Tikkun Magazine, March/April 2010
A NOTE ON LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
We welcome your responses to our articles. Send your letters to the editor to Letters@Tikkun.org. Please remember, however, not to attribute to Tikkun views other than those expressed in our editorials. We email, post, and print many articles with which we have strong disagreements, because that is what makes Tikkun a location for a true diversity of ideas. Tikkun reserves the right to edit your letters to fit available space in the magazine.
OBAMA AND ALINSKY
I read President Obama's political character structure to be essentially the same as that of Rabbi Lerner's -- despite Obama's Nobel Prize speech and his stance on Afghanistan. Then how do I explain his recent positions on the war and how to deal with perceived threats? Obama was elected for a term of four years. He knows that he cannot possibly leave the imprint that he desires to leave on the American political structure and on the thinking of the American people in four years, but maybe he can in eight. Therefore he must constantly keep in mind -- in the background of all his significant decisions -- how not to imperil the next presidential election.
Saul Alinsky, from the grave, taught him that when you first (and for some time) face a disparate and partially hostile group, you must be very careful not to confront its members with ideas and positions that will offend them and make them anxious. You are bound to lose them. So initially and for some time you may not profess action or a way of thinking too removed from what they can accept. If you keep this strategy -- which Obama has studied and worked with before entering politics -- in mind, then we can understand that what appears to be a shift from his earlier positions is really a strategy to permit him to pursue his true beliefs during a second term in office. If my analysis of his strategy is correct, it remains to be seen whether it will work.
Louis Getoff
Sedona, AZ
Michael Lerner replies:
It's well known in progressive circles that Saul Alinsky's great strength in organizing in Chicago was also his great weakness: he organized white people around their self-interests as narrowly defined within the existing social order and never challenged their racism. These same people, once organized, were able to be an effective force against Blacks moving into their neighborhoods.
Alinsky-style organizing avoids ideology, and that is its great weakness -- a weakness now reflected in Obama. What presidents can do is shape the ideas of a given historical period, and if they do not do so, they end up strengthening the existing set of ideas that come from the powerful and their servants in the media, the schools and universities, the Congress, and the various state legislatures.
No president can guarantee passage of his or her program -- the one thing a president can control is the vision he projects in the country, and so far, Obama has strengthened the worldview of the militarists by his endorsement of the "war on terror" and the notion that the violence of war can be justified even when there is no immediate threat (from Taliban Afghans) and no popular call from the people of Afghanistan for us to escalate violence. And with his call for nuclear power plants, offshore drilling, and "clean coal," Obama has strengthened the hands of the polluters. And with his rejection of "Medicare for All" and his embrace of deals with pharmaceutical firms and health insurance companies ... well, the list goes on and on.
A PROGRESSIVE THIRD PARTY
In the Tikkun articles you published back when President Clinton took office, and then again when President Obama took office, your tone was supportive, placing progressives in the new president's corner, offering to be a force of encouragement. However, now that both of us can recall in our own lifetimes being betrayed by at least four Democratic presidents, we need to face the bitter fact that the Democratic Party no longer represents (if it ever really did) the interests of the American working, middle, or pensioner class. The bailouts, the continuation of the Bush administration's policies of "endless war," failure to close Guantánamo, wasted opportunities after the Cairo speech, the weak response to Israeli settlements, backpedaling on gay rights, half-hearted efforts at health care, and on and on -- how much failure, how much proof, do we all need that the Democrats are a group that has no real interest in substantive change?
You wrote, "We have to reconstitute that movement without Obama's help, before the disillusionment with Obama's compromises leads to the resurgence of the Right's policies." I agree with the "without Obama's help" part, but I would add that it should apply to his political party as well.
Perhaps the twenty-first century is a time to resurrect the nineteenth-century idea that we need a political party that represents our interests. Encouraging the left wing of the Democratic Party to exit and form a third party seems the best option we have for any real change.
