-5

In this question

Can jews eat unclean animals when blood is removed?

God mentions that jews can eat gazelle and deers without sacrificing them first. That's because all sacrifice must be in the temple and once the temple is build it'll be too impractical to go to (or fly to/wait till rebuilding of) the temple first to sacrifice every time a jew wants to eat steak.

Here God uses gazelle and deers as samples. You don't sacrifice them, but you can eat them because they are kosher.

However, even though gazelle and deers are kosher, jews don't hunt anyway and hence, jews at that time most likely don't eat gazelle and deers per question Can Jews eat hunted animals?

So why God pick deer and gazelle as samples because jews don't eat them anyway.

Here, I presume that deer and gazelle are hunted animals. They may be trapped but that's more of theoretical possibility.

Community
  • 1
user4951
  • 4,343
  • 4
  • 34
  • 56
  • There is no problem with eating deer and gazelle if it's slaughtered correctly. In practice, the only time you run into venison is when a hunter gets a kill and we can't eat that. But it's not correct to say that "Jews don't eat them"; we could if we wanted to put in the effort. And anyway, who's to say that we never have or never will? – Monica Cellio Sep 11 '14 at 02:10
  • 3
    @MonicaCellio You can get kosher venison, if you know where to look ;) – MTL Sep 11 '14 at 03:13
  • @Shokhet true. I should have said "almost the only time...". (I have not personally ever seen kosher venison.) – Monica Cellio Sep 11 '14 at 03:16
  • 1
    This meta post should be relevant to anyone interested in answering. – MTL Sep 11 '14 at 03:27
  • If I remember correctly there was an undergraduate at Magdalen College Oxford, that has a deer park, who organized a shochet etc for kosher venison for the College Ball. – Epicentre Sep 11 '14 at 07:08
  • I've had kosher venison at a fancy kosher restaurant in New York City. I didn't care for it, too "gamey" as people say, but it was deer meat, and it was kosher. (and ridiculously expensive). – Jake Sep 11 '14 at 07:08

1 Answers1

5

Leviticus Ch. 1 makes it clear that the only mammals available as sacrifices were cattle, sheep, and goats. So as soon as the Torah said (a few chapters later into Leviticus) that "deer and gazelle are kosher animals", that meant you could eat them (by trapping and slaughtering them) without them being sacrifices. Yes they're wild, so they're a bit inconvenient to kill in a kosher way, but not at all impossible.

During the time in the desert, the only way you could have kosher beef or lamb was if you brought it to the portable Temple as a sacrifice (they'd burn some of the fats and give you plenty of meat to eat). Moses is saying when they enter the land of Israel they can have kosher beef that's non-sacrificial -- just like kosher venison was non-sacrificial since Day 1.

Shalom
  • 132,602
  • 8
  • 193
  • 489
  • 1
    +1, though the answer would be greatly improved by adding sources for the claim that "During the time in the desert, the only way you could have kosher beef or lamb was if you brought it to the portable Temple as a sacrifice" [ I'm not saying it's incorrect, just that a source would be nice ] – MTL Sep 11 '14 at 05:39