Adam and the Donkey

After Adam HaRishon violates the Divine command, G-d says to him, “Kotz v’dardar… Thorns and thistles will be yours, you shall eat the grass of the field [instead of the fruits of Gan Eden].” Adam wept: “Shall I and the donkey eat from the same trough?” (Bereishis 3:18, Pesachim 118a)

Adam was not concerned with dining etiquette, but he sensed that food — how you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, what you eat and do not eat — affects who you are, and he feared that if he and his donkey ate the same way, he would become beast-like, and so he wept. G-d reassured Adam that he could create actual bread from the growth in the fields, and that would differentiate him from the beasts.

The history of mankind is an answer to Adam’s plaintive question. Instinctively, a human knows he is not an animal. He has a soul, a neshamah. But he also has a body that must be fed. Therefore, mankind seeks to differentiate between his eating habits and those of the animals, endowing ordinary foods with a) an ornate nomenclature: soup is consommé; opening morsels are hors d’oeuvres; certain meats are filet mignon; liver is pâté de foie gras; and b) by preparing foods in various ways to make it attractive and desirable — all to demonstrate that we do not eat like the animals. Major newspapers feature huge food sections. New York Times and London Times have Food and Dining Editors. At fine universities one can major in Culinary Studies. Children once wanted to become fire chiefs; today they say: “Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be a food chef.”

In Judaism there is a mysterious connection between food and the spiritual. On Shabbos, for example, we must eat three meals. Strange. One would consider it appropriate to celebrate a holy time by restricting that which is the epitome of the physical: food. But Judaism, instead of negating the material food, coopts it and uses it to enhance spirituality. We sanctify the food itself by reciting Kiddush over it, and by beginning and ending the act of eating with brachos. The very first words of G-d to Adam concern food: What he may eat and what he may not eat. And the Torah carefully monitors what we may and may not eat (kashrus, Pesach); where we may eat (Succos); when we may not eat at all (Yom Kippur); which foods we may not mix (milk, meat).