David Ehrens
Dartmouth, MA
Michael Lerner replies:
Yes, and if someone were to give me five billion dollars, I would start the "New Bottom Line Party" (or readers can supply us with better names -- maybe the "Love and Generosity Party" or "Spiritual Progressives Party" or "Environmental Progressives Party" or "Healing and Transformation Party" or ... well, you tell me). What I'm clear on, having been a Green for many years, is that the Green Party's religiophobia, its one-sided expressions of anger at Israel that lack any feel of compassion for the Jewish people (and this is coming from me, a person who is frequently accused of that very same thing), and its preference for internal debate over external outreach in the communities where its members live all combine to make the Greens feel to me to be unconsciously committed to being the ones who lose. If I were to get involved in building a new electoral party, it would be to win and actually heal and transform the world. So until I find partners with a psychological makeup oriented toward winning, plus the five billion dollars that it would take to make that party viable, I'll do what I can to reach people through the existing party structures -- using Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives as consciousness-raising vehicles -- even though I agree with all the progressive critiques of the existing parties and their endless attachment to the status quo.
OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN
Thank you so much for your important editorial about Afghanistan, "Obama Capitulates to the Warmakers" (Tikkun, January/February 2010).
I'm forwarding this piece to everyone I know, and encouraging them (once again) to become a member of Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives.
Obama has shown that he is not a visionary. He campaigned on empty words. I still cringe at the words "evil" and "evildoers." For myself, I would define evil as a complete lack of conscience and caring. I don't believe there is an entity called "evil" in the world, and I agree that people do evil things. I believe we all have that capability, and that we make choices based on what our thoughts are, how we respond to them, and how we manage our anger.
It's critical that people learn how to tell the difference between nice words and real concrete goals.
You, my friend, are a visionary. We need people like you, who so eloquently speak truth to power.
Sharon Abreu
Eastsound, WA
BEYOND LEFT AND RIGHT
What happened to going beyond left and right? That used to be a tenet of the religious left, and I believe it is the principle that Obama acts on. He's not center/right. That's just labeling of the very oldest sort and I'm disappointed to see it used here. I thought the religious left was beyond that. Aside from trying to bail us out of the disasters handed to him when he took office, Obama is trying to make politics more humane and more engaged with social justice. Obama is democratic with a small "d." He's trying to set a new tone for politics. He's also a pragmatist because he has to be. He HAS to speak and appeal to a wide range of people in the United States if he is to get anything done at all. The progressives in Congress, i.e. the progressives actually trying to govern, are far more flexible than those in our local community because they know what they're up against. Obama's actual politics are constrained by incredibly powerful forces -- historically unique forces. I think it's just wrong to say he doesn't believe in peace or social justice. It offends me deeply me to hear him characterized in that way.
I count myself as progressive, but I live in Berkeley and I'm really, really tired of the way many progressive armchair philosophers assume their own superior insight (He should have done it this way, the way I would!) while paying no attention to the forces actually in operation right now. I look to the religious left for more. While I think we can always urge Obama to do better (if he can, which for me is in doubt), I have to be practical too. I can't be part of anything that doesn't work actively to create a positive attitude toward Obama's administration. If we don't do that, we are in for the most right-wing congress and president in 2012 that we will ever have had.
Judith Newton
Berkeley, CA
Michael Lerner replies:
I'd so appreciate it if you'd read my book The Left Hand of God, because there I try to explain the psychodynamics of American politics, and how, when hopeful energy gets undermined by being subverted into "realistic/pragmatic" politics, it ends up creating the space for the rise of right-wing politics. I detail this in regard to the failures of both Carter and Clinton, and the same pattern is happening now with Obama.
As for going beyond left/right, I still believe that is what we are trying to do, but there are moments when there has to be a moral bottom line. For me, that line is crossed when a leader from any political party, no matter how good the party is on other issues, decides to use the military and violence in order to achieve his or her ends -- goals that she or he declares to be the ends of the country as a whole (in this case, in Afghanistan). I cannot support anyone who believes that massive violence and the inevitable killing of civilians is a legitimate way to develop national policy, except in those circumstances where the threat to our own physical survival is immediate as the Bible describes (namely, where someone is coming specifically and unambiguously to kill you or a member of your family) and then, as the rabbis of the Talmud specified, only if you warn that person in advance that such behavior is punishable by death.
So I'm not a moral relativist, and going beyond left/right to me means affirming a consistent position of love and generosity. I'm certainly wanting to express that compassion toward Sarah Palin and others in the Tea Party movement on a personal level, but that doesn't preclude fierce opposition to their movement as a political phenomenon and to their worldviews.
