Shechita (
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
:) is the
ritual slaughterRitual slaughter is the practice of slaughtering livestock for meat in a ritual manner. This may be prescribed by a religious dietary laws, notably Jewish Shechita and Islamic Ḏabīḥah, or performed as a spectacular cultural practice, as in bullfighting....
of mammals and birds according to
Jewish dietary lawsKashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér , meaning "fit"...
. The act is performed by cutting the animal's throat by drawing a very sharp knife horizontally across it and allowing the
blood to drain outExsanguination is the fatal process of total hypovolemia . It is most commonly known as "bleeding to death"...
.
The animal must be killed with respect and compassion by a
shochet (ritual slaughterer), a pious Jew who has in mind the life of the animal as he draws the knife across its neck. The animal can be in a number of positions; when the animal is lying on its back, this is referred to as
shechita munachat.
If the hindquarters (or sirloin) of kosher mammals are to be eaten by Jews, they must be 'porged' - stripped of veins,
ChelevCheilev or Cheilev in Judaism is the animal fat which was consumed on the mizbe'ah as for the korban ritual, and is therefore forbidden to be eaten by Jewish humans. Whereas Shuman are called those fats which were not offered, and therefore kosher for human consumption.The punishment for eating...
(fats) and sinews in accordance with a strict procedure. Because of the expense of porging and the skill required to properly separate out the forbidden parts, a large portion of the meat of kosher mammals slaughtered through shechita in the United States winds up on the non-kosher market.
Preparation
The animal must be kosher (i.e. mammals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves, or birds that are not birds of prey and for which there is an established tradition that the bird is kosher or similar to one that is).
Before slaughtering, the animal must be healthy, so the animal is inspected as carefully as possible without being invasive. The shochet may feel the area around the lungs, for scabbing or lesions, which would render the animal not kosher. The animal cannot be stunned, as is common practice in modern animal slaughter, for this would render the shechita invalid.
Process
Though referenced in the
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
, (Deut. 12:21) none of the basic practices of shechita are described in this place, or anywhere else in
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
(Five books of Moses). Instead, they have been handed down in Judaism's traditional
Oral TorahA term used to denote the legal and interpretative traditions which, according to traditon, were transmitted orally from Mount Sinai, and were not written in the Torah...
, and codified in
halakhaHalakha — also transliterated Halocho and Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish religious law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions....
in various sources, most notably the
Shulchan AruchThe Shulchan Aruch is a codification, or written manual, of halacha , composed by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the 16th century...
. In order to fulfill the basic law of shechita, the majority of both the esophagus and trachea (wind pipe and food pipe) of a mammal, or the majority of either one of these in the case of birds, must be sliced through with a back and forth sawing motion without violating one of the five major prohibited techniques, or various more detailed rules. The five major forbidden techniques include: Pressing, Pausing, Tearing, Piercing, or Covering. A shochet must have studied these laws and demonstrate a thorough understanding of them, as well as have been carefully trained, before he is allowed to 'shekht' meat unaided.
Pressing is accomplished when the shochet pushes the knife into the animal's throat, chops rather than slices, or positions the animal improperly so that either its head presses down on the blade as it expires or the shochet must push the knife into the throat against the force of gravity. There are those who feel that it is forbidden to have the animal in an upright position during shechita due to the prohibition of pressing. They feel that the animal must be on its back, lying on its side, suspended upside down by a rope or chain, or - as is done in most commercial slaughter houses - placed in a barrel like pen that restrains the animal's limbs while it is turned on its back for slaughter. However, an expert shochet can slaughter the animal while it is upright without pressing the knife. This method is employed in most smaller operations in America.
Pausing is performed by the shochet if he stops the slaughtering process after either the trachea or esophagus has been cut but before they have been cut the majority of the way through. Pausing can happen accidentally if muscle contractions in the animal's neck pull one of these organs out of contact with the blade. The latter case is especially common in turkeys.
Piercing is the result of stabbing the animal in the throat, slicing the trachea or esophagus with a serrated knife, slaughtering with a rusty knife or one that has an imperfection that rises above the blade's surface, burning the animal's throat, or slaughtering with a knife that is so hot it would cause a person to not touch it. Burning is always considered piercing in shechita, regardless of the motion of the knife.
Tearing is caused by using a knife with an imperfection on the blade, such as a scratch or nick, that causes a section of blade to be lower than the surface of the blade.
Covering is accomplished by either cutting into the animal's throat so deeply that the entire width of the knife disappears in the wound, using a knife that is too short so that the end disappears in the wound, or by having a foreign object fall over the knife so the shochet loses sight of the incision.
