Elevating the Discourse with Jonathan Crane

Down the Wormhole

Episode 82

In part 13 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Crane. We talk about the various ways that religious and generational groups handle trauma, how we can reclaim the sacred act of eating, and whether we can make the world a better place by paying closer attention to the labels at the grocery store.

Dr Crane is the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Jewish Thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University, is Professor of Medicine and of Religion, and is the founding director of the Food Studies and Ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained Rabbi, He is the founder and co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Ethics, and author of several books including Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet (2018), Narratives and Jewish Bioethics (2013) and Ahimsa: The way to Peace.

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produced by Zack Jackson
music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.

Zack Jackson 00:05

You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week we are exploring how that relationship gets worked out in real life with one of the current Sinai and Synapses, fellows, Sinai and Synapses is a two year fellowship committed to elevating the discourse surrounding religion and science and where the five of us first met. So, without further ado, our guest today is the Raman Ashkenazi scholar in bioethics and Jewish thought in the Center for Ethics at Emory University is the professor of medicine and of religion and as the founding director of the food studies and ethics program at Emory University. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, he is the founder and co editor of the Journal of Jewish ethics and author of several books. I want to welcome to the podcast, Jonathan crane,

Jonathan Crane 00:58

thank you so much for having me, Zack, it's a pleasure to be here.

Zack Jackson 01:01

Yeah, it is wonderful to finally get a chance to connect with you, you have a lot going on. It seems in your biography, a lot of books being published a lot of work being done in ethics, in religion in medicine, you are an ordained rabbi, as well as a full professor. just figuring out where to start in, in getting to know you a little bit better. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what's occupying your headspace these days?

Jonathan Crane 01:36

Well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm very much interested in understanding how and why people are responding to current events as they do. And there are so many that are provoking us in a variety of different ways. Everything from the pandemic, to racial tensions to ongoing conflicts to wars that are starting up and wars that are ending to climate change, to how we are unfortunately getting increasingly sick from the food that our civilization feeds to us. And there's a whole host to the list goes on and on. And so I'm very curious about how we, as individuals, as communities, as societies, countries, civilizations respond to these challenges and what sort of resources we bring to bear on our deliberations through figuring out what to do with these circumstances, which ones we prioritize is more urgent, which ones we kick the can down the road and say that technology will solve it sometime in the future. And which ones we actually tell ourselves that this is the time and this is the place, and we are the people to actually deal with the mess.

Zack Jackson 02:49

So in your in your professional opinion, how how are we handling, the current mess that we

Jonathan Crane 02:54

understand depends, of course, on whom you are talking about, and which which topics, I think some we are handling better, and certainly depending on the scale. So some institutions, schools or communities or cities or states, and even a few countries are dealing with their tensions and conflicts in very creative ways, and are showing market success toward reaching certain kinds of goals. So for example, New Zealand has done an extraordinary job of protecting its population from the ravages of COVID-19. But it's done so at an expense of closing down international tourism. And so that's a bit that itself demonstrates an ethical deliberation, they saw two things that are good. One is tourist tourism, and the other good is their own public's health. And so they decided that in this instance, one should take priority when they are in tension with each other. Whereas other countries have decided to, to go different routes, and prioritize other things instead of the public's health. And we can see how that plays out. So it really depends on what topic you want to focus in on and at what scale and what timeframe, before you can really begin to give the assessment on whether they are succeeding or not.

Zack Jackson 04:21

It seems there are a few countries in the world that handled the COVID outbreak worse than the United States. And that might just be biased because I'm in it. But it seems like the idea of there being something that we would have to collectively get behind and give up some of our individual liberties in order to better serve the whole is just so antithetical to this American cowboy spirit that we were sunk before the ship left the dock did you do you see any of have that in the why we were so poorly prepared and handled it so bad,

Jonathan Crane 05:06

different countries and America is no exception here, champion different notions of success and what their national story is. So we do have this myth here in the united states of India, rugged individualism. And one of the challenges and perhaps you can reflect on this, too is this pursuit of self interest has amazing power. And it has developed an incredible goods for America and Americans and the world writ large. But at the other hand, it also makes us extremely vulnerable, especially when there are challenges like a pandemic or a challenge, like climate change that impact everyone, and no one can find safety, because everybody is implicated and impacted by these challenges. So rugged individualism is now facing a challenge from from without, from outside of it. And one of the things that I have been impressed with there are those communities here within the United States, sub national communities. So certain cities or religious communities that have demonstrated that the pursuit of self interest is perhaps not as good as the pursuit of enlightened self interest. And when I say enlightened self interest, that means taking other people's interests into consideration as well, like the public's interest, and so they adjust and make changes in their practices and in their policies so as to protect the community, as well as trying to champion individual pursuits as well.

