Eating Meat Once a Week...On Shabbos!

By Rachel Salston
Brandeis University

This past summer, I inadvertently convinced a friend to go vegetarian. I mentioned the shocking fact that the livestock population of the United States eats five times the amount of grain that the human population consumes. By extrapolating this statistic to the world population, one arrives at the fact that there is more than enough grain in the world to feed all six billion people with a surplus. If we didn't raise livestock, perhaps we would not have world hunger.

Given that I have been familiar with this fact since I was in middle school, yet I continue to eat meat, I was very surprised by my friend's reaction. She became convinced that she should attempt to become a vegetarian or at least cut back to consuming meat meals one day a week. Being an observant Jew, she decided that she would eat meat to treat herself on Shabbat.

For me, despite the fact that being more environmentally friendly has always been an aspiration of mine, it seemed difficult to cut back on my own meat consumption. As I attend Brandeis University, I benefit from the luxury of a kosher meat buffet four days a week. Dairy days on the kosher side of Sherman Dining Hall are a rare occurrence. Eating on a kosher meal plan, not as a committed vegetarian or vegan, involves eating meat or the slim pickings of a hummus sandwich or an unattractive salad bar. I could not see myself reducing my meat consumption.

This year, as an upperclassman, I live in an on-campus apartment with a full kitchen and am not dependent on the dining hall for my meals. Currently, my roommates and I do not have any meat cookware. Because of this, I have been unintentionally living as a vegetarian at home. Being a cheap, busy and lazy college student, I can't really foresee cooking a meat meal for myself.

But there is, of course, one important exception to my near-vegetarianism: Shabbos. In the three Shabbatot I have spent on campus this semester, I have gone to the Shabbat dinner arranged by my Hillel and the Shabbat lunch in the dining hall. These are meat meals. They are also incredibly affordable; I spend only $6 for an all-you-can-eat meat buffet.

While I did not begin my dietary restriction with the intention of being environmentally or socially conscious (I'm not sure I began it with any intention at all), I am intrigued by the idea that I only eat meat once a week (unless it's a hag of course, like the three day Yom Tov we encountered last week) and I am considering turning it into an active practice rather than a passive one.

As it turns out, eating meat only once a week is not a new Jewish custom. Of course, people have not always been doing it for the same reasons. In the shtetl, our ancestors were only able to afford a small amount of meat a week, which would usually end up being a chicken (usually stretched as far as possible, by making chicken soup).

I really enjoyed my meat meal for the ‘Shabbos dinner' before Erev Yom Kippur!

Rachel Salston is a junior at Brandeis University, majoring in neuroscience and minoring in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She is the administrator of the Brandeis University Conservative (that's with a capital C) Organization and a very active participant in many aspects of Hillel at Brandeis. Her favorite food is Palak Paneer with a side of Paratha (yes, she knows how to cook it).

[Posted 10/7/10]