My friends tell me it is against the Torah to be a vegetarian? Is it?

While Hashem gave us permission to eat certain animals, He never said or implied that we must eat them. Because Adam and Chava (Eve) ate a forbidden food, they were ousted from Gan Eden. The food they ate was forbidden and therefore not kosher. Why it was forbidden is answered in part after they ate it. But that still does not say that the tree was safe to eat. It might have been poisonous—poisonous enough to overcome their immortality.

I once mistook a plant for an onion, and I vomited almost immediately after eating it. That was a good lesson, but I would have to say that I still have not learned that lesson. Many delicious looking plants are poisonous, either known to cause diseases like cancer or known to be fatal. While I know that, I still have to fight myself when it comes to tasting fruits. I was walking in the neighborhood just in the past few weeks, and I noticed a lovely fruiting plant growing in a neighbor's yard by the sidewalk. The fruits were about the size of cherries and just as red. I was enchanted, and I had to try one. It was delicious. It tasted like an apple. It could also have been poisonous. Curiosity could have killed the cat—me! While I do not have to eat everything, I like to taste everything. Therein lies my own struggle with restraint, and I do not fight against it hard enough when it comes to fruits.

When parents tell their children not to eat or do something, it is often for their own good and even for their protection. The proverbial cookie jar isn't going to kill them or give them cancer, but a belly full is not going to contribute to good health and could give them a belly ache.

As soon as we are told "no," we have to make a choice to restrain ourselves or to let our curiosity or desire get the better of us. Since mankind could not refrain from eating animals, Hashem, being as merciful as He is, gave them other prohibitions. Noah was given the law not to cut off the limb of a living animal. The Chinese do not obey this law. You can go to a Chinese market in China, and you can buy a piece of a living (and miserably dying) animal.

Read Bereshis (Genesis) 1:29. A person who is a vegetarian is keeping the first dietary law given to mankind. He is conquering his desire for meat. How can the Torah have a problem with that?

Unfortunately, there are people who will have a problem with that. People do not like when someone in a group acts differently. Look, that's one of the reasons Jewish people are so often disliked. We do things differently. Jewish people are as human as others, so if one person acts differently, it may make others at the table feel nervous. It is as if they are confronted with their own lack of restraint and feel guilty about it. No one likes to feel guilty, and if someone is of the opinion, even subconsciously that his guilt is a result of someone else’s behavior, he will fight back to protect his ego and justify his behavior.

The Torah is in great measure about the problem of restraint. Consider any number of people who could not restrain themselves from abominable behaviors: Cain who murdered his brother, the people who taunted Noah and had not restrained themselves from taking whichever women they wanted, Lot’s wife, Lot with his daughters, Kimchi, Bilaam, and thousands more. Adam and Chava were the first examples and the role model for all their children all the way to us. We have not learned yet to restrain ourselves and obey Hashem.

We are all of us humans, and we each have our own challenges, and the issue of restraint is often at the bottom of our behavior, and it is always about that free will—choice! Adam and Chava were curious and they liked their fruit. Lot’s wife could not restrain herself from looking back for her daughters, Lot could not restrain himself from committing incest, Kimchi had to bed Kosbi, Bilaam could not resist the wealth that Balak promised him, even when he had multiple divine warnings. Like so many others throughout the Torah and throughout history, Bilaam is an example of those who are more afraid of evil men than they are of Hashem.

You do not have to let other people get on your nerves. You are on this earth to serve Hashem, not other people. I applaud you for your sticking to your vegetarian diet, and I also encourage you to continue what you are able to do and which so many other people are incapable of doing because they must have their meat.

Links:
http://www.jewishveg.com/jv.html
http://jewishvegetarianism.com/
http://www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/dietgod.html