Minor rules
The animal's blood may not be collected in a bowl, a pit, or a body of water, as these resemble ancient forms of idol worship. If the shochet accidentally slaughters with a knife dedicated to idol worship, he must remove an amount of meat equivalent to the value of the knife and destroy it. If he slaughtered with such a knife on purpose, the animal is forbidden as not kosher. It is forbidden to slaughter an animal in front of others, or to slaughter an animal and its young on the same day, even separately. This is forbidden no matter how far away the animals are from each other. An animal's "young" is defined as either its own offspring, or another animal that follows it around, even if of another species.
The knife
The knife used for shechita is called a hallaf by Ashkenazim or a sakin (the Hebrew word for knife, similar to the Arabic word for knife: سكين) by all Jews. By biblical law the knife may be made from anything not attached directly or indirectly to the ground and capable of being sharpened and polished to the necessary level of sharpness and smoothness required for shechita. The
MinhagMinhag is an accepted tradition or group of traditions in Judaism. A related concept, Nusach , refers to the traditional order and form of the prayers...
now is to use a metal knife. Anything but a metal knife today would render the animal unfit to eat except in certain narrow circumstances.
The knife must be minimally 1.5 or 2 times as long as the animal's neck is wide, depending on the species of animal and the number of strokes needed to slaughter the animal, but not so long that the weight of the knife exceeds the weight of the animal's head. If the knife is too large, it is assumed to cause Pressing. The knife must not have a point. It is feared a point may slip into the wound during slaughter and cause piercing. The blade may also not be serrated, as serrations cause tearing.
The blade may not have imperfections in it. All blades are assumed by Jewish law to be imperfect, so the knife must be checked before each session. The shochet must run his fingernail up and down both sides of the blade and on the cutting edge to determine if he can feel any imperfections. He then uses a number of increasingly fine abrasive stones to sharpen and polish the blade until it is perfectly sharp and smooth. After the slaughter, the shochet must check the knife again in the same way to be certain the first inspection was properly done, and to ensure the blade was not damaged during shechita. If the blade is found to be damaged, the meat may not be eaten by Jews. If the blade falls or is lost before the second check is done, the first inspection is relied on and the meat is permitted.
In previous centuries the hallaf was made of forged steel, which was not reflective and was difficult to make both smooth and sharp. The Baal Shem Tov, fearing that Sabbateans were scratching the knives in a way not detectable by normal people, introduced the
HasidischeHasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew: , Hasidut, meaning "piety") is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith. The majority of Hasidic Jews are ultra-orthodox....
Hallaf. The Hasidische Hallaf differs from the previously used knife in that it was made from molten steel and polished to a mirror gloss in which scratches could be seen as well as felt. The new knife was controversial and was one of four reasons listed in the Brody Cherem for the
excommunicationExcommunication is a religious censure used to deprive or suspend membership in a religious community. The word literally means putting [someone] out of communion. In some religions, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group...
of the Chassidim.
Today the Hasidische Hallaf is the only commercially available knife for shechita and is universally accepted.
Bedikah
An animal must be checked again after it has been shekhted to see if there were
any internal injuries that would have rendered the animal unhealthy before the slaughter, but were simply not visible because they were internal. The inspector must check certain organs, such as the lungs, for any scarring which would render the animal treif (not-kosher)
Glatt
In the case of a scab or lesion on a cow’s lungs specifically, there is debate between Ashkenazic customs and Sephardic customs. Ashkenazic Jews hold that if the patch can be removed and the lungs are still airtight (a process that is tested by filling the lungs with air and then submerging them in water and looking for escaping air) then the animal is still Kosher, while Sephardic Jews hold that if there is any sort of scabbing or lesion on the lungs, then the animal is not kosher. “Glatt” meat would literally mean that the animal has passed the stringent Sephardic requirements, although today the word is rarely used in that context.
Purging
After the animal has been thoroughly inspected, there are still steps that have to be taken before the animal can be sold as kosher. The
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
prohibits the eating of certain fats and organs, such as the kidneys and intestines, so they must be removed from the animal. These fats are typically known as “Chelev”.
ChelevCheilev or Cheilev in Judaism is the animal fat which was consumed on the mizbe'ah as for the korban ritual, and is therefore forbidden to be eaten by Jewish humans. Whereas Shuman are called those fats which were not offered, and therefore kosher for human consumption.The punishment for eating...
prohibition only applies to domesticated animals, such as cows and sheep. For wild animals, such as deer, this prohibition is not applicable. There is also a biblical prohibition against eating the
sciatic nerveThe sciatic nerve is a large nerve in humans and other animals. It begins in the lower back and runs through the buttock and down the lower limb. It is the longest and widest single nerve in the human body....
