Is Kosher Ethical?

 Almost 40 years ago I spoke about “The Case for Judaism”  to members of the tiny Jewish community of Moncton, in New Brunswick, Canada. It was a speech I had given many times before and would give hundreds of times more. In it, I described the ethical preoccupation of Judaism, including practices dismissed as only ritual. One example I offered in almost every talk was the laws of kosher slaughtering. For example, to ensure as rapid a death as possible the shochet (slaughterer) had to kill the animal with one cut of the throat and with a blade that had no nicks, lest the animal suffer.

During the question-and-answer period, a young man about my age (early 20s) rose and introduced himself. He had just obtained smicha (ordination as a rabbi) from Yeshiva University and was in Moncton as a potential rabbi for his first congregation. He differed with what I said about kashrut; it had nothing to do with ethics or morality, he explained. For example, he noted, a shochet could, in fact, cut the animal’s throat very slowly, causing real suffering to the animal, yet the animal would still be kosher.