michaelson once described Judaism as neither superior nor necessary for everyone, but as superior and necessary for him because it is “the vocabulary of my soul.” That phrase captures something essential about kashrut. It is not a judgment upon someone else’s table. It is part of the vocabulary through which a Jewish soul speaks.
Kashrut also invites a wider mindfulness. Jewish tradition asks us to attend not only to what enters our mouths, but also to what emerges from them. A kosher life must include careful speech, words prepared with as much attention as food, and offered in ways that sustain rather than diminish others.
Such belonging need not separate us from our neighbors. It can help us honor the sacred practices through which other communities remember who they are. A Muslim, Hindu, or Christian neighbor may bring distinct disciplines and abstentions to the table. When identity is rooted in love rather than superiority, difference becomes an invitation to hospitality. We can say to one another: “I cherish what is mine, and I am honored to make room for what is yours.”
Helen demonstrated how food could become art, hospitality, and covenant. (The ginger tea she would regularly and graciously offer was and will likely remain unmatched in my experience.) Through her, ingredients became expressions of care. May her memory remind us that our inherited practices need not be perfectly explained to be deeply meaningful. They can be received with curiosity, shaped with love, and served with beauty.
Kashrut teaches: this is who we are. This is how we remember. This is how belonging itself acquires flavor, form, and a place at the table.
