What Christians Can Learn from Keeping Kosher

Throughout Christian history, interpreters have agreed that the moral precepts of the Old Testament--in particular, the Ten Commandments--are binding upon Christians, but the civil and ceremonial codes, from the dietary laws to the holiday injunctions, are not. And the New Testament rather dramatically makes clear that Christians are free to eat as many clams and oysters as they like: In the Book of Acts, a hungry Peter has a vision of a sheet of food descending from heaven. The sheet is filled with food that is both kosher and unkosher, clean and unclean-potatoes and chicken and spinach, but also pork chops and lobsters and prawns.

A voice instructs Peter to "kill and eat," but Peter protests, insisting that he will never eat unclean, unkosher, food. The voice from heaven then says, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

This story is symbolic, to be sure. The voice is talking not just about food, but also about people; the instructions are not simply to eat, but also to invite both Jews and Gentiles into the Kingdom of God. Still, the story has epicurean consequences, too. Peter, a Jew who has come to follow Christ, is free to eat any and all of those once forbidden foods.

While Christians are not bound by the particularities of deuteronomic dietary law, we may still want to pay attention to the basic principle that underlies

: God cares about our dietary choices.

This should come as no surprise; you only have to read the first two chapters of Genesis to see God's concern for food. Humanity's first sin was disobedience manifested in a choice about eating. Adam and Eve were allowed to eat anything they wanted, except the one fruit they chose. And the New Testament makes clear that God cares about the most basic, quotidian aspects of our lives. (Our God, after all, is the God who provides for the sparrows and numbers the hairs on our heads.) This God who is interested in how we speak, how we handle our money, how we carry our bodies is also interested in how we live with food.

At its most basic level, keeping kosher requires you to be present to your food. Of course, so does the Atkins diet. The difference between Atkins and

is God. We try out the Atkins diet because our physician cares about what we eat. We limit ourselves to kosher food--to return to the etymology, appropriate or fitting food, prepared appropriately--because God cares about what we eat.

So, down to brass tacks. I am not about to stop eating shellfish again. But I am trying to bring some thought and intention to the food I eat. The impulse comes from Judaism, but for the specifics I have turned to a number of different teachers who, though not Jewish, have an intuitive appreciation for the logic of

.

One of my food teachers is an Episcopal priest-cum-chef, Robert Farrar Capon. In 1968, Capon wrote a slender book called "The Supper of the Lamb." It's part cookbook, part theological meditation--something like M. E K. Fisher meets the desert fathers. (The book is, in fact, organized around a lamb recipe, and the title's biblical allusion is not accidental.)

The second chapter of "The Supper of the Lamb" begins with the slightly absurd instruction to spend "60 minutes or so" chopping an onion. One onion, 60 minutes. The hour is to begin with the chopper looking at the onion, encountering the onion, having a "material . meeting" with it. After noticing its shape, its top and bottom, its blemishes, you proceed to removing its skin, moving so carefully that you do not puncture, let alone slice, the flesh of the onion itself. And on and on Capon leads us, through a veritable onion meditation. By the end of the chapter one wonders if a single hour is enough time.

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