SANCTITY OF SKIN & FEATHER
בס"ד
Tamuz 25
It's BC Day, a stat (civic) holiday at home. Just another chol here in the US of A. I miss Canada already.
At Elat Chayyim, after the teachers' meeting I attended, I was savouring the quiet time that followed the rigourous drum & dance circle (which I did not participate in). A young man tells me he is making himself a tallis with milkweed tzitzit. He wants me to teach him how to make vegan tefilin & of course I have no idea how. You know, all animal-rights concerns aside, Torah is a visceral thing, & I believe that using viscera to bring it into the world of physicality, of Asiyah, is a powerful action. It reminds us that the place where we work with Torah to manifest its revelation through ourselves is in our guts.
Our very core.
posted by Soferet | 4:32:00 p.m.
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2 Comments:
someone should make vegan tefilah. or at least i think that making tefilah out of an animal who died of natural causes is preferable. that, i think, is impossible to find, but something needed.
בס"ד
Well, the good news is that's allowed, Michael.
In Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Halakhah 10, he states, "...One may write on the hides of all kosher animals, wild beasts & fowl. This applies even when these animals died without being ritually slaughtered or when they were killed by wild beasts."
Although we're not allowed to eat these creatures due to the manner in which they died, we can certainly make tefilin, mezuzot, megilot & Sifrei Torah from them. Rambam is backed up on this by Talmud Bavli Shabbat 108a.
I have never found a source permitting the use of non-animal derived materials in the making of our sacred articles, but knowing we can produce them without causing unecessary death is crucial, & in line with the Jewish value of tzar ba'alei chayim, not causing suffering to animals.
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