Zack Jackson 07:11

Yeah, I've seen I've seen pockets of that, as well. Do you think there's a generational gap here that younger generations are more community focused and older generations less? So?

Jonathan Crane 07:27

No, on the contrary, I think it's flipped. Now. I think that, at least here in the Atlanta area, I have seen the elderly population be much more vigilant and taking care of themselves and doing what is necessary not only to take care of themselves, but to protect the public writ large, and not engage in risky business, risky behaviors, I should say. Whereas younger generations, some of them understand the seriousness of this public health issue, and also follow vigilant protocols. And then there are, I would say, a fairly sizable minority of younger populations that still engage in Cavalier behavior.

Zack Jackson 08:14

It's interesting that she would say it that way. Because it's been, it's been noted many times by by folks that the younger generations are more globally minded, having grown up in a digitally in a digital world connected by the internet all the time, they they think of themselves more as citizens of the world, as opposed to citizens of a particular ethnic or local municipality. But when it comes to this particular crisis, that they are acting more, more reckless and less in terms of the collective good. That's interesting. It seems like there's a lot of different factors at play in any particular crisis, or

Jonathan Crane 09:04

or I think you're right about that i and and now that I'm thinking about, I think that you're stumbling onto something really interesting here is that perhaps the younger generations are more globally minded in regards to social and political issues. But when it comes to public health issues, to physical issues, about our bodily existence, I don't know whether that global mindedness translates that there's something about the the pre digital person who's not a digital native, who has a greater sense of embodiment, and understands just how vulnerable radically vulnerable we are to each other and to the broader environment that perhaps digital natives are less inherently attuned to.

Zack Jackson 09:57

Now that is something interesting to think about. as a as a person who is like a first generation digital, not really a digital native, a digital, what would you call someone who grew up analog and then turn digital in early teens? digital? Don't know, I can see both sides of that. I want to I want to shift and ask you a question about something that you brought up a little bit earlier, talking about public health crises, and how we deal with them. And you mentioned our modern world, our modern way of producing food and of eating, and how that is poisoning our bodies. And I know there's been a lot said on this topic, both scientifically and pseudo scientifically. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit to the scope of the work that you've done, I know you've, you've written an entire book on ethical eating.

Jonathan Crane 11:02

So that book, eat eating ethically, religion and science for a better diet, explores an old idea that the Abrahamic traditions, championed many, many decades ago, hundreds and 1000s of years ago. In a previous millennium, that built on an ancient Greek and Roman idea a classical idea of satiety that one should eat until one is sated, until and, and not until one has been collected. And this notion of eating until one is stated, these religious traditions in insist is a kind of eating strategy, a consumption strategy, where you listen to your body, and your body tells you when you have eaten enough, and it does not mean that you have eaten enough. It does not mean that in this one particular meal, you have eaten enough calories or eaten enough protein or eaten enough micronutrients. But on the whole if one eats this way, eating until you have become sated, and you do this chronically, it is far healthier for your body than if you eat until you have filled your belly or glutted yourself. This is not to say that you should not eat an occasional festive meal. Indeed, every religious tradition mandates festive meals, like for example, Easter, feast or eat at the end of Ramadan, or Passover meal. These feasts are designed specifically to be special, but they can only be special in the context of calendar year where you are not eating a festive meal every single day. If you did that, that would be maladaptive biologically, and also transgressive according to the religious traditions, and contemporary science of nutrition has is corroborating this ancient idea that what is healthy, and also what these traditions say is what is holy, is actually biologically adaptive. Our bodies are designed to eat until we are sated. And all only on occasion, eat beyond that point. So the book tries to explore these ideas of the distinction between maladaptive and adaptive eating between healthy, healthy and unhealthy eating unhealthy and holy eating, and bring it together into conversation with contemporary science. I and my teaching continues to explore some of these ideas. Here at Emory, I teach a variety of courses that a suite of courses the fold into the food studies and ethics program that we're trying to develop here. Because eating is a dynamic relationship. And any relationship is fraught with ethical decisions all the time eating is perhaps one of the most pursued relationships that we all are engaged relationships that we have in our lives. And we need to take time in our lives make time and, and give ourselves the privilege, the opportunity to pay attention to where our food comes from. Who is growing it How does it get from farm to factory to to the local restaurant and to your fork and what are you doing with your fork? We need to be paying attention to all of these questions. So I think that industry and government and cells have done extraordinary jobs in making the food system info hate, obscure, really difficult to have access to. The meat industry is notorious for hiding behind high walls, both physical and legal. I so much so that it is now a criminal in activity to engage in investigative journalism into certain in certain states when you want to go investigate what's going on, on animal factory farming entities. So this does not breed transparency, and it certainly does not inculcate trust. And so it, this is killing us. It's making it difficult for us to trust the food system, it's making it difficult for us to trust not only what the food is and how it gets to us, but also what it's doing to us bodily. We can see it in our ballooning waistlines and our deteriorating health. And