THE AMERICAN WAY
I'm a member of Beyt Tikkun and NSP. I'm also a professor at UC Berkeley. I continue to be amazed at the quality and amazing Tikkun articles. Every issue I imagine, "wow, they'll never be this good again." And then the next issue you do seems even better.
There are two articles in the January/February 2010 issue that I really would love to get an electronic copy of before waiting two months.
One is the incredible overview of American society by Harriet Fraad. In the past two months, I've gotten very involved in UC Berkeley campus politics of how to get the faculty, students, and unions on the same page to get a massive properly framed message to the California voters to make major changes in Sacramento. I think Fraad's analysis is a must read for some of the factions. The issues must be framed in such a way that the majority of voters (people who barely pay any taxes) will vote for their interests. The left has done a horrid job of framing things properly, and I'm hoping that UC faculty might be helpful in that framing process and in getting a decent fraction of the two million college students to become politically involved. I think Fraad's article presents an important point of view.
Second, Bauer and Blanchard's article on neurobiology and God is a must read for some members of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science discussion group with which I'm heavily involved. Our 2011 annual conference will be on the topic of "Why Good People Do Bad Things" (actually the latest version of the title has the word "Good" removed, but I'm hoping it will be put back in). The Bauer and Blanchard article is exactly the sort of thing we would like to have presented. Incidentally, I'm very familiar with the use of God language for humanity's goodness since I go to Rabbi Lerner's Torah study gatherings when I can (I live a few blocks from him, so walking is a treat).
I want to give you huge congratulations for how you are able to make each issue of Tikkun a precious gem. Most impressive.
Stan Klein
Berkeley, CA
I found Harriet Fraad's article, "American Depressions," (Tikkun, January/February 2010) refreshing and thought-provoking. I would like to suggest the following additions to Ms. Fraad's five points beginning with the last: the fifth reason she gives as causing psychological depression seems not to be limited to pharmaceuticals. A pervasive insistence that one should always be happy and look on the bright side of things is also numbing. In an interview with Eva Sohlman of The WIP, cultural critic Harold Bloom speaks of what he calls the media-ocrity of the American press, which avoided speaking about the travesties of the George W. Bush administration and dumbed down intelligent discussion of critical issues. Intelligent discussion of issues remains rare in American life; such discussions are seen as "downers."
In reason number one, the author writes that President Reagan discontinued social programs from increases in funding for social security to Head Start. I seem to recall that he also reduced funds for housing by, more than 20 billion dollars. In response to a visitor's remark that there were homeless people huddled within sight of the oval office, he is said to have responded, "Oh, I don't think so."
In reasons for depression number two, Ms. Fraad does not mention two things that occurred in the 1970s that I've always thought significant. In the mid-1970s, the Heritage Foundation was started and with it came one of two of the most important changes to American Capitalism in history: the cutting of the link between production and wages and the consequent astronomical rise in the value of corporations. Middle class investors were somewhat appeased as they saw the value of their investments grow along with the increase in corporate bottom lines. Only with the market crash of 2008 would they learn that they had made a very bad deal indeed.
Reason number three brought to my mind what I have always considered a stroke of evil genius on the part of our corporate masters: they told us "you can't make it on one income anymore." Following the corporate holy command of supply and demand, they lowered everyone's wages when women entered the labor market, thereby vastly increasing the size of the workforce. When even that was not enough to satisfy corporate greed and middle class appetite for consumer goods (an appetite artificially enlarged by corporate advertising), U.S. business decided to temporarily lend thousands of dollars to help struggling families make ends meet. And so debt, often crushing debt, entered the kitchens and bedrooms of middle-class America, introducing one of the most common irritants into family life.
Ms. Fraad's reason number four offers an assortment of causes for the increased isolation of Americans one from another. An additional reason was that with the assault on middle class citizens and the switch from working class income to investment income came a greater than ever before switch in values. Working people, even if they had jobs after the outsourcing of factory jobs, no longer looked forward to putting their children on the road to better lives than they had enjoyed. They felt like failures. Those who had taken well to the investment economy looked to corporate interests, and therefore the reduction of production costs such as labor, to increase the value of their stocks. As Robert Putnam observed in Bowling Alone, these two groups found it increasingly difficult to enjoy the camaraderie of a beer frame at the neighborhood bowling alley.
