Reply To: What have you "given up" to be frum?

Probably the biggest recent advocate of not eating meat would be Rav Kook z’tz’l who wrote that the permission to eat meat after Noach to be a concession to human frailty. The position is reminiscent of Rambam’s famous position on korbanot. It reminds me of the end of Mesilat Yesharim: Not everyone can reach the highest levels. But all can observe the halachah and the halachah clearly permits us to eat meat that is properly slaughtered. (And indeed we are now learning hilchot shechita in the Daf Yomi, in chapter 2 of Chullin. My daf yomi shiur had a special guest on Sunday — a rabbinical student who is finishing his training as a shochet. He gave a demonstration of the care and use of a shechita knife.)

And that leads to another important point. Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski has written that in our times it is no longer sufficient to be “Shulchan Aruch Jews” that simply observe the halachah. Instead we need to go to another level and become “Mesilat Yesharim Jews”. I presume that he means that in the past simply observing the halachah was enough but that in our times the condition of the world is such that we need to go further.