(Gid Hanasheh) so that too, must be removed.
The removal of the Chelev and the Gid Hanasheh is considered complicated and tedious, and hence labor intensive, and even more specialized training is necessary to perform the act properly. While the small amounts of Chelev in the front half of the animal are relatively easy to remove, the back half of the animal is far more complicated, and it is where the sciatic nerve is located.
In countries such as America, where there exist a large non-kosher meat market, the hindquarters of the animal (where many of these forbidden meats are located) is sold to non-Jews so as to simplify the process. This tradition goes back for centuries where local Muslims accept meat slaughtered by Jews as consumable. While many Muslims do accept that today (e.g. in the Middle East) based on Quranic permissibility of food from
people of the bookIn Islam, the People of the Book are non-Muslim peoples who, according to the Qur'an, received scriptures which were revealed to them by God before the time of Muhammad, most notably Christians and Jews. The generally accepted interpretation is that the pre-Islamic revealed texts are the Tawrat,...
, not all Muslim communities accept those hindquarters as
halalHalal is an Arabic term designating any object or an action which is permissible to use or engage in, according to Islamic law. It is the opposite of haraam. The term is widely used to designate food seen as permissible according to Islamic law...
(e.g. Indian subcontinent). On the other hand, in countries like Israel, specially trained men are hired to prepare the hindquarters for sale as kosher.
Blood
The blood must also be removed from the meat, as there is a biblical prohibition against the eating of blood as well. All large arteries and veins are removed, as well as any bruised meat or coagulated blood. Then the meat has to be purged of all remaining blood (kashering). The process is generally done by letting the meat soak for around 30 minutes, covering it with salt and then allowing it to drain. In Sephardi traditions, one generally leaves the salt on for a full hour and then rinses the meat thoroughly. The meat is then considered kashered. However, if the meat has been left for more than three days after being slaughtered without being kashered, or if the meat was frozen before being kashered, then the blood is considered to have “set” in the meat, and it is no longer salvageable to eat except when prepared through broiling with appropriate drainage.
Animal welfare controversies
The prohibition of stunning and the humane attitude towards the slaughtered animal expressed in shechita law limits the extent to which Jewish slaughterhouses can industrialize their procedures. The most industrialized attempt at a kosher
slaughterhouseA slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir ,or freezing works , is a facility where animals are killed and processed into meat foods...
,
AgriprocessorsAgriprocessors is the corporate identity of a slaughterhouse and meat-packaging factory that is in an incorporated area of Postville, Iowa, best known as a facility for the glatt kosher processing of cattle, as well as chicken, turkey, duck, lamb, and veal...
of Postville,
IowaIowa is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland." It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of...
, became the center of controversy in 2004, after
People for the Ethical Treatment of AnimalsPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. With two million members and supporters worldwide, it claims the status of the largest animal rights group in the world...
released undercover video of cattle struggling to their feet with their tracheas and esophagi severed after shechita. Some of the cattle got up and stood for a minute or so after being dumped from the rotating pen.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors
Temple GrandinTemple Grandin is a Doctor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, bestselling author, and consultant to the livestock industry in animal behavior...
, a leading designer of animal handling systems, wrote, on visiting a shechita slaughterhouse, "I will never forget having nightmares after visiting the now defunct Spencer Foods plant in Spencer, Iowa fifteen years ago. Employees wearing football helmets attached a nose tong to the nose of a writhing beast suspended by a chain wrapped around one back leg. Each terrified animal was forced with an electric prod to run into a small stall which had a slick floor on a forty-five degree angle. This caused the animal to slip and fall so that workers could attach the chain to its rear leg [in order to raise it into the air]. As I watched this nightmare, I thought, 'This should not be happening in a civilized society.' In my diary I wrote, 'If hell exists, I am in it.' I vowed that I would replace the plant from hell with a kinder and gentler system." However, Dr Grandin has said that "When the cut is done correctly, the animal appears not to feel it. From an animal welfare standpoint, the major concern during ritual slaughter are the stressful and cruel methods of restraint (holding) that are used in some plants."
The UK
Farm Animal Welfare CouncilThe Farm Animal Welfare Council is an independent advisory body established by the Government of Great Britain in 1979. Its terms of reference are to keep under review the welfare of farm animals on agricultural land, at market, in transit and at the place of slaughter and advise Government of any...
says that the method by which kosher and halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals and it should be banned immediately. According to FAWC it can take up to two minutes for cattle to bleed to death, thus amounting to animal abuse.