Even when I was young enough to enjoy the simple story of Pinocchio, I sensed the metaphorical meaning as well. I understood that the little wooden boy sacrificed the genuine good of his "father" Geppetto's love, and succumbed to the attraction of superficial goods offered by those who only wanted his labor as a beast of burden. The parallels to this country since 1970 are so sadly striking!
John Carrigan
Indianapolis, IN
DOMINION OVER THE EARTH?
Thanks to Riane Eisler for her wonderful article "Beyond Capitalism and Socialism" (Tikkun, November/December 2009).
She provides us with a much more insightful and helpful model for building a world of compassion than the earlier and inadequate dialectic.
I would, however, like to address an aspect of what she suggests is the harmful inheritance of perspectives found in the Book of Genesis.
It may well be true that there are directives in Genesis that have been used to substantiate a domination inclination. But as we investigate related verses in the text, we can see that rather than being called to exploit, we are being called to a very different relationship with creation.
Firstly, the fact that we are to have "dominion" over the other species of the earth is simply a reality of nature. Even indigenous cultures with great respect for creation - cultures that refer to the four-leggeds ones, winged ones, and tree-people as our familial relations, and whose societies fall very much on the "partnership" side of Ms. Eisler's continuum -- recognize the given necessity to use what Creation provides for the "Life of the People." They hunt for food and for materials for shelter and clothing, domesticate animals for labor, and crops for sustenance, burn and clear woodlands, and mine the earth. They take with reverence, and give back with gratitude.
In Jewish terminology, one aspect of our being b'tzellem Elohim (made in God's image) is that we have been granted enormous powers by Creator that no other species possess. Yet we are told in Genesis 2:15 that we have been put here in this Garden, this earthly paradise, to serve and protect it, to be guardians and caretakers of this holy planet, from which the human being gets its name: Adam, from the word Adamah (earth). So biblically speaking, the human being is an "earthling." While our souls are immortal and immaterial, our physical existence is rooted in Adamah, in which we, along with all other species, are an interconnected and dependent part.
Most of the references to "Adam" in Torah imply "human being," not simply the male of the species. As we read in Genesis 5:2, "Male and Female did God create them, blessed them and called them Adam on the day they were created."
In a well-known midrash, God shows Adam the magnificence of the entire earthly domain and says, "Take good care of this earth, for if you don't, there is no one else who can." So the enormous powers we are given are to be used to cultivate and nurture, safe-guard, and protect Creation: l'av'dah u l'shamrah.
We are to serve as Creator's caretaker of the Land, to be God's heart and hands on the Earth.
Caretaking of the Garden takes work, an essential part of the work of our lives.
And it is holy work, which is implied in the word av'dah, which while often translated as "to work, cultivate, or tend," literally means "to serve." This same word is used to refer to a prayer service: avodah, and implies reverence and gratitude, the very precepts embraced by indigenous peoples. Working, tending and living on the earth as caretakers is holy service, the prayer of our bodies, as Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that in marching for justice, his "feet were praying."
Reflecting again on Ms. Eisler's partnership/domination continuum, we read in Exodus: "I took you out of Mitzrayim/Egypt (freed you from enslavement to narrow limited vision, to ‘small mind' that places me as Center...) so that you might serve Me."
This is the essence of Covenant, of holy partnership. And the first job description that Adam receives in Torah to fulfill our role in that partnership is to engage in the holy service of guardianship of the earth.
Maggid Andrew Gold
Santa Fe, NM
IMPOSING PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
"An American Peace Initiative: (Is there a nice way of saying "an imposed solution"?) is an excellent article as far as it goes. But the piece (Tikkun, January/February 2010) does not go far enough. It does not tackle the insoluble issue of the location of the future frontier between Israel and Palestine.
You (Gershon Baskin) write, "the parameters of agreements are more or less known," and later, "there is global consensus on the parameters of that agreement."
Yes, there is, but it is based on global ignorance of facts on the ground. The world has agreed that the Jewish settlements surrounding Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which contain a majority of the Jewish settlers, be annexed to Israel and that in return the Palestinians be awarded an equal amount of Israeli land. The amount to be swapped is usually put between 5 percent and 10 percent.
