In a recent book, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat, Bee Wilson reminds us that the knife is derived from sharpened hand axes—the oldest human tools. The first spoons are descended from objects used to scoop up liquid, but the fork is relatively new on the human scene.

As I read about the fork as a utensil that reveals much about cultural anthropology, I thought about kashrut, the Holocaust, Rwanda and casinos. Although they appear to be disconnected, I’d like to share some my thoughts with the hopes that they will provide you something thoughtful to chew upon. 

Let me begin with eating, a topic that looms large in the Torah portion today. Leon Kass is a physician and biochemist who teaches literature and philosophy at the University of Chicago. His book, The Hungry Soul takes its name from a verse of Psalm 107: כי השביע נפש שקקה ונפש רעבה מלא טוב. For [God] satisfies the yearning soul, and fills the hungry soul with good things” (Psalm 107.9).

Kass explores the natural and cultural act of eating, sees eating as a “great paradox”. To preserve life, individuals must destroy life. Yet, this, most basic animal necessity is converted through table manners, hospitality, sharing, good conversation and ritual into a means to celebrate and broaden human community, friendship and values. 

Kass discusses the physical act of eating as well as customs, culture, manners, rituals, and taboos related to eating. Kass moves from anthropology to ethics, “metabolism to mortality and digestion to divinity” (Kirkus Associates).

He argues that in the progression from physical consumption of raw products to cooked food, eating while seated, at set times, while using utensils, culturally frame eating. He discusses kashrut as an example of the striving of humans to transform eating from the satisfaction of basic physical needs to an act of profound intention, spiritual attunement, and a yearning for the transcendent. 

Kass connects the simple act of eating to a desire, a yearning to move from the fundamental to a more aesthetic, moral, and spiritual state of being. Yesterday, a wise counselor suggested to me that while we usually think of the watermelon fruit as deliscious and the rind as inedible, we can learn something significant if we consider the melon as a metaphor for human development.

All of the basics of human life might be symbolized by the red fruit of the melon. These include the acts of rest and reproduction, hunting and warfare, agriculture and eating. The exterior rind, the shell of the watermelon is quite thin in comparison to the fruit.

The exterior represents human culture, appreciation of beauty, ethics and moral behavior, religion and a quest for the spiritual. It is not thick, it is only a veneer in the fruit, but without that thin shell, our lives would be immeasurably diminished. 

Earlier this week, Irwin Cotler pointed out that the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwanda Genocide and Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, will coincide. April 7 is the date selected by the UN to commemorate the deaths of 800,000 people who were murdered during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, central Africa. Yom Hashoah is the date when we remember the Nazi effort to exterminate all Jews and the murder of 6 million of our people.

Cotler spoke of the absence of human compassion and international justice that each tragedy represents. Our prayers and our aspirations are for a world without warfare. We strive to go beyond the world described by Thomas Hobbes in his famous word-play: clubs are trump. 

We have a deep yearning for a world that will not simply be war and murder, the rule of the wild, whatever one people wants to do to another. We desperately want and need a commitment to a moral and just world. We do not want clubs to trump.

In a sense, Yom Hashoah and the Day of Remembrance for Rwanda are statements of our desire for a world of justice and compassion. Just as  kashrut is a ritualized desire to elevate the animal instincts that are part of all of us into something better and greater, so these days of memory seek to aid us in shifting from killing to conversation, from massacre to moral discourse.

That brings me to casinos. I’m not trying to compare casinos to Holocaust or genocide. I’m not trying to compare casinos to kashrut. But I do want to draw a connection between the opposition of faith leaders to the development of a downtown casino and the desire that Leon Kass describes to transcend our basic, raw needs and desires.

We all know that our city requires funds to pay for all sorts of social and capital needs in Toronto. The burdens are enormous and the needs are great. The casino promises more jobs and greater tax revenues. Although academic studies show that the economic benefits would be negligible and the social problems would be magnified, the priests and ministers, rabbis and imams, religious leaders of all stripes, were not trying to make an economic statement about the proposed development.

We wanted to add a moral voice to the civic conversation. We said that the development of a casino is not the way for our city to go. I represented the Toronto Board of Rabbis. It was an amazing gathering, a real first, and it arose because we have come to know each other through interfaith conversations. 

In Judaism, gambling, as a minor activity, is permissible (and on Purim and Hanukkah actually encouraged). But excessive gambling, obsessive gambling, addictive gambling, is destructive of individuals, families and communities. We have seen the shrapnel in our own congregation. Other religious leaders have also been faced with the debris after the human debacle.

Although some religious leaders condemn all gambling, the rabbis were there to offer a moderate voice. We should allow existing opportunities to continue, but should not add to the potential problems. The thickening of gambling opportunities will create more attraction to destructive behaviour.

How we eat, what we remember, even how we play and entertain ourselves, all respond to our basic needs and drives. We also have the possibility and capacity to transcend the fundamentals to reach for something higher, more transcendent.

Holiness in the Torah is not a given for anyone or anything other than God. Kedushah is an affirmative aspiration that seeks to uplift us from the humdrum to the holy.

That aspiration should affect what we eat, how we disagree, and how we play. We should always remember that there is only a thin separation between the basic drives and needs that we seek to satisfy and the aesthetic, moral and spiritual considerations that enable us to develop as human beings. Remember and aspire: Kedoshim tehiyu- You shall be holy.