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The days creep slowly along until the end of time. And every day that’s already happened has taken fools that much closer to their deaths. Out, out, brief candle. Life is nothing more than an illusion. It’s like a poor actor who struts and worries for his hour on the stage and then is never heard from again. Life is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and emotional disturbance but devoid of meaning.

“Hark ye yet again— the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event— in the living act, the undoubted deed— there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

Melville, Herman (2011-03-24). Moby Dick: or, the White Whale (Kindle Locations 2344-2349). . Kindle Edition.

Thus, when I started to research Leviticus, I found myself on the ground floor. Early on I discovered that rituals are meaningless in themselves. Only when seen as a set of symbols do their inherent values come to light. I shall cite an example from the same dietary laws. Quadrupeds that qualify for the table must chew the cud and show split hoofs (11:3*). These criteria sound absurd. But consider: they effectively eliminate the entire animal kingdom from human consumption, except for three domestic herbivores: cattle, sheep, and goats. Moreover, these are the same three animals permitted on the sacrificial altar (17:3*). The implications are clear. All life is sacred and inviolable. Only these three stipulated quadrupeds are eligible for the human table because they are eligible for God’s altar/table. The dining table symbolically becomes an altar, and all the diners are symbolically priests. (In Judaism, the equivalence of table and altar is carried further: just as the priest must wash [Exod 30:17–21*] and salt the meat before offering the sacrifice [Lev 2:13*], so must the diners ritually wash their hands and salt the table’s bread, which represents the sacrifice.) Above all, the table is transformed into a sacred altar and the meal must be treated as sacred—a time for thanking God for the repast (cf. Lev 7:11–13*), requesting a blessing for the future (Num 6:22–26*), and engaging in conversation befitting the sanctified meal.

Milgrom, J. (2004). A Continental Commentary: Leviticus: a book of ritual and ethics (p. xii). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.