Before you write another long and excellent article, please specify where you will find 5 percent or even 3 percent of Israeli land that can be annexed to Palestine. Certainly your Arab partners in IPCRI will furiously fight any attempt to shove Arab cities in the Triangle or the Galilee into Palestine, not to mention the revolt of the Arab citizens of Israel at such a proposal.
There was talk in the past of giving up the dunes in the south, but these square miles of sand abut the Sinai and not Gaza. And they have since been allocated to young families who are building their homes there. They remember that Tel Aviv was built on sand dunes.
Delray Beach, FL
STILL TABOO: THE LINK BETWEEN INTIMATE ABUSE AND PUBLIC VIOLENCE
Thank you, Tikkun, for Bettina Aptheker's excellent review of Robert Cohen's biography of Mario Savio (Tikkun, January/February 2010). Who better to review Cohen's book than Aptheker, who co-led the Berkeley Free Speech Movement with Savio? But for me, the most important issue Aptheker brings up is the way Savio was wounded by sexual abuse in his childhood. Today we would refer to this as PTSD, an acronym that has entered our popular discourse mainly in the context of the tens of thousands of U.S. service people returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. As much as we talk about the phenomenon, though, it remains largely misunderstood due to shame, a military code of conduct that continues to urge its members to "tough it out," and our society's inability or unwillingness to make the connection between the intimate soul-wounding experience and the repetition of violence it so often engenders.
Aptheker's own life experience, beautifully documented in her autobiography Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel, is one of very few books to successfully deal with the often uncomfortable connection between childhood sexual abuse and the more public political arena. In it she is able to look at her father, the important Communist historian, in a truly nuanced way. She documents his abuse and its effect on her while recognizing his brilliant contributions. When her book came out, I remember more than one Left voice questioning her need to reveal her father's abuse. I have long felt that until those of us committed to social change are able to explore the silenced aspects of our movement and their heroes, we will be unable to create new forms of struggle capable of taking us where we need to go.
Margaret Randall
Albuquerque, NM
ISRAEL'S CAMPUS CRITICS
I want to respond to Philip Mendes's letter to the editor in Tikkun's November/December 2009 issue. Mr. Mendes, there is no well-organized pro-Palestinian lobby in Australian universities. Yes, there is a growing number of voices that are becoming less fearful to speak from their conscience, research, and experience. Yes, there is a greater openness within some sectors to considering the possibility of a liberal, multi-ethnic, democratic state (not unlike that of Judah Magnes's binational state vision) that is equally respectful of the deep cultural and spiritual connections that Jewish and Palestinian Arab people have to the region.
However, these are simply people who have had enough of seeing the violence that comes with militarily and economically occupying a people for forty-two years; the unabated settlement expansion; and the failure to deal with a sixty-one-year refugee problem. Yes, the left needs to do more to condemn rocket attacks on fellow humans living in Sderot or Ashkelon; for anti-Semitic statements in Arab media; or for the part that other Arab countries plays in making the life of Gazans a misery (e.g., Egypt's blockade of Gaza). But Mr. Mendes's letter ironically tries to create a bogeyman out of a weak and marginal community (in the same way that the Jewish community for decades argued was done to them). Mr. Mendes, these people you fear are not that unlike you: they too look for a future where Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis can live together in peace. The difference is in politically how such a situation would look. I respect your many years of engagement on this issue, but please don't play on Americans' ignorance of Australian university politics to try and create something that is untrue.
Stewart Mills
Sydney, Australia
HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
When reading the engaging interview with Congressman Ellison, vice chair of the Progressive Caucus, that focused on President Obama, the war in Afghanistan, and health care reform (Tikkun, January/ February 2010), we couldn't help notice the photograph on page twelve of the rally of health care activists at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in October. Since the Network of Spiritual Progressives has long advocated single-payer health care, we thought you and your readers might like to know about the exciting developments in our Commonwealth. We were just two of 1,200 citizens who rallied that day to support the Family and Business Health Security Act of 2009 (SB 400 / HB 1660), a publicly financed, privately delivered single-payer health care plan. We believe that this was the largest rally in the history of the capitol rotunda. We were addressed by Donna Smith, organizer for the California Nurses Association, Wendell Potter, former Cigna VP for public relations who outed the insurance giant a year ago, and four of the Baucus 8.
