I’ve been working out a lot lately, and my body is doing that thing that it does when I actually use it: it wants to eat meat.

But of course, now, with all this food stuff going on, I have to think about it.

Like many people, I have a meat-eating history. I grew up eating it. Then I stopped at age 14 when I read “Diet for a New America” – but persisted in eating salmon because I was from Vancouver, and turkey on Thanksgiving because damn the house smelled good! Then was the phase where I was still a vegetarian but really wanted to eat meat – that was when I started playing rugby – my girlfriend would give me a bite of her hamburger only after she made me say out loud “I’m a vegetarian” and she found the whole thing pretty funny.

These days, I do eat meat. Not often. Not without thought. And not, if I can help it, of the variety that comes from feedlots or factories—and fortunately there’s more of that available these days. But I do think about it when I eat it. It’s a challenge to sort out the various (and sometimes competing) desires to live ethically, and at the same time, to eat meat.

There’s a story I heard recently about the Ba’al Shem Tov, great Lithuanian rebbe, who was also a shochet (ritual slaughterer):

After the Ba’al Shem Tov passed, a new shochet took his place. He was well-learned in all the laws and followed them scrupulously. He sharpened his knife, knew just where to hold the neck, how to make the cut.
He noticed, though, that a man would watch him as he slaughtered the chickens, and shake his head in disapproval. After several days, he asked the man what he was doing wrong.
“I wet the blade, I sharpen it, I make the smallest, quickest cut, just as I learned from the Ba’al Shem Tov. What am I doing that’s upsetting you?”
The man, who remembered watching the Ba’al Shem Tov prepare for and slaughter animals, shook his head.
“It is true, you wet the blade and sharpen it. But where you use water to sharpen your blade, the Ba’al Shem Tov used his own tears.”

I’m not sure the story means we should cry every time we eat meat. But it is worth thinking about, a little, before your next burger.