My fantasy very best self adheres to a strictly vegan diet. That means consuming no foods from members of the animal kingdom.
No meat, no eggs, no fish, no dairy, and just for consistency’s sake, no honey or even vitamin supplements containing traces of animal products. My fantasy very best self believes a plant-based diet to be best for me based on ethical, environmental, and health considerations (I’ve had serious heart issues).
But as you’ve probably already deduced, my current best self falls way short of my fantasy best self. While I rarely eat red meat (a couple of times a year at most), I regularly eat poultry, fish, eggs and dairy. So I’m by no means there yet.
When I do eat animal flesh, however, I restrict myself to animals in accord with traditional Judaism’s dietary protocols. That means I won’t eat pork or shell fish and won’t mix meat with dairy at the same meal. My wife and I also restrict our consumption to organic, free-range animal products. It also means that the allowed meats I do eat must be slaughtered in accordance with kosher guidelines.
As a theologically liberal Jew, I do not do all this because I believe HaShem — God — has directly commanded me to do so. I do this as a way to sustain my Jewish identity and as a voluntary spiritual discipline.
Which is why recent news out of Europe concerning the outlawing of kosher slaughtering protocols caught my attention. Journalists should note that traditional Muslims, who adhere to a similar slaughtering protocol, are also impacted by the European Union court ruling.
Here’s the gist of the issue, courtesy of a December story from JTA, the international Jewish news service:
(JTA) – The European Union’s highest court has upheld Belgium’s bans on slaughtering animals without first stunning them, a ruling that confirms the prohibition on the production of kosher and halal meat in parts of Belgium and clears a path for additional bans across Europe.
Israel’s ambassador to Belgium called the ruling “a blow to Jewish life in Europe.”
Two of Belgium’s three states last year banned the slaughter of animals without first stunning them, a key requirement of kosher meat production. The laws were passed over the vociferous objections of Jewish and Muslim community leaders, and several groups — including one representing French-speaking Jews in Belgium — filed a petition arguing that the bans illegally limit religious freedom. …
Tthe EU Court of Justice issued its decision: Bans on slaughter of animals for meat without stunning do not violate EU principles on freedom of worship.
The EU court decision prompted a slew of stories in Israeli and international Jewish news outlets. A handful of European news outlets, including the BBC and Politico’s European edition, along with a small number of Muslim nation outlets, also followed up.
The elite American mainstream press, however, has been pretty much silent (preoccupied as it is with the ongoing dystopian Donald Trump saga; certainly of greater immediacy and concern to domestic readers). As of my writing, I’ve only seen the issue referenced in The Washington Examiner — by no means an elite outlet, but one that is concerned about issues of religious freedom.
The Examiner piece wasn’t a comprehensive news piece. Rather, it was an opinion column that ran under the in-your-face headline, “EU court prioritizes animals over Jews and Muslims in backing ritual slaughter ban.”
The banning of shechitah — as the kosher slaughtering process is called in Hebrew — is ripe with angles. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are the two most obvious, as has been noted above. Religious freedom issues are, of course, also front and center, as also noted.
But what peaked my interest most is the reek of hypocrisy this story carries.
The shechitah ban is rooted — to give its proponents the benefit of the doubt based on their rhetoric — in concerns over animal cruelty. But here’s the rub.
If easing animal cruelty is the motivation, why are factory farming, the isolation and confining of veal calves, the cutting of hens’ beaks, the production of foie gras and the endless pregnancies that dairy cows are forced to endure also not outlawed? Then there is the continued use of animals for human medical research and the legality of hunting strictly for sport.
This opinion piece from the Jewish News Syndicate articulates clearly what I consider to be this blatantly two-faced approach. And this essay from RationalistJudaism.com notes:
The possible suffering of animals in how they die pales into insignificance compared to the suffering of animals in how they live. Yet all this is legal in every country, for human benefit. Belgium - the country at the forefront of the opposition to shechitah - even permits sport hunting!
Given the amount of animal suffering which is perfectly legal in every country in the world, one can only conclude that the targeting of shechitah has less to do with compassion for animals and more to do with hostility to religion.
Need to read more? Then try this opinion piece from Tablet, another online Jewish publication. It ran under the no-messing-around headline, “Europe’s Highest Court Gives Its Approval to Attempts to Outlaw Jewish and Muslim Life.”
Finally, here’s a far more theologically nuanced essay on the issue written by an Orthodox rabbi for the largely conservative Christian readership of First Things.
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are growing threats in Europe. To believe otherwise is to remain willfully ignorant. American and European media are replete with such stories.
Nor do I expect people to act in morally consistent ways. That goes equally for people who profess piety and those who profess secular humanism. And as I indicated at the start of this post, don’t expect full moral consistency from me either.
But this EU kosher slaughtering story strikes me as a classic when it comes to homo sapiens bottomless ability to talk ourselves into the most convoluted of moral rationalizations.
Agree? Disagree? Please leave your opinions in the comments section below.