Maran Rav Kook wrote that although, according to the perfect ideal, a person should not eat animal flesh, people should not be encouraged to refrain from eating meat at our present moral level. After the flood, when it became clear how low humanity could fall, the Torah sought to direct human beings toward their primary task: repairing the relationships between people. The gap between human beings and animals is vast. Human beings are created in the image of God, with developed thought and a deep emotional life; when a person is wronged, the injury reaches incomparably deeper than it does in an animal. And when people treat one another with decency and love, their relationships become fruitful and can help bring redemption to the world. To keep the moral demand of “Love your fellow as yourself” (Vayikra 19:18), and the teaching “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” (Shabbat 31a), at the center of moral life, the Torah directed us, for now, to set aside the ideal of refraining from harm to animals (Rav Kook, Ḥazon Ha-tzimḥonut Ve-ha-shalom 6–7). For this reason, one may slaughter animals for food. As the Sages teach, all creatures were created to serve human beings (Kiddushin 82a); at the world’s present moral level, this means that they may also be eaten.
There is a further danger as well. If too much moral effort were directed toward cultivating love for animals before human morality itself had been repaired, then instead of improving the animals’ lot, it would damage the moral relations among people. Those whose moral sense is not properly developed might say to themselves: “Since we do not refrain from killing animals and eating them, perhaps we may also kill people who stand in our way, and perhaps even eat their flesh.” Others, though morally corrupt, would channel their better impulses toward animals — for even a wicked person retains some spark of kindness — and, having soothed their conscience by treating their pets well, would feel free to steal from, exploit, and kill human beings. For this reason, in the current state of society, people should not be encouraged to stop eating meat. As long as people still crave meat, that craving itself shows that we have not yet reached the stage at which refraining from eating it has moral value (Ḥazon Ha-tzimḥonut Ve-ha-shalom 4, 6, 11).
In the future, however, all creation will rise to a higher state. The kabbalists teach that animals, too, will be elevated and developed until they are capable of speech (Arizal, Sha’ar Ha-mitzvot, Parashat Ekev). Their moral stature will also be transformed completely, as the prophet states (Yeshayahu 11:6–9): “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf, the young lion, and the fatling together, and a small child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like cattle. An infant shall play over the hole of a cobra, and a weaned child shall stretch his hand over the viper’s den. They shall not harm nor destroy throughout My holy mountain, for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
Then everyone will understand that it is inappropriate to kill animals, and no one will desire to eat their flesh. As the prophet says (Hoshea 2:20): “On that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground; and bow, sword, and war I will break from the earth” (Ḥazon Ha-tzimḥonut Ve-ha-shalom 12, 32).
