Q&A: Lab-Grown Tefillin
Lab-Grown Tefillin
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Surely the Rabbi has heard about the development of “lab-grown leather” — taking a single skin cell, fertilizing/culturing it in laboratories, and producing leather products from it as a substitute for the conventional (and barbaric) leather industry.
Is it possible to make kosher tefillin from this leather (I don’t understand the laws of tefillin, but let’s say it’s multiplied skin from the neck of a kosher cow or whatever)?
Thank you
Answer
I’ve heard about attempts to produce meat in this way, and I understood that we are still far from industrial production of it (because it’s very expensive). Does this already exist for leather? At a humane price?
As for your question, it is not clear to me how to answer it. There is a law given to Moses at Sinai that one writes on parchment made from animal hide (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 79b). If they were synthesizing it in the lab ex nihilo (that is, chemical synthesis from chemical elements), I think that would be more problematic. Here, though, it is an expansion of skin cells from an animal. Still, this too requires discussion, and it is not clear to me how one could decide. Since there are two possibilities, and I think there is no good halakhic way to resolve them, I would choose the option that it is permitted to use it because of considerations of animal suffering.
Discussion on Answer
As for tefillin, I assume that if the animal was not slaughtered properly, the leather is invalid.
If there is no halakhic way to answer the question of cultured leather, shouldn’t the tefillin be ruled invalid because of a Torah-level doubt?
Your assumption is mistaken. There is absolutely no need for proper slaughter. Even leather from a carcass is kosher.
To the best of my knowledge, leather is a byproduct of the meat industry, so additional leather consumption does not add suffering. In addition, leather can be produced from an animal that died a natural death, so it is not necessarily bound up with animal suffering.