Compassion in World FarmingCompassion in World Farming is a campaigning and lobbying animal welfare organisation, with headquarters in the UK, branches in eight European countries and international representatives in China, Australia and South Africa....
also supported the recommendation saying "We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter." The UK government rejected its recommendations.
Various research papers on cattle slaughter collected by
Compassion In World FarmingCompassion in World Farming is a campaigning and lobbying animal welfare organisation, with headquarters in the UK, branches in eight European countries and international representatives in China, Australia and South Africa....
mention that "after the throat is cut, large clots can form at the severed ends of the carotid arteries, leading to occlusion of the wound (or “ballooning” as it is known in the slaughtering trade). Nick Cohen wrote in the
New Statesman, "Occlusions slow blood loss from the carotids and delay the decline in blood pressure that prevents the suffering brain from blacking out. In one group of calves, 62.5 per cent suffered from ballooning. Even if the slaughterman is a master of his craft and the cut to the neck is clean, blood is carried to the brain by vertebral arteries and it keeps cattle conscious of their pain."
Reference has been made above to the argument that after shechita an animal remains conscious due to the vertebral arteries supplying blood to the brain; this is not true according to different studies. Chanoch Kesselman of Shechita UK write that "It is well known that in vertebrate mammals, the brain is generously supplied with blood, mostly via the carotid arteries. The junction between the two carotid arteries and the vertebral arteries, forms a 'ring road' at the base of the brain. In cattle this junction is the rete mirabilis. In humans, this arrangement is the 'Circle of Willis'. The effect of having an arterial 'ring road' at the base of the brain is that if there is a blockage of one of the cerebral arteries, the brain region supplied by that vessel can still obtain adequate blood supply via one of the other vessels. However, this is not the case if the carotids are severed. In this case blood flow follows the route of least resistance so that blood which could reach the brain, now spills out from the cut ends of the carotid arteries. The brain is deprived of blood reaching it. Shechita does more than prevent blood from reaching the brain. It also ensures that any blood that is present in the brain empties out via the severed jugular veins at the moment of the incision resulting in immediate loss of pressure in the brain. Additionally the loss of cerebrospinal fluid pressure causes the brain to collapse completely and with it total loss of consciousness. This entire process occurs in less than two seconds. Professor HH Dukes of Cornell University, USA confirmed (in his study of blood pressure in the vertebral arteries of ruminant animals), that “consciousness will have been lost within two seconds of the incision”. This has also been confirmed by experiment by Rabbi Dr IM Levinger of Basel, Switzerland. Dr Stuart Rosen, consultant cardiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, London has extensively researched the subject and confirms these findings in the most up to date study, “Physiological Insights Into Shechita” (2004)."
The
Orthodox UnionThe Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America , more popularly known as the Orthodox Union , is one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States...
, the leading certificating body for kosher food in the USA, concluded, however, that AgriProcessors was observing proper procedures
http://www.oukosher.org/index.php?/articles/single/setting_the_record_straight_on_kosher_slaughter/, though some changes could be made in consideration of
marit ayin - community perceptions. The OU pointed out:
- While unnecessary cruelty to even one animal is intolerable, one has to look at the total picture before judging the matter. To those unfamiliar with the slaughter industry—kosher or non-kosher—scenes showing post-shechita movement of several animals, such as are shown on the video, can be very disturbing. But it must be realized that during the six or seven weeks during which the video was taken, approximately 18,000 animals were slaughtered by the plant in question. With such numbers, it is inevitable that aberrations do sometimes occur, and those shown in the video represent only a tiny percentage of the total number processed in that time span. http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20041210/10dec2004120301.html
PETA was rebuked by several parties in the Jewish community for mounting what they considered to be a vindictive campaign so soon after Jewish organizations had criticized the group for its "Holocaust on your Plate" ad campaign promoting
veganismVeganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind. The most common reasons for becoming a vegan are ethical commitment or moral conviction concerning animal rights,...
.
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/The_Shechita_Controversy.asp Leading rabbis of the non-Orthodox movements in Judaism, allied with a small number of Orthodox rabbis including
David RosenRabbi David Rosen is the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and currently serves as the Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department of Interreligious Affairs and the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding...
, former
Chief RabbiChief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
of
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
, sided with PETA and condemned what they viewed as the inhumane methods used at AgriProcessors.
http://www.goveg.com/pdfs/HumaneKosherSignatories.pdf
European history and Shechita: controversies and legislation
The first instance of anti-Shechita legislation occurred when obligatory stunning of animals was introduced in the Swiss canton of
AargauAargau is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland. It comprises the lower course of the river Aare, which is why the canton is called Aar-gau .-History:...
