Part 4: Is eating meat a concession?

Historically, soldiers were allowed to take the spoils of war. This not only included property but also women. This is actually a mitzvah called “Eshet Yefat Toar” (a beautiful woman) which allows a man to kidnap a woman from the battlefield and have sexual relations with her against her will. The Torah understood that people would not adhere to a prohibition of what in the past was a widespread norm, so it added limits and rules around it. The kidnapper should not stop her from mourning her home and her parents for 40 days in order to see if his conscience would awaken and he will let her go. He also has to shave her head so that she will lose her beauty and not allow her to cut her fingernails for the same reason. This is meant to make him loathe her and send her back to her home.

The Torah has other examples of things which are allowed even though they’re not the ideal, such as marrying multiple wives and owning slaves. We don’t need to do everything the Torah allows. Certain allowances are not God’s desire but concessions in order to minimize behaviors that ultimately we are meant to grow out of.

The sages compare the concession of eating meat to the concession of kidnapping and having forced sexual relations with a woman from the battlefield: “The Torah only spoke against yetzer hara, the same way it allowed kidnapping a beautiful woman”. (ספר העיקרים, מאמר ג פרק טו)