Yellow-crowned Night Heron : You Are What You Eat

This is a Yellow-crowned Night Heron. After a few minutes of digging through the muck, he found a crawfish for breakfast. I’m always fascinated watching herons eat their catch. They don’t chew; they don’t peck off pieces; they simply swallow whole. Sometimes it takes a little work to align their catch to slip down the gullet, but a couple flips of the head, and down it goes. From there, via a well-documented scientific transformation, the crawfish becomes part of the heron. I understand the science behind it, but part of me still finds the entire process essentially miraculous. What were two living creatures are now one.

Observant Jews of course do not eat crawfish. These little mudbugs are treyf, one of the prohibited food items which Jews don’t eat. Why does our tradition ban this long list? Theorized answers run the gamut from scientific explanations of disease prevention and enhanced nutrient absorption to more esoteric reasons. I’ve heard - unconfirmed! - reports that pork is the meat which tastes most like human flesh, which evidently was on the menu at ancient pagan rites. Perhaps the simplest explanation is best: they eat that, and we eat this. In other words, what one eats is a fundamental demarcation of who one is.

We literally become what we eat, a unifying process of turning two things into one. Simultaneously Torah teaches that holiness is a process of separation and differentiation, making clear what the boundaries are. Seen through this lens, the physical and spiritual aspects of our self-constitution reinforce one another, as both individuals and a people. Our eating practices must be as consciously Jewish as our laws, as our language, as our worldview, which establish who we are as a community. So we’ll leave the etouffee to the Heron…. Instead we’ll bless HaShem for our own meals, aware of the sustenance we’re given - both physical and spiritual.