One of the most important prohibitions of the Old Testament, which we find already in the “post-flood” covenant with Noah, is the prohibition against eating blood. Both there and in today’s reading it is emphasized that the reason for this prohibition is that in the blood of an animal is its life, its soul. Blood, as we know, really does play an essential and irreplaceable role in the functioning of the organism: its disease or loss is equivalent to the loss of life.

Thus today we read not simply about a certain ritual taboo, but about God declaring His undivided authority over life and death. Indeed, since He is the Creator and source of life, He is also its master. Only He can permit a person to kill animals for food, though this was not so in the beginning, just as He forbids the killing of a human being.

Meanwhile every day people quite legally kill thousands of their own kind — in abortions, executions, wars — and in essence drink rivers of human blood before the Lord. This commandment is assimilated by humanity with the greatest difficulty. When will we all understand that we have no right to kill?

One of the traditional Jewish ritual prohibitions, known both in Yahwistic and in Jewish religious practice, is the prohibition against eating meat with blood. One might ask why blood should be forbidden when the animal has already been killed and is intended for food. In any case, that blood will end up on the ground; the slaughtered animal cannot be brought back to life. The simplest answer would be to point out that human beings were allowed to eat animal flesh after the fall, when the covenant with Noah was made.

Blood poured out on the ground serves as a reminder that this is something extraordinary, something that under normal circumstances, had the fall not happened, should not have existed at all. There is also a deeper explanation. It concerns blood as the symbol and vessel of life.

According to the biblical understanding, the "soul," or life, of both an animal and fallen humanity is in the blood and is bound precisely to the blood. Blood is used during sacrifice for the sanctification of a person, together with the sacrificial meat, of course; but a sacrificial meal does not take place at every sacrifice, while sprinkling with blood always does.

A sacrifice can be offered only at the Tabernacle; any other sacrifice is considered pagan. This is understandable: God marked the place of His presence where He chose to mark it, and it is not for human beings to establish meeting places with Him. Yet people need to eat everywhere, not only where the Tabernacle is, and God does not forbid a person to eat meat wherever he has to live.

Blood is another matter: it is God's, whether the blood in question is an animal's or a human being's. It is not for nourishment; it is for sanctification, and only for sanctification. To consume it as food in the same way as meat is an attack on what is holy, on what belongs and must belong only to God. That is why the Book of Leviticus commands that blood be poured out on the ground: the earth is God's, and what falls there returns to God. So too must every life return to Him, life whose symbol and vessel in the Bible is blood.