Zack Jackson 16:12

a lot of that sounds familiar, I think a lot of us have heard this, this call to more humane ways of treating animals and livestock have more attentive ways to think about the things that we put in our bodies. But you mentioned a phrase that I don't know if I've heard before holy eating. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how the how eating can be a holy

Jonathan Crane 16:45

practice. So every religious tradition that I have come across spends a lot of time and energy and spills a lot of ink, across time and space, thinking about what it means to be an eater of the world. And the world that food has to be if it's going to be food, that has to be not your own body that you're eating. So it can't be your fingernails, it can't be your finger, it can't be your arm, he got to eat something, that's not you. And so that means that it's a relationship with something outside of yourself. And so these religious traditions, he's turned on Western, native and global, spend a lot of time thinking about what that relationship should look like. And they describe and prescribe what they consider to be appropriate ways of managing those consumptive relationships, eating. And so what eating looks like, say, for Judaism, that's the tradition I'm most familiar with, looks a peculiar way. In its details, then say how a Christian my understand to be appropriate and holy eating. But that's not to say that Christianity, and Judaism are mutually allergic about the importance of eating, they just have different details about how to think these things through. So when I say holy eating on every, again, as I hope that religious traditions take eating very seriously. And our civilizations, our companies, try to do a lot of effort to make us forget those commitments that our traditions encourages us to think about, or they try to capitalize on them. And I think one of our challenges as creatures of the 21st century is to reclaim those tried and true, religiously based notions of eating. They were developed over a lot of time, and a lot of space for those good reasons. And we should know that for the vast majority of these religious traditions, views on eating, were developed in context of scarcity and agricultural vulnerability, they did not have big monocropping Technologies. They did not have drip irrigation, they did not have aquaponics. They were exposed to the natural to the vagaries of the natural world. And they did not have supermarkets, and they certainly did not have to our delivery systems to to get what they wanted to their front doors. We live in a context for the most part of extraordinary super abundance. And eating, just because we can is not necessarily eating everything that we can just because we can, is maladaptive biologically and contrary to what our religious traditions teach us.

Zack Jackson 20:17

So if there's someone out there who would like to start thinking deep deeper about where their food comes from, who wants to change their purchasing habits, such that it causes the least amount of suffering in the world. And so they go to the to the grocery store, and they choose to spend an extra dollar 50 on eggs that say cage free or free range, or they decide to buy some bread that says no GMO, or organic, or any number of these pictures and badges and signs and phrases that grace our foods these days. Do any of them mean anything? Can we trust those labels to help us to make better choices,

Jonathan Crane 21:13

we can trust them that they're trying to sell us something, not just the companies to market and attract and seduce and entice? Absolutely, there is only one term that has legal definition and teeth to it. And that is the term organic in order for a product. To claim that it is organic, it must meet certain legal standards of where its ingredients come from, and how those ingredients are produced and manufactured. Everything else any other marketing claim that is found on a package is just that it is a marketing claim. There is no standards outside of that term. So anything that says that it's healthy, that it says that it's all natural, that it has no GMOs, that may or may not be true, but it doesn't mean anything. Anything that has corn in it is necessarily a GMO product, because contemporary corn is unless it's some rare heritage breed, it is a genetically modified organism. So one would have to search far and wide to find to find products that are truly not impacted by save genetically modified or efforts technologies. So you ask what can a person do, a person can look at their purchasing practices, and figure out what their values are, and what their highest priorities are, and figure out how their purchasing practices align with reflect and reinforce those values that I tell my students, they should try when they go to the local grocery store is to just walk around the outside of the grocery store, the outermost layer, do not go through the middle aisles of a grocery store because those are usually where you find find barcode products. And those things that are bar coded are typically manufactured and manufactured products are those that are, for the most part. unhealthy. The fresh produce is on the outside, the fresh dairy, the fresh meats, those are typically offered on the outsides of grocery stores.

