Behinds!

July 1 is the 183rd day of the year...I last wrote on day 170. I feel horrendously guilty! Between my internship/driving to and from my internship, my online math course and the midterm I took for it today, visiting my brother in Chicago, experimenting with the number of hours of sleep I can function on, and attempting to spend time with my parents and a friend here and there, I have had zero time to write here.

Which is also a bad thing. I don't like thinking that I sometimes don't have time to study or learn or read what I'd like to read. So here's the deal: I'm going to add-in a couple days entries here and make up the rest SOON. [I don't want to give myself a deadline because I don't want to be disappointed if I don't meet it.]

ALSO side note: just a thought I had today. I'm so thankful to God for the determination He gave me. I'm driven and relatively focused and I owe many of my successes to these traits which I believe both God and my biological parents get some credit for. I just realized that when I do something and come out of it proud of myself, the first thing I do alone is thank God for how well it went. Okay, that's it. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Day 171: Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: What the Torah Says

"A righteous person knows the soul of his animal."-Proverbs 12:10

We have this concept in Judaism, tza'ar ba'alei chayim, the prevention of cruelty to animals. I think a lot of animal lovers find something special in Judaism because our religion tries to go out of its way to be kind to animals: we can take the eggs from a nest as long as we shoo the mother bird away to prevent distressing her, we must kill the animals we will eat as fast and painless as possible, animals are even supposed to rest on the Sabbath!

Recently, I saw something about some sort of new animal cruelty prevention laws being implemented somewhere in the U.S. I can't find anything on it now but if I see something, I'll include it in my Shabbas entry!

Day 172: Can Veal Be Kosher?

One of my non-Jewish co-workers was telling me the other day that because of her morals and beliefs, she refused to eat veal...until she found out one day that her father had been making his meatballs with it for years without telling her.

I didn't really think about what was so wrong with veal until...well...right now actually.

To spare you the gory and possibly disturbing details, it depends who you ask about the kashrut status of veal. If you believe that kashrut is all about how the animal is killed, then veal can be kosher. However, if you believe that kashrut is also about how the animal is raised and treated, then you might believe that veal is not kosher.