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What a Jew Should Do I If You Really Care About Animals, You Need to Read The ANIMALS' AGENDA WHAT A JEW SHOULD DO Roberta Kalechofsky Kalechofsky Jews for Jesus Jesus Editors' Note: This article is a response to an article by Sidney Gendin, "What Should a Jew Do?", published in Between the Species, To say you love animals is one vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 25-32. thing, but it's important to know what you're talking about if you're really going to do something to help them. idney Gendin's review of Richard Schwartz's Covering a range of issues from fac­ book, Judaism and Vegetarianism and of tory farming to Native trapping, § Rabbi Bleich's article in Animal Sacrifices: from endangered species to com­ panion animals, we have been a Religious Perspectives on the Use ofAnimals in Science is valuable resource for nine years. We premised on the mistaken idea that what separates are your best connection with the Richard Schwartz's involvement in vegetarianism people and events that are making and animal rights from Rabbi Bleich's apparent animal rights one of the major movements of the twentieth century. indifference to them is that the former represents the Reform position in Judaism while the latter ~~~~ represents the Orthodox posture. &®rn~A To begin with, Richard Schwartz himself is not a The International Magazine Reform Jew. Though he eschews labels like of Animal Rights & Ecology '-------------­'-------------- "Orthodox" or "Conservative" and prefers to call ~ himself simply "committed," the congregation he ' I want to subscribe to ~ belongs to is Orthodox, and his practice would be • The ANIMALS' AGENDA. YES described by others as Orthodox. The second edi- o 1 yr.-$22 0 2 yrS.-$39 0 3 yrs.-$55 (Ten issues) Name _ Address - _ City State _ Zip _ DISCUSSION The ANIMALS' AGENDA AGENDA Subscription Dept. Dept. I P.O. Box 6809 • Syracuse, NY 13217 I I Between the Species 168 Summer 1989 :;; J£ .L ,££ t £ ; What a Jew Should Do tion of his book (published by Micah Publications have wandered far from "those deeper layers of in 1988) includes a rabbinic endorsement by the Torah" to which Rav Kuk was attuned. The Rabbi Shaar Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi and Rosh social historian W.E.H. Lecky could write in his Bet Din, Haifa, and his book has received praise History ofEuropean Morals, in the 19th century, that and support from such Orthodox representatives "the rabbinical writers have been remarkable for as Rabbi David Rosen, who has been Chief Rabbi the great emphasis with which they inculcated the oflreland. duty of kindness to animals," but cen turies of The rabbi who wrote that "The free movement enforced urbanization and a desperate attempt to of the moral impulse to establish justice for modernize have resulted in the decay of one of animals generally and the claim of their rights Jewry'sjewry's great traditions. MostJews,Most Jews, whether from mankind are hidden in a moral psychic sen­ Orthodox or Reform, believe that the traditions of sibility in the deeper layers of the Torah" and who tsa'ar ba'alei chaim (you may not cause sorrow to equated the Messianic world with vegetarianism any living creature) are still operative. Like the and the establishment of the rights of animals was general public everywhere else, they have never Rav Kuk, first Chief Rabbi in Palestine, Orthodox been to a modern farm or inside a laboratory. and mystic. His small booklet, written decades Recently, I met an Orthodox cantor whose father ago, "The Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace," has had been a schochet (ritual slaughterer) and who achieved the status of a manifesto among Jewish himself had been a schochet and who was now a vegetarians of all backgrounds. The rabbi who vegetarian. He, Orthodox, and I, anything you'd wrote that "There are probably no creatures who like to call me, agreed that shechitah (ritual more require the protective Divine Word against slaughter) had once been the symbol and the presumption of man than the animals" was the guardian of the tradition which Lecky observed. nineteenth century scholar and Orthodox rabbi, Both of us agreed on its decay in the modern Samson Raphael Hirsch. world and under the impact of modern tech­ Sidney Gendin rightly describes the contem­ nology. When I formed Jews for Animal Rights, I porary sectarianism among Jews, which has its immediately became aware that I was to be the origins in the Enlightenment, when Reform was messenger of bad news. born and when Conservatism was established to The question of animal rights and bridge the gap between Reform and Orthodoxy, vegetarianism is not a matter that can be but he misses the fact that the one doctrinal compartmentalized into Orthodox or Reform sphere whereJews of all kinds of practice and non­ practice. It eludes this distinction among Jews, as practice, including atheism and secularism, the movement eludes distinctions in the general conjoin is on the issue of vegetarianism and public. Conservatives and liberals, right-wingers animal rights. Jewish vegetarians and Jewish and left-wingers, lapsed and practising Catholics, animal rights activists come from every type of and people of every kind of Christian and lapsed Jewish community. They may come with different Christian background find themselves in the argumentsargumen ts and different perspectives, but the movement. What brings such heterogeneous impulse that makes them give up eating meat or groups together is an impulse that may well lie become animal rights activists transcends or cuts very deep in our psychic layers. across the kind of scholarly and historical analysis The immediate strategy for Jews, like myself and ofaJewish position that Rabbi Bleich gave. Almost hopefully like Prof. Gendin, is not to further every vegetarian OrthodoxJewOrthodoxJew knows a half dozen Jewish sectarianism but to restore the immensity other authorities to quote, to qualify Rabbi of the great tradition of tsa'ar ba'alei chaim which Bleich's statements and, sad to say, many other all Jews once claimed. My organization has a Jews don't know any. message for Prof. Gendin's despair: "For an ecu­ Furthermore, Reform Jewry has its roots in and menicalJudaism, go vegetarian." feels spiritually at home with Enlightenment values, the values of science and modern medical practice. But both Reform and Orthodox Jewry Summer 1989 169 Between the Species .
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