Zack Jackson 23:48

I remember some time ago, there being some legal battle with McDonald's because they advertise their chicken nuggets as made with white meat or something made with 100% white meat. And the it was actually made with with some slurry of chicken parts. But white meat was included in that. And so technically by saying made with 100% white meat, they could say like no, we used 100% white meat in it. And so we didn't lie technically, it's just also bones and cartilage and things that are all chopped up.

Jonathan Crane 24:28

Like dog food. Exactly. So companies will go to great lengths, especially those companies that use animal products will go to great lengths to to misinform the public. And they do this for a variety of different reasons. We don't need to get into all of those details. It's complicated, but we should know that. They are there are very creative industries that that make that try to swage consumer concerns And make them feel comfortable in buying their products.

Zack Jackson 25:04

that occurs to me as well that a lot of a lot of the places that have options of fresh ingredients and fresh produce and fresh, locally sourced whatnot, are places of privilege of money, that there's a lot of places, especially in the cities that we call food deserts, where there's not a supermarket within, within the ability to get to without taking several buses. And you're kind of forced to get your food from the local bodega. And a lot of that is questionable at best. And the food that is more affordable because of government subsidies to things like corn and wheat are things that are almost completely just corn that is flavored in different ways to look like real food, but it's not actually real food. So the it strikes me that that a lot of the the fight to help America to figure out how to get its food priorities back in line is also an issue of, of justice for our underserved populations.

Jonathan Crane 26:17

Yes, you're right, there's a lot of racism that's embedded in contemporary zoning. Not just contemporary, but historical zoning practices about where grocery stores can and should be located. There were banking practices that allowed for certain kinds of businesses to be established in certain kinds of neighborhoods and not established and other kinds of neighborhoods. There's a lot of sexism that's involved in this and education ism, as well about who can and should have rightful access to healthier foods. There's classism that's embedded in all of these practices as well, we should recognize that the history of the laws governing our contemporary food environment, were designed precisely to continue to, to fatten the profits of the well off to for the corporations. And there were there were very few incentives to actually democratize, access, democratize the production of food. And that story is quite pronounced here in the south. Black farmers were notoriously kept off out of gaining access to capital investments to improve their farms. And so they had to eventually sell them. And then they become ground, landless. And they had to find their economic wherewithal in urban areas. And so there are, there are a fraction, just a tiny percentage of all American farmers are black, or brown. Even though many of the laborers are black and brown on farms. The people who actually own the farms, or manage them are not minority populations. There's a historical set of complicated interlocking stories about why this is the case. So you're pointing to exactly why we need to have not just a dispassionate investigation into these issues, but a real consideration of the ethics that have been involved in many of those decisions. And what should the ethical values be at play as we move forward?

Zack Jackson 28:42

And thinking globally, as well. There's there's a lot of pushback in the United States right now about genetically modified plants. And I think part of that is Monsanto is not helping by being in kind of a dastardly organization. But there, there's push on either side, when places that are being ravaged by climate change, or dealing with long periods of drought, who can't sustain their populations, they're being production of like, vegetables that can that are more drought resistant, through genetic modification, and using science and technology to make food easier to grow for in needing less water for places. And then there are others that would say that, you know, we don't know the long term implications of people eating that kind of unnatural food, and we could be poisoning developing nations through this. Do you have any insights into into that? So

29:45

I

Jonathan Crane 29:47

I'm disinclined to, to speak about a particular company. Just because I don't know enough about what say Monsanto or other seed companies do. But it is, I think, right to say that we need to have a sincere conversation about the centralization of seeds for farming practices. That is a complicated story that needs to be investigated from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. But we also need to recognize that climate change is real. And people need to feed themselves in a sustainable fashion no matter where they are in the world. And that if science can help by creating drought resistant or flood resistant crops, then though those are goods, we don't want to put so many regulations on genetically modifying organisms, that it puts a chilling effect on these kinds of research programs. So there are goods that can be done with genetically modified technologies, in certain places at certain times.