(Argovia) in 1850 with a dispensation for shechita that was rescinded ten years later. A ban was introduced in the
Kingdom of SaxonyThe Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...
. Later the Swiss ban in Aargau applied to the whole country after a referendum on the question; the Catholic cantons voted against and the Protestant cantons supported the ban.
Shechita was banned in Finland when it was part of the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, but the ban was lifted once
Finland became independentThe Finnish declaration of independence was adopted by the Parliament of Finland on 6 December 1917. It declared Finland an independent and sovereign nation-state rather than an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy.- Revolution in Russia :...
as a result of the Communist Revolution. By 1936, shechita was only banned, within Europe, by Switzerland and Saxony. In proposed legislation in 1937, the Swedish Riksdag argued for a prohibition of the practice based on its offensive appearance to the non-Jewish population:
- "Regardless whatever the case may be concerning the degree of suffering inflicted on the animal, there are other circumstances which support a schächten ban. Thus, we cannot disregard the fact that schächten makes a more disgusting and brutal impression on the observer than does slaughter by stunning. (...) Not only that, we have to take into consideration that, undoubtedly, for large sections of our population, it appears offensive to them that this kind of slaughter is legally permitted. [...]"
Nazi Germany and shechita
In
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
post 1880 the Tierschutz ("Animal Protection," 'animal welfare' in English) movement protested shechita together with vivisection; this and the related
VölkischThe völkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic". The term völkisch, meaning "ethnic", derives from the German word Volk , corresponding to "people", with connotations in German of "people-powered", "folksy" and...
("Folkloric") movement met little support in the
German EmpireThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
but were embraced by the Nazis. Nazi animal-welfare laws established after 1933 put substantial restrictions on shechita (see the 1940 movie
The Eternal JewThe Eternal Jew is a 1940 antisemitic German Nazi propaganda film. Its title in German is Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was directed by Fritz...
for an example of this), and even today, animal welfare remains controversial in the Jewish community in Germany due to its association with the Nazi regime..
The Nazi conquests of Poland and other regions and countries saw the extension of their shechita ban there; Mussolini likewise forbade shechita in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
. The Allied governments lifted these bans, together with other legislation, in the liberation of Europe in the later stages of the war.
Current laws
The Swedish government commissioned a report from the Veterinary College in the 1920s that concluded that shechita could continue, but this was ignored in later Swedish legislation (although in Swedish law it is legal to slaughter fowl for private consumption). Shechita slaughtering is also prohibited in
IcelandThe Republic of Iceland is a European island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km². Its capital and largest city is Reykjavík, whose surrounding area is home to approximately two thirds of the national population...
, and since 1929 in
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
.
The
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
forbids
shechitah munachat (slaughter of the animal while it is lying on its back), on animal welfare grounds.
Shechita has been an emotional issue in the European Union; there were strikes of slaughterhouse workers in Germany and in Malmö, in southern Sweden, protesting that shechita was permitted at all.
Significance in Jewish tradition
The laws of shechita are not given in the text of the Torah. Rather, the Torah only writes that the slaughter shall be "as I have instructed you." In
Orthodox JudaismOrthodox Judaism is a formulation of Judaism that adheres to a relatively strict interpretation and application of the laws and ethics first canonized in the Talmudic texts and as subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and Acharonim.Orthodox...
this is taken as a proof that Moses received an
Oral TorahA term used to denote the legal and interpretative traditions which, according to traditon, were transmitted orally from Mount Sinai, and were not written in the Torah...
along with the text.
See also
- Kashrut
Kashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér , meaning "fit"...
- Ritual slaughter
Ritual slaughter is the practice of slaughtering livestock for meat in a ritual manner. This may be prescribed by a religious dietary laws, notably Jewish Shechita and Islamic Ḏabīḥah, or performed as a spectacular cultural practice, as in bullfighting....
- Comparison of Dhabiĥa Halal and kashrut
The Islamic dietary laws and the Jewish dietary laws are both quite detailed, and contain both points of similarity and discord. They share a common root: a Jewish code of laws found in Leviticus and an explanation of the Islamic code of law found in the Qur'an.-Similarities:* Swine are...
- Zabiha (Muslim method of ritual slaughter)
- Jhatka
Jhatka or Chatka meat is meat from an animal which has been killed by a single strike of a sword or axe to sever the head, as opposed to Jewish kosher or Islamic halal in which the animal is killed by ritually slicing the throat.This kills the animal immediately because the spinal cord is...
(Hindu method of ritual slaughter)
External links