This legislation to establish health care justice and fiscal sustainability is progressing through the Pennsylvania House and Senate. So far 35 representatives, including 4 Republicans (the first time in our nation's history that single payer has gained bi-partisan support) and 11 senators have signed on as co-sponsors. In December the Republican chaired Senate Banking and Insurance Committee held the first hearing, and this has generated serious Republican interest. Finally, Governor Ed Rendell is on record stating that he will sign a single-payer bill once it reaches his desk.
The members of Health Care for All Pennsylvania have strived tirelessly over the past six years to reach this point. We have received strong support from Congressman Conyers, Ms. Smith, Progressive Democrats of America, and many other national leaders and organizations. One of our members, Walter Tsou, former president of the American Public Health Association, testified in favor of single-payer in Congress this past summer and our executive director, Chuck Pennachio, testified in Congress just this past week. Just as we led the nation in pioneering the Children's Health Insurance Program, in the true tradition of federalism's innovative spirit, we believe that the Keystone State holds the key to unlocking the gate to quality affordable health care for all. Find out more at www.healthcare4allpat.org.
Bob and Tirzah Mason
Trafford, PA
Thank you for your contribution (Tikkun.org article "Support the Health Care Bill" by Peter Drier) to our country's health care discussion. One thing that bugs me though is when people suggest remedies without knowing what they're talking about. You wrote, "Lesson #1: we need campaign finance reform, preferably mandatory ‘clean money' public financing plan (http://www.publicampaign.org), as an alternative to our current system of legalized bribery." Our country needs campaign spending limits, not publicly financed political campaigns. And it's doable right now, because the Supreme Court isn't supposed to have anywhere near enough judicial review power for our country's government to have to comply with the Supreme Court ruling that says it's unconstitutional to implement campaign spending limits in our country's election races.
Gene Silvers
Los Angeles, CA
THOUGHTS ON VEGETARIANISM
I tread into this debate with hesitation, knowing that the stakes are high and the certitudes are higher still in the ostensibly clear-cut case for a vegetarian or vegan diet. Daniel Brooks (in "The Planet Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism," Tikkun, July/August 2009) makes a number of strong points in terms of the environmental impact of corporate ranching and feed-lot practices, and the misappropriation of grains to promote animal obesity -- and secondarily human obesity -- while human hunger flourishes in many parts of the globe. No doubt this is true, and the corroborating biblical and talmudic injunctions against eating meat are vivid and pertinent. Even so, I want to interject some shades of gray into what may seem to many to be a morally black and white terrain.
I should interject that I have considerable sympathy for a vegetarian diet, and followed one consistently for eighteen years, in large measure due to the influence of Leo Tolstoy's writings on the subject. And even today -- some twenty-three years after "lapsing" -- I am quite content to be vegetarian for days at a time. However, I don't see the issue with the same moral clarity I once did. Let's consider some other factors that have a bearing on the decision to eat meat.
First, I think it is somewhat irresponsible in an article of this length to fail to mention that a strict vegan diet requires supplementation with vitamin B12 in order to avoid anemia and a serious neurological disease (http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030301/979.html). In the current stage of technology, this nutrient is readily obtained from tablets containing B12 derived from bacteria, but there are no plant sources of B12 that can be relied upon to supply this essential nutrient.
Perhaps for this reason, traditional cultures -- even those that venerate a "pure veg" diet -- did not resort completely to vegan diets but included dairy products in their diets. And even then, they developed highly evolved cuisines to compensate for the low level of specific nutrients in a "pure veg" diet, particularly B12 and iron. These cuisines are not readily learned or adapted in Eurocentric lands, due to the lack of familiarity and lack of ingredients, and indeed, by the lack of time required to prepare these elaborate cuisines.
Thirdly, many of the environmental benefits of a vegetarian diet can be obtained by reducing meat consumption to a low level, without necessarily eliminating it altogether. It is as much a matter of quantity of meat consumed as it is of moral fiber in terms of the environment impact of meat production.
