D’var Torah: Noach 2025/5786 נח
Caleb Schachter, Grade 8
Imagine if you went into Rami’s on a Sunday night, and instead of ordering a shawarma or falafel, you ask: “May I please have a cheeseburger?”
Now, I know you are wondering: How is that possible? Is Rami’s still kosher? And if they are still kosher, is it because they are now exclusively using lab-grown meat? Is lab-grown meat kosher? Is it fleishig or parve?
In my fantasy scenario, the employee hands me a cheeseburger, and I can taste the real cheese and the lab-grown meat that tastes like beef. Today, I’ll be discussing if this is indeed halachically possible.
But first, let’s talk about today’s parashah, Parshat Noach, which is the first time meat is permitted for people to eat. At the very beginning of the Torah, in the Garden of Eden, Hashem only allows Adam and Chava to eat vegetation (Bereishit 1:29):
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים
And God said:
הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת־כׇּל־עֵשֶׂב זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע אֲשֶׁר עַל־פְּנֵי כׇל־הָאָרֶץ
Behold, I have given you every herb which is upon the face of all the earth,
וְאֶת־כׇּל־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ פְרִי־עֵץ זֹרֵעַ זָרַע לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאׇכְלָה׃
and every tree, in which is the fruit, to you it shall be for food.
However, after the flood, when Noach and his family leave the Ark, Hashem grants permission for them to eat meat.
In Bereishit 9:1-4, the Torah says:
And God blessed Noach and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Fear and dread of you shall be upon all the animals of the earth, upon all the birds of the heavens, in all that creeps on the ground, and in all the fish of the sea. The Torah says;
בְּיֶדְכֶם נִתָּנוּ
Into your hands they have been given.
כׇּל־רֶמֶשׂ אֲשֶׁר הוּא־חַי לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאׇכְלָה
All creeping things which live will be yours for eating
כְּיֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת־כֹּל
like green vegetation, I have given you all.
Ramban explains (Bereishit 1:29) that Hashem allowed Noach, his family, and their descendants to kill and eat the animals, because no animals would be alive after the flood if it wasn't for Noach.
However, there was one restriction. In Bereishit 9:4, the Torah adds:
אַךְ־בָּשָׂר בְּנַפְשׁוֹ דָמוֹ לֹא תֹאכֵלוּ
But, flesh with its soul, its blood, you may not eat.
The Talmud in Masekhet Sanhedrin daf nun tet amud alef (59a) interprets this phrase “בָּשָׂר בְּנַפְשׁוֹ - flesh with it soul,” as prohibiting aver min haChai - eating the limb of a living animal.
Now, you might be thinking, who in their right mind would want to bite on a limb of a live animal? But, let’s think about lab-grown meat. A scientist extracts muscle cells from a cow and, in a lab, grows them into meat. The cow was never slaughtered and it is still in the barn. Would these cells be considered a limb of a live animal?
Which brings us back to my questions:
Is lab-grown meat kosher, or is it forbidden as the limb of a living animal?
If lab-grown meat can be made in a kosher way, is it fleishig or parve?
Let’s first consider the prohibition of Aver min HaChai (eating the limb of a living animal):
If the cow was not slaughtered, is extracting a muscle cell aver min hachai?
The argument that says it is aver min hachai has to do with the thought that a stem cell is a limb of a live animal that continues to grow. From a halakhic point of view, this may be the same as the halakhic principle of yotzei min haissur assur – that which comes from something non-kosher is non-kosher, and, according to some Rabbis, the second item would have the same status as the first item. In this case, the lab-grown meat would have the same status as a live cow.
Now, let’s consider the other point of view. Why would an extracted muscle cell not be a problem of aver min hachai? It may be kosher because we can compare it to milk or eggs.
Rabbi Shlomo Kluger in his Sefer of Responsa, HaElef Lecha Shlomo – Yoreh Deah סימן שכב teaches that milk or eggs, that come from a living animal are still Kosher because they are not limbs. This idea could also be applied to taking stem cells from a living animal – because you are not taking a limb, but just one cell.
Now all of this applies to extracting a muscle cell from a living cow, but what if it was extracted from a dead cow? If the cow was slaughtered would it require a kosher shechita?
I think that it would require a proper shechita because, even though people aren't eating anything straight from the cow, the stem cells would still need to be kosher. Because the stem cell was taken from a dead non-schechted cow, it would make the stem cell immediately not Kosher.
And finally, one last question: If the cow was kosherly slaughtered before the stem cell was extracted, is the lab-grown meat really meat, or is it perhaps parve?
The reason I like this question is because there are many possible answers. And, how do we know which answer is right? Maybe it is simply an application of already-existing halakhic principles. As I mentioned earlier, there is the halakhic principle yotzei min haHissur assur, but could that also be applied to ‘HaYotzei min HaFleishigs Fleishigs?
For example, while eggs are parve, the rabbis say that if you slaughter a chicken and find eggs in the chicken, those eggs are not parve, but fleishig.
Another way to answer this question is to see if there are any halakhic analogies. This means comparing different cases that seem to have similar components.
Let’s take the example of kilayim. The Torah prohibits planting different species together. For example, you cannot plant onions in a vineyard. This is called Kilayei haKerem. The Torah commands (דברים כב:ט)
לֹא־תִזְרַע כַּרְמְךָ כִּלְאָיִם
You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed
פֶּן־תִּקְדַּשׁ הַמְלֵאָה הַזֶּרַע אֲשֶׁר תִּזְרָע וּתְבוּאַת הַכָּרֶם׃
Lest the whole fruit be forfeited, the seed which you have sown, and the produce of the vineyard.
In other words, if you plant onions in your vineyard, both the onions and the grapes would be treif. However, what happens if you leave the onion bulbs underground and cut down all the grape vines, and then the onions grow back the next season? This new growth is called giddulin. Is it forbidden or permissible?
The halakha is: only the original onion is forbidden, but the new onions, the giddulin, that grew later from the original onion are permitted.
How might we apply the concept of Giddulin to the case of stem cells? Could we say that a stem cell harvested from a non-slaughtered cow, or even from an improperly slaughtered cow, that is then used to grow muscle cells, is just like Giddulin?
The original stem cell (like the onion planted in the vineyard) are treif, but all of the muscle cells that came from the first stem cell are considered Kosher (just like all the new onions). Perhaps, we could go so far as to say that if the new-growth muscle cells are not halachically seen as connected to the original stem cell, maybe they are not even considered fleishig, and lab-grown meat would likewise be considered parve.
There are those who believe that stem cells and lab-grown meat are fundamentally different than giddulin. In the case of giddulin, the new onions are completely new entities. But in the case of lab-grown meat, the stem cells grow into meat and do not make new stem cells which then grow into meat.
Overall, there are many ways that you could say that lab-grown meat would be Kosher, but there are also many ways that it could be treif. As of right now, the issue has yet to be halachically decided in a conclusive way. My hope is still that one day, I will be able to buy a kosher cheeseburger.
