Editorials are posted and archived
on JN Online:
WWw detroitj ewis hn ews c o m
Dry Bones
In The Spirit Of Kashrut
n Hebrew, Kaf Shin Resh. It is the root of
kashrut and "kosher" — and it means, most
simply, "fit, proper or correct." Looking at a
videotape distributed last week that showed cows
being slaughtered at AgriProcessors Inc., a kosher
beef abattoir in Postville, Iowa, most of us could
determine to the satisfaction of our own con-
sciences whether what we saw was fit, proper or
correct.
Rabbinic and other reactions differed but most
of us likely felt that the goal of kosher slaughter,
to respect the life of the animal and to minimize
its pain, was being compromised.
The process of drawing the lifeblood of a crea-
ture can never be antiseptically, spotlessly
clean. But that is not what being kosher
requires. Its goal is purity, particularly
purity of the spirit. To argue that the rit-
ual slaughterer, or shochet, meets the literal
requirements of using an unblemished knife and
cutting through the esophagus and trachea misses
the point when the animals are then left to writhe
for up to a minute in apparent agony.
Watching what happens in any slaughterhouse,
where animals are herded into close quarters
before ultimately facing death, makes many of us
contemplate reducing the meat content of our
daily diet. And there is no doubt the group that
arranged for the covert videotaping in Postville —
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) — advances an agenda whose stridency is
offensive to many Americans.
Neither fact, however, exculpates the
AgriProcessors plant, which sells its Rubashkin/
Aaron's Best brands in this country and also ships
meat to Israel. The tape showing
workers pulling out the cows' tra-
chea and esophagi by hand seems
a particularly repellent violation
of Jewish ethics, even if technical-
ly the animals are dead as soon as
the incision is made. The price of
kosher meats is high enough to
pay for humane killing as well as
for rabbinic supervision.
The New York-based Orthodox
Union, the major agency for
kosher supervision, deserves praise
for its prompt response to the
videotape; O.U. Vice
President Rabbi Tzvi
Hersh Weinreb said he
would ask AgriProcessors
to change the most
offensive elements of its proce-
dures. That response was substan-
tially better than the Agudath
Israel of America reaction, a
"shoot-the-messenger" statement
describing PETA as "devious and
unscrupulous."
Surely we are good enough at
engineering death to be able to
assure that the animals we eat do
not suffer needlessly. Overall, the
practices of kosher slaughterhous-
es, where trained rabbis exercise
ultimate authority, seem to be more humane than
government-regulated secular abattoirs in America
and most of the world. It should not be too diffi-
Facing The Truth
hour, and if I run into him on the street
see it clearly. It's one smile, one face.
the next day I won't have the slightest idea
Then, during the Thanksgiving holiday,
who he is.
my daughter and her husband came in from
My wife says this is because of an excess of
New York and stayed with us. Jaime loves
egotism. Probably. But enough about her.
looking at old pictures, and one evening she
I just have a problem with punims.
brought out a whole box of them from a
Especially when they're out of context.
storage closet. She gave a double take at one
Even with my immediate family, I some-
and asked, "Who's this?"
times fail to see the face before me. My
It was a picture of my wife, taken a year
GEORGE
mother recently had an old photograph of my CANTOR
or two before I met her, at about the same
father blown up to keep on her dresser. It
age Jaime is now. The faces are identical.
Reality
shows him at about the age of 18, posed in a
I had never seen it before, and it left
Check
bathing suit at a summer cottage. I had seen it
Mike, my son-in-law, pretty shaken, too.
dozens of times before in a family album.
Sherry merely beamed, secure in the infalli-
But in its magnified form there were several
bility of genetic science.
details that I never had noticed. The most striking
We spend a lifetime with the faces of those clos-
of which was that I was looking at my face.
est to us. But I wonder if we really see them. We
I had never really seen much of a resemblance
look at a parent, a child. And gradually that is
before. When I was young, I wasn't looking for such
what we see, rather than a face. Sometimes we
things; and for the last 32 years of his life, my dad
have to look deep in the past to really see who
wore a white beard. He was younger than I am now
they are.
when he began to grow it, and that is the image of
I know that years ago I fell in love with a special
him that is fixed in my mind.
face, and over Thanksgiving I unexpectedly saw it
But here he is as a strapping youth, and now I can
again. Isn't life delightful? I I
I
EDITORIAL
M
any years ago, I decided to grow a mus-
tache. I started it on a long road trip to
the West Coast and kept it for about
three years.
One night, I was sitting around my apartment.
You know how it is; not much on TV, too cold for a
walk. So I shaved it off.
A strange face stared back at me from the bath-
room mirror. It looked vaguely familiar. Someone I
used to know but couldn't quite place. It took me
weeks before I got used to my former face again.
I wonder, though, if anyone is really familiar with
his own face. The reflected image we see is a distor-
tion, a reversal of reality. I don't think we can ever
have the gift, as Robert Burns put it, to "see our-
selves as others see us."
I suffer from a sort of facial dyslexia anyhow. I
can interview someone intensively for half an
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor@thejewishnews.corn
www.mrdrybones.com
cult for AgriProcessors to fix those steps that are
wrong. American Jewry will support them in mak-
ing the necessary corrections.
12/10
2004
33