I was not the only observer surprised by the outcry against the killing of Harambe the gorilla in order to save a child who had wandered into the gorilla enclosure in the Cincinnati Zoo. While only a few people asked whether the child’s life took precedence over the gorilla’s, more asked about our general practice of killing animals for food when human life is not at stake. And they are right. This brought to mind a passage I recently came across in a 19th century polemic against biblical criticism by Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, who is most famous as a forerunner of Religious Zionism.

In his Emunah Yesharah, Rav Kalischer offers a number of arguments for the divine origin of the Torah. In the following argument (vol. 2, ch. 7, par. 4), he denies philosophical legitimacy to eating meat absent divine permission. Without God and the Torah, he asks, by what right does one creature kill–often cruelly–and eat another creature? And if we accept that there is divine permission, then we have to eat kosher (in particular, refrain from eating blood).

I do not find this argument compelling because there are non-theistic philosophical justifications for humans to eat animals. Others might consider it convincing, such as those who argue for vegetarianism today for precisely these reasons. However, I find Rav Kalischer’s subsequent points very noteworthy. Anticipating the possible objection that a person may choose to be a vegetarian, Rav Kalischer states that this is an improper attitude. Once we receive divine permission to eat (kosher) animals, we are wrong to deprive ourselves of this pleasure. Vegetarianism confuses the religious mind with incorrect priorities, leading to other wrong moral choices.

We were given instructions on how to live in this world that include values and priorities. Human lives take precedence over animal lives. And human consumption validates the killing, even somewhat cruelly, of animal life.

This brief but important essay serves as a precedent to Rav Kook’s view that vegetarianism is morally dangerous in our I redeemed world. The following is a loose translation of Rav Kalischer’s poetic Hebrew: