Kosher Meat, Meet Elk

This tasty morsel just came across my desktop and I had to share. It turns out that among the many new Kosher products hitting the shelves, we will now have kosher elk fresh from South Dakota. That's right, elk. This classic game animal hunted for eons on the prairies of North America and the steppes of Europe, will now be available to those who have no tradition of hunting whatsoever!

I mean Jews are classically so disconnected from hunting that when Billy Crystal was on The Tonight Show and the discussion turned to hunting, about which he had nothing to say, he remarked to the host: Johnny, you need to remember that I'm Jewish. We're not hunters, we're furriers! So what's going on?

I guess there is always a Jewish market for that which has been heretofore prohibited. And why should we be different than anyone else? Most of us enjoy access to those things that were unavailable and unattainable until some new reality hit - but that's the funny part. Elk is not newly kosher. No rabbis have suddenly discovered new rules that would make this classic game meat permissible.

Elk has always (please no lectures about evolution and zoology) met the requirements of being a kosher land animal i.e. it has split hooves and chews its cud. But since most of us don't raise and slaughter our own meat, it hasn't been available - until now.

Is this a step in the right direction - another example of Jews becoming increasingly normal?

Is this a sick joke in which we will fill our plates with meat that is a premiere symbol of the hunting which Jewish law prohibits?

Could it be that we are so disconnected from that which we eat that is no longer matters?

Or is this another example of how an increasingly successful kosher market reminds us that Jewish law never meant to deprive us of anything that wasn't expressly forbidden?

What does this mean? You tell me!