“Eat to your heart’s content,” Hashem states at the end of the psukim that begin, “When Hashem enlarges your territory as promised and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you have the urge to eat meat, you may eat meat whenever you wish….” (Devarim 12:20).

Rav Saadia Gaon reads those words not as an allowance but rather as an imperative – that there is a Torah mitzvah (which he counts among the 613) to eat meat.

To be sure, we are admonished to consume meat only when we have a compelling appetite for it (Chullin 84a, codified by the Rambam in Hilchos Dei’os 5:10). But, at least according to Saadia Gaon, when such an appetite is present, satisfying it is a fulfillment of a d’Oryaisa commandment.

Similarly, in the Talmud Yerushalmi, at the end of Massechta Kiddushin, it is stated in the name of Rav that “One will be held accountable for not having not eaten something permitted that one found enticing.” Presumably, because to do otherwise would be to decline a Divine gift.

Surrendering to appetites is not something generally seen as consonant with a Torah-conscious life. And moderation even in permitted things is a high ideal. Yet, here, with regard to meat (and, according to the Yerushalmi, it would seem, any food), if one has a desire to consume it, one not only may but must do so.

Saadia Gaon is alone among those who enumerate the 613 mitzvos who sees the words “eat to your heart’s content” as a commandment.

But the next time you feel an urge to eat a steak or a hamburger, out of acknowledgment of Saadia Gaon’s opinion, it might be proper to have intent that one’s enjoyment of the fare is an observance of a mitzvah.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran