Vayikra 11:1-4, 44-45
Make Yourselves Holy
The two signs of a permitted animal, and the one reason the Torah gives for them at the end of the chapter.
For children, teens and adults
Here is the question this chapter puts to you long before it answers anything: why would God care what is on your plate? It gives two signs, a hoof split fully in two, and chewing the cud, and then works through the near misses, the animals that carry one sign and not the other. For forty verses it explains nothing. No health warning, no reason, no argument. Then at the end it says the only thing it is going to say: I am holy, so make yourselves holy. That is a completely different kind of reason from the ones people usually reach for when they defend kashrut, and it is worth noticing that the Torah declined to offer those.
וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל־אַהֲרֹן לֵאמֹר אֲלֵהֶם׃
Vayikra 11:1
Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe ve'el Aharon lemor alehem.
Hashem spoke to Moshe and to Aharon, saying to them: