Are Anti-Semites Targeting Kosher Food?

New regulations and restrictions on Kosher food have some Jews wondering whether anti-Semitism is at play.

In May of 2010, New Zealand effectively banned the practice of shechita, or Jewish ritual slaughter. Since October, Shechita has since been resumed by an order of a judge, pending the outcome of a lawsuit launched by the Jewish community to quash the legislation.

The New Zealand government will allow some ritually slaughtered meat (but not chicken) to be imported pending the outcome of the trial. The Jewish community’s legal case will probably focus on the new law’s contravention of New Zealand’s “Bill of Rights” which protects an individuals’ right to practice their religion, and provisions of the Animal Welfare Act which also protect religious freedom. But the Jewish community says that it cannot win its case without spending prohibitive amounts of money on legal costs. If they lose in court, Jews fear that eventually that the importation of all such meat will be banned.

Jews who keeps their religion’s dietary laws will only eat meat that has been ritually slaughtered. For this reason, New Zealand Jews fear that the ban on ritual slaughter will have a devastating impact on their community. They predict that it will make it impossible to attract Rabbis, other communal professionals, or observant Jews to New Zealand.

Shechita involves the severing of the trachea, esophagus, carotid arteries, and jugular veins of certain birds and mammals, and then allowing the animal to bleed to death.  In preparation for shechita, the animal cannot be stunned by any method – such as electronarcosis, gas, or a captive-bolt shot to the head. The shochet who performs shechita is an observant Jew who is especially trained in its intricate laws. A shochet must demonstrate his knowledge of these laws and his ability to carry out shechita without being supervised.

Attempts to outlaw shechita have originated with animal rights groups. Jewish supporters of shechita maintain that it is a humane method for killing animals. Its opponents claim that it is cruel. Much of the controversy focuses on how long an animal lives after it is slaughtered. Shechita’s supporters say that the animal dies within two seconds after slaughter. Its opponents say that goes on living for ten minutes.

New Zealand’s ban is part of a worldwide campaign to outlaw shechita. The European Parliament had voted to support the singling out of Kosher and Halal meat for special labeling. (Halal meat is prepared according to Islamic religious regulations.) But on October 28th London’s Jewish Chronicle reported the executive of the European Parliament, the European Council, had declared that the proposed law was “unacceptable”.

Shechita UK, an organization that lobbies against any legislation that would restrict ritual slaughter, claims that the labeling proposals can potentially have damaging consequences. It is particularly concerned about non-kosher companies ceasing to carry kosher meat products.

Defenders of shechita say that anti-Semitism motivates those trying to outlaw the practice.  Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, the spiritual leader of the Great Synagogue in Sydney Australia, and who formerly held a similar position in Auckland, New Zealand says that the international campaign to ban shechita is part of a larger plan to delegitimize Jewish life. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, declared in reaction to Holland’s 2002 banning of certain forms of ritual slaughter that “Sometimes anti-Semites will use this as a vehicle to try to isolate the Jewish community by reaching out to those who are so preoccupied with animal rights.” In response to the same Dutch initiative, Rabbi Michael Melchior, Israel’s deputy foreign minister said, “They simply don’t want foreigners, and they don’t want Jews.” Such suspicions are not lacking in foundation.  Banning ritual slaughter was one of the first anti-Jewish measures adopted by the Nazis.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that most of the efforts to ban shechita originated in Europe, at a time when governments there have become increasingly hostile to Israel. In Switzerland, according to reporter Adam Dickter, of New York’s Jewish Week, in 2002 the government was resisting rescinding a hundred year ban on Jewish ritual slaughter because of a backlash against Jewish efforts to get Swiss banks to make restitution for bank deposits of Jewish Holocaust victims. The Swiss Animal Association asked for a national referendum on whether kosher meat should be banned. A poll indicated that 76 percent of the Swiss population supported the ban. Meanwhile the leaders of the Swiss Jewish community received hate mail. This led to the Swiss government abandoning its efforts to rescind the ban.

On the other hand, such feelings do seem remote from New Zealand politics: The mother of the country’s prime minister, John Key, was a Jewish refugee who fled from Europe on the eve of Holocaust.

“The key issue [in determining whether the ban is motivated by anti-Semitism] is whether or not there is in the history of that country [animal rights legislation]. When they begin and end with kosher slaughter, that’s when I become suspicious,” Foxman said in 2002. Last week, Shechita UK’s campaign director Shimon Cohen raised the prospect that ritually slaughtered meat would be required by law to carry special warning labels. “If we have to label everything, why should kosher meat be singled out … Why should we not put on a piece pork, ‘This animal was gassed’?”