Ariella Tracton – Year 10

Parashat Shemini

This week’s parashah, Shemini, highlights important ideas on Kashrut laws and purity.

The idea I would like to talk about comes from one example in the kashrut laws. It relates to how to determine whether a pig is kosher or not.

The kashrut laws relating to mammals say that a mammal is considered kosher if it has split hooves and chews its cud. While we all know that a pig is not kosher, you actually have to examine it closely to work this out when using the kashrut laws as a guide. When you look at a pig, it looks like a kosher animal because of its split hooves! You have to know a lot more about a pig to know that beyond its external appearance it does not chew its cud.

So, if you only looked superficially, you would mistake this unkosher animal for a kosher one.  

This can teach us an important lesson in life: that things aren’t always as they seem. This is very relevant for us because we get a lot of our information from the internet. Some of this is great information but some of it is incorrect. So, when we read this week’s parashah, we are reminded not to take things at face value and that, sometimes, we need to dig deeper and get more information before we can be confident that we understand things properly.