Fourth, there are producers of grass-fed beef who offer some advantages over feed-lot-fattened beef. Such beef is more lean yet has higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, and has a lower environmental impact -- a consideration which need not be dismissed in this discussion.
Fifth, there is no guarantee that, by eating less meat, world hunger will be readily diminished. Admittedly there would be a greater supply of grains, but delivering that grain to areas of need would not necessarily be governed by different economic rules than currently apply. If the goal is to reduce world hunger, reducing meat consumption is a worthy component, but no substitute for the hard work of getting food to the people who need it.
Moreover, as contentious as the subject of diet can be, it avoids what in my mind is an even larger and more sensitive issue: that of human population growth and the need to deliver family planning services to all parts of the globe. Food distribution is only part of the equation of restoring a sustainable ecological balance. Delivering food without reducing human fertility is likely to increase the net ecological damage to the planet. (Note, I would favor of doing both interventions simultaneously, though both components face major obstacles.)
Seventh, the purely moral issue of killing animals for food is much murkier than Daniel Brook appears willing to acknowledge. In the wild, herbivores are constantly exposed to inclement weather, drought, starvation, deep snow, violent competition between males, insects, parasites, and predation. However in captivity, herbivores are protected from many of these pestilent influences, and in fact, many live longer in captivity and in greater comfort than they would in the wild, even if they eventually are sent to slaughter. Herbivores do not typically die peacefully -- nor for that matter do many carnivores. In this biological reality, the stringency of animal husbandry can be gruesome, but still they are less gruesome than life in the wild.
Similarly, most domestic herbivores would not be raised at all were it not for food. Very few people would be inclined to keep a pet cow were it not for milk or meat, and even fewer would keep a pet bull. So in order for these animals to survive in any number -- l'chaim -- they need to serve a utilitarian purpose. Do we want domestic animals and fowl to become extinct?
Finally, the cultivation of plants is not without significant levels of violence and ecological damage. Land must be cleared, trees cut down, habitat destroyed, wild flora eliminated, fauna displaced, insects controlled, and fossil fuels utilized to plow, fertilize, and harvest the fields. There is simply no moral purity when it comes to food production, whether it is animal or vegetable. There are indeed differing shades of gray, but that is exactly my point.
Keith Barton
Oakland, CA
I appreciate Dr. Barton's thoughtful (and lengthy) response to my article. All of his criticisms, however, miss the mark.
I could respond that traditional East Asian vegans don't have vitamin B12 deficiencies. I could rebut that although agriculture creates environmental damage, livestock eat much greater amounts of crops than humans do. I could speak to his point about vegetarianism not necessarily leading to less world hunger, though it certainly is more likely to do so.
I will, however, address Dr. Barton's "murkier" moral issue. He argues that farmed animals live better, more comfortable, and longer lives than they would in the wild. If this ever were true, it certainly isn't anymore. Every day, millions of individual animals are tortured and killed in a variety of horrible ways. Lambs are shackled and boxed to keep them "tender"; cows and pigs are crammed for "efficiency"; chickens are de-beaked to "protect" them; and animals are often branded, castrated, docked, beaten, and hung upside-down by their limbs, all without anesthesia. Entire schools of fish are netted, along with turtles, dolphins, seals, and birds, while land animals are terrorized and slaughtered with their blood, guts, pus, saliva, sweat, vomit, tears, hair, mucus, semen, urine, and feces being splattered everywhere, some left to suffer and die in piles of other dead and dying animals. Animals are often impregnated by artificial insemination on "rape racks," repeatedly forced to endure pain and then pregnancy, with their newborns separated from them shortly after birth. There is nothing murky about this routine cruelty.
Even if Dr. Barton's criticisms were not erroneous, each and all of them miss the essential point that the mass production and consumption of meat and other animals products violates the best teachings and highest ideals of Judaism: that we should (1) preserve human health, (2) have compassion for animals, (3) protect and repair the world, (4) conserve resources, (5) have deep spiritual intention, (6) feed the hungry and assist the weak, (7) pursue peace and justice, (8) have concern for the community, (9) eat consciously, and (10) fight fascism. Vegetarianism can easily, effectively, and efficiently accomplish all of these.
Dan Brook
San Francisco, CA
