Who made this, and how.
My name is Jacob Relkin. I put this together over many late nights, because I got tired of hearing this argument made badly: with careless sources, or with anger and no Torah. Arguments like that lose, and they deserve to. An argument from Torah has to hold up when someone opens the Talmud and checks it.
I am vegan for the animals, and because it is the right thing to do. You should know that before you read a word of the argument, because it means I am not neutral. This site does not survey every view. It argues for one conclusion, and you should read it knowing what I want: for you to go vegan.
But I did not need the Torah to win this argument for me. The sources are here because the tradition says a great deal about how we treat animals, and most of it is never taught. If every source on this site disappeared tomorrow, the animals would still be in the sheds, and what is done to them would still be wrong. I am not using the Torah to prop up a view I already held. The Torah is my inheritance, and I think most people read right past what it says about animals.
לְעִלּוּי נִשְׁמָתָם · For my grandparents.
This site is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Harry Lerner and Lily Lerner.
My grandmother Lily Gluck Lerner was sixteen, a Hungarian Jew, when she was taken to Auschwitz. She survived it, and everything that came after — the family at her table, the grandson who built this site — is her answer to the people who meant for her to die. Decades later she set her testimony down in a memoir. It is called The Silence. Part of this site is about a silence too: why your rabbi hasn't said this. I did not plan for the two to match. When I noticed it, I kept it. The two silences share only one thing, the cost of not speaking. They share nothing of what each one was about.
I have to say the next part carefully, because it is the deepest thing in me and the easiest to say wrong. I do not compare the Shoah to anything. Nothing on this site places my grandparents' suffering on a scale beside anything else, for any cause. Their memory is not an argument, and I will not use it as one.
But I will say how their lives changed the way I see. Growing up as the grandchild of people who survived the camps left something in me that has never gone away: an alarm that goes off when I see innocent beings in cages, or machinery built calmly around suffering. I did not choose that sensitivity. I inherited it, the way you inherit a name. When I finally looked at what is done to animals, every second of every day, the alarm went off on its own. This site is what I did about it. It is not a comparison. It is a watchfulness I inherited, turned toward the one kind of suffering I can stop supporting, with my own choices, today.
A dedication should carry hope, so here is mine. I believe the redemption is near, in the sense the chapter on repentance explains: it comes through deeds, one at a time, not by waiting. Going vegan is one of the big deeds, and every Jewish home can do it, at every meal. It is a fitting way to honor my grandparents. They knew, better than anyone should have to, what an ordinary meal eaten in peace is worth.
I built this with AI, and you should know that.
The site you are reading was built with Claude, Anthropic's AI. It wrote nearly all of the code. It cut a single scrolling page into chapters. It checked every Hebrew quotation this site links to Sefaria against Sefaria's own text and found real errors in mine. One was two words of Mishlei 12:10 in the wrong order, sitting on this site, in a verse I have read a thousand times.
The AI did not decide where I stand. The conclusions are mine, and I answer for them. An AI model has nothing at stake in your life or in mine. I do.
I can admit all this easily, because of how the site is built. You do not have to trust me. All 90 sources are listed — linked to the original wherever a link exists, quoted in the Hebrew wherever the site quotes it — precisely so you never have to take my word, or a machine's, for any of it. A wrong page reference is wrong whoever typed it, and should be caught either way.
I say this because a site that asks you to check its sources should be open about how it was built.
Why no new ruling is needed.
I am not a rabbi who decides Jewish law, and nothing here is a new ruling. The site does not need one. Causing an animal needless suffering is wrong, and the Torah already forbids it. Every step from that prohibition to the verdict is on the page for you to check. This site does not replace your rabbi. It gives you what you need to talk to him, and you can go vegan while you ask. Positions attributed to named people are theirs, not mine, and I have tried to state them exactly as far as they go and no further. Where a source is disputed, the dispute is on the page. Where a critic has a point, the critic is on the page, with the answer.
If you find an error in a citation, even a wrong page number or vowel mark, send it in. It will be fixed, with thanks and in public. Getting the sources right is the whole point. It is the only thing here I am willing to be stubborn about.
Why the site is called Pardes.
Pardes is Hebrew for “orchard.” It is also a traditional name for four ways of reading a Jewish text: what the verses say, what follows from them, what they ask of us today, and the deeper meaning. In Hebrew these are called peshat, remez, derash and sod, and the first letters of the four words spell Pardes. The argument does not depend on these four ways of reading. They are only where the site's name comes from.
The four letters of the name
Read the large letters from top to bottom and they spell Pardes in Hebrew. Each one begins a verse from the Bible. Open one, or all four.
פפּוֹתֵחַ אֶת־יָדֶךָ…Peshat: what the verses say
You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing with favour.
This is the verse of Ashrei that begins with the letter pe. Ashrei is an alphabetical acrostic, said three times a day. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 51:7) rules that it is the one verse of Ashrei a person must say with full attention, and must say again if they did not. 'Every living thing' means every creature, not only people. The verse describes God feeding the world. The site quotes it for its first letter and because it includes every creature, not as proof of anything. It opens Peshat, the first of the site's four ways of reading: what the verses say.
ררְאֵה נָתַתִּי…Remez: what follows from them
See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil.
In its plain sense, the verse is about the covenant's choice: keep the Torah or leave it. It opens Remez, the second of the site's four ways of reading: what follows from the verses. It is there because its first word is see, and because it puts a choice in front of the reader. It is not a verse about animals.
דדִּרְשׁוּ ה׳…Derash: what they ask of us today
Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near.
Its first word, dirshu, seek, has the same root as derash. In its plain sense it calls people to return to God while there is still time; the next verse goes on, let the wicked forsake his way. It opens Derash, the third of the site's four ways of reading: what the verses ask of us today. It is not a verse about animals.
ססוֹד ה׳…Sod: the deeper meaning
The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and His covenant, to make it known to them.
Its first word is sod. Tehillim 25 is itself an alphabetical acrostic, and this is its samekh verse. The covenant it names is the Torah's; the site does not read it as the covenant with the beasts of the field in Hoshea 2:20. It opens Sod, the last of the site's four ways of reading: the deeper meaning.
First compiled in the summer of 2026, and kept up to date. Set in Newsreader and Instrument Serif, with Frank Ruhl Libre for Hebrew and Archivo for labels.