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You Are What You Eat Parashat Re’eh
- Rabbi Sarah Weissman
- Aug 22
- 5 min read
August 22, 2025
“You are what you eat.” Some say a French politician and author named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a version of the phrase in 1826, when he wrote “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” Others attribute the saying to the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who wrote in an essay published in 1863, “Man is what he eats.” But the phrase really became popular after 1940, when American Dr. Victor Lindlahr published his bestseller, “You Are What You Eat.” The phrase may be only a couple hundred years old, but the sentiment can be traced all the way back to Deuteronomy, where it would probably be phrased in the negative: we are what we don’t eat.
This week’s parashah, Re’eh, continues Moses’ last instructions to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. There are warnings against idolatry, reminders to care for the poor and needy, and instructions for how to celebrate the pilgrimage festivals. The other main topic is kashrut: the list of animals the Israelites are permitted to eat and those that are forbidden. This section of the Torah is framed by an explanation for why these laws exist. In Deuteronomy 14, we read, “For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God: the Eternal your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be a treasured people. You shall not eat anything abhorrent” (Deut. 14:2-3). Then, after the list of forbidden and permitted animals, the section concludes, “For you are a people consecrated to the Eternal your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (14:21).
According to the Torah, we are a people consecrated to God – an am kadosh. And how do we demonstrate our holiness? By following the laws of kashrut. For many Reform Jews, this is a tough pill to swallow. When we think of holiness, we usually think of spiritual elevation, or at least moral elevation, not the mundane, physical act of eating. Plus, kashrut is one of the more opaque Jewish practices; while scholars have long tried to find an underlying scientific or medical rationale for which animals are permitted and forbidden, the fact remains that the laws of kashrut are considered chukkim, statutes that don’t have a rational basis and must simply be observed as a sign of obedience to God.
Following ritual laws just because God said so was not in keeping with the early Reform Movement’s philosophy, and so kashrut was one of the first Jewish practices the early Reformers rejected. When the American Reform Movement issued its first platform in 1885, known as the Pittsburgh Platform, it declared: “We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine [meaning the Land of Israel], and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.” The Reformers then go even further in repudiating kashrut, saying, “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.”
The Reformers were certainly bold, declaring that keeping kosher is not only not required anymore because it is an outdated practice, but is actually harmful because it is likely to hinder our spiritual elevation rather than further it. While they don’t explain why they believe keeping kosher will keep us from realizing our holiness, it’s clear that the Reformers were trying to rid Judaism of its irrational, “primitive” aspects, and also wanted to remove the barriers between Jews and non-Jews. Being able to eat with our non-Jewish neighbors was seen as the greater good.
But since the early days of the Reform movement, we have come to realize (or re-realize) that eating can be a spiritual practice, and choosing to keep kosher can be a way to reach for holiness.
The word for holy, “kadosh,” means to be set apart. Keeping special dietary laws is a way to set a community apart, that is, to reinforce a group’s identity. Not eating pork, in particular, has long been one of the Jewish People’s best known characteristics. When we choose not to eat treif, or non-kosher food, we are reminding ourselves and those we’re eating with that we’re Jewish.
The laws of kashrut are also a way to limit the meat we eat, reminding us that taking another creature’s life in order to nourish ourselves should not be taken lightly. That’s why the Torah insists that kosher meat not have any blood in it, for “the blood is the life, and you must not consume the life with the flesh” (Deut. 12:23). Similarly, we’re not supposed to mix dairy and meat because milk represents the life of the animal. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg explains, “This is a religion that teaches that the highest value is life itself; that humans are called to join in a covenant-partnership with God to live on the side of life…. Life is life and death is death and ‘never the twain shall meet’.... In Jacob Milgrom’s words, the tradition is objecting to ‘the fusion and confusion of life and death simultaneously.’ The covenant asks its members to see life and death forces in binary opposition to each other and one must not blur the lines between them. Once the choice is stark and clear, the covenant participant is instructed to ‘choose life.’” Even when eating meat, a Jew is supposed to find ways to remember the sanctity of all life.
And finally, keeping kosher requires that we pay attention to what we’re eating. If you’re at a party at someone else’s house, you might have to ask, “What’s in this dish?” before taking a bite. In just that momentary pause, we might remember to have gratitude for the food we’re eating, including giving thanks for the people who planted and raised and harvested and delivered and cooked each ingredient. Most of all, we can express our gratitude to God, the Creator of all life, Sustainer of every creature on earth, including us. As we recite in Birkat HaMazon, the Grace after Meals:
בָּרוּךְ אֱלֺהֵֽינוּ שֶֽׁאָכַֽלְנוּ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ וּבְטוּבוֹ חָיִֽינוּ:
Blessed is our God, Whose bounty we have eaten and through Whose goodness we live.