Zack Jackson 31:17

I tend to be in that camp, as well. I also tend to be somebody who trust science a little bit too much. Maybe just recognizing that technology is only as as good as the benevolence of the of the people wielding it. Well, on that point, I'm

Jonathan Crane 31:35

teaching a course here at Emory called immoral medicine. We're looking at the Nuremberg medical trials in 1946 47, about what the Nazis notoriously did during World War Two to their own citizens to indigenous non German citizens, both in their clinics, their communities, as well as, obviously in the concentration camps. And the vast majority of their victims in these biomedical experiments were Jews and political prisoners. But I

32:07

the

Jonathan Crane 32:08

one of the things that we're coming to really appreciate in this course, is that the Nazis were very much guided by a utilitarian ethic that they wanted to do what was best for the state. And because that was their that was their ultimate goal that justify that goal justified any means it justified doing heinous things to innocent victims, I so we do need to be wary about science, that is unbridled, unregulated, pursuing science or knowledge, just for the sake of knowledge is a good but if it is done without any kind of ethical constraints, it can unfortunately, history shows us It can lead to disastrous AI programs of investigation and also results. Right.

Zack Jackson 33:10

Now, I mean, I think they argued that they they were operating under a certain ethic, a certain ethic that the individual suffering is not as important as the greater good, which I mean, many in the world that argue is an not ethical ethic. How do we, how do we police ethics,

Jonathan Crane 33:34

by continuing to put it on the public's radar, we need to have conversations about what our values are, and to have ongoing conversations about what are our convictions? What should be our commitments. This is true not only in the science arena, and not only true in the food arena and public health arena, but it's also true in our social arena. What what sort of values should be guiding our commitments to vulnerable populations. We need to have these conversations from time to time and they're going to be uncomfortable, and we need to be comfortable sitting in that discomfort as individuals and as a society but to defer to political elites to defer to academic elites. And I'm putting elites in air quotes. By delegating or relegating certain kinds of conversations to others, we absolve ourselves of participating in these conversations that necessarily should involve as many people as possible.

Zack Jackson 34:48

So changing gears a little bit. What was it that led you initially to the Sinai and Synapses fellowship?

Jonathan Crane 34:58

Somebody who's interested In religion and contemporary issues, the the tensions, the dynamic relationship between religion and science is, has been there from the very beginning. And it's as alive as ever. So this is perhaps the best venue to too, to interact with clergy, professionals, academic policy, people, science people, it everybody's curious about how best to appreciate the wisdom that is derived from religious traditions, as well as insights that can be derived from scientific explorations of the world.

Zack Jackson 35:45

Has there been anything in in this fellowship that has surprised you

Jonathan Crane 35:51

the the ease with which it is possible to relate in deep ways with people who come from different religious communities as well as different scientific commitments that I have found for the many years that I've now been involved with Sinai and Synapses. That the people are really genuinely nice and curious and welcoming, and generous, and willing to hear somebody else's perspective, even if they don't necessarily agree with it, or even fully understand it. And that's been really refreshing, especially in this middle, you this contemporary political milieu here in the United States, where people demean and damn others who are not waving the same kind of flag that they were with.

Zack Jackson 36:55

Yeah, thing that's the main criteria for admission into the fellowship is you must be curious and kind. So as we approach the end of our time together, I want to ask you one final question, feel free to take as much time as you need. The question I've asked every other fellow before you. And that is, what is one thing that you wish everyone knew about the world.

Jonathan Crane 37:23

That it's vast. It's big. And because it's so big, you can zoom out and look at it from 30,000 feet, and still only see a fraction of it. And you can zoom in and take a microscope to it and dig deep down. But you're only going to see a tiny fraction of it to It's big. And that's when I talk about the world being big. I'm talking about not just the natural world, which is awesome, and intricate, and fragile. But I'm also talking about the social world. It's also variegated, and complicated. And I'm also talking about the world that's within each one of us. There's so much within each person that is still a mystery, to be experienced and to be appreciated. And that's one of the things that I hope that all folks can come to really appreciate is that you can learn new things about yourself. may not be things that you want to be learning may not be things that you're proud of about yourself, and the things that you might want to change. But there is always something new to learn about oneself if you are willing to pay attention to it. So the world is vast. And I really do hope that people are willing to be courageous explorers. Hmm.

Zack Jackson 38:52

Thank you for that. That is essentially the synopsis of the book that I've been writing about. Well, thank you so, so much for being here, and for sharing some of the work that you're doing some of the passion that drives you, and thank you for the work that you are doing through the fellowship, and I look forward to Reading and hearing more about what you do.

Jonathan Crane 39:18

Well, thank you so much, Zack. It's been a real pleasure and delight talking with you today.