I hate saying anything negative about Poland, especially in
a medium that can be read by anyone and easily misconstrued. But I think at
this point you’d have to be pretty damn daft not to realize that I’ve met some of
the most intelligent, genuine and sensitive people during my year abroad. On a personal level, I’ve made wonderful friends, for which I am everlastingly
grateful.
On an institutional level, however, I have to admit that
Poland is still not a welcome place for anyone non-Polish, non-Catholic or
non-white. The hospital didn’t allow me to have a translator in the room, even
though an English philologist who translates professionally was waiting for me
and offering her services. They had no understanding of the anxiety and terror that
comes with getting injured in a foreign country, and would only get angry with
me when I didn’t do what they were asking, instead of realizing I didn’t
understand them. Same with the police. When it comes to public services and
legislation, Poland is not a welcome place, and I don’t think it will ever
restore its diversity until that changes.
I write “restore” deliberately, because for centuries Poland
prospered as a colorful mosaic of peoples. In fact, Poland was once a safe
haven for non-white, non-Catholics when other countries in Europe drove them
abroad. Jews, Muslims, gypsies—they all found refuge under the protective laws
of religious tolerance and social autonomy that defined Poland until 1573, when the Jagiellon dynasty ended and nobility overtook the nation. My Jewish friends and
family often forget that our ancestors were in Poland for a reason—because,
once upon a time, it was where they were most welcome to live without compromising their beliefs.
Yet today (perhaps as much a reflection of the
zeitgiest of the contemporary West), Polish legislation has made it harder and harder to be an "other" in Poland. This became abundantly clear last week, when
the Polish parliament passed a ban on halal/kosher meat. Given that every
non-Christian monotheistic religion requires this ritualistic slaughter for their
meat to be deemed clean, this law essentially makes it clear that Jews and Muslims are not welcome in Poland. No non-Christian, myself included, wants to live in a country where a fundamental tradition of their culture has been outlawed.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years, and I doubt I will ever
eat meat, kosher or not, again. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that I
will never need kosher meat if I live in Poland. It doesn’t matter that I find
the gratuitous consumption of meat immoral when it serves neither our survival
nor health. What matters is that banning the tradition my people have done for millennia that shows the utmost respect to the slaughterer, animal and consumer
in a nation of factory farming is an incontrovertible act of discrimination and hypocrisy.
The argument behind the law banning kosher meat is that the
practice of ritual slaughter, shechita in
Hebrew, is inhumane. In shechita, the
shochet, or slaughterer, performs the
killing with a single incision at the neck in one swift movement. This causes
an instant plummet in blood pressure that causes the animal to quickly lose
consciousness. The shochet receives
rigorous training before being able to perform this task, such that his
movement is deft and flawless; the cut must sever the trachea, esophagus and
major blood vessels in one quick and continuous cut. For this reason, the knife
must be twice as long as the animals neck and perfectly sharp, with no nicks
(before every animal, the shochet must
run his fingernail along the edge of the knife to make sure of this). Along
with training in the prayer, ritual and technique of the act, the shochet must also be deemed adequately
intelligent, show love and respect towards animals and have high moral
character.
While the scriptures do not provide specific instructions regarding
the treatment of the animal during its life, the animal should be treated with
same respect it receives in life as upon its death. When a company in the US
producing kosher meats was discovered using electric prods on animals’ faces,
as is common practice in animal farming today, the Jewish community expressed
their outrage and asserted that such behavior makes the meat non-kosher. The
president of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement wrote to its
community of rabbis that “When a company purporting to be kosher [causes] pain
to one of God’s living creatures, that company must answer to the Jewish
community, and ultimately, to God.” The Orthodox chair at Bar Ilan University
reprimanded the company and deemed the meat non-kosher as well, because “to
insist that God cares only about his ritual law and not about his moral law is
to desecrate His Name.”
So why has the Polish government deemed kosher or halal meat inhumane? The official reason is that all livestock must be stunned with an electric probe before slaughter, which is not included in the kosher ritual. In other words, kosher meat has been banned because the animals don't get electrocuted. In legal farms, the animals live pressed body-to-body amongst their own filth eating a stew of antibiotics and GMO corn, dragged to their death either by a mechanical chain around their necks or by getting prodded with an electric taser, hung by their feet and “stuck”—the industry term for being stabbed in the neck and left to slowly and inefficiently bleed out—but don't worry; they still receive the humane and all-absolving electric shock before their death. So basically, non-kosher animals can live inexcusably miserable and disgusting lives as long as they're deemed unconscious during the actual moment of death. That’s the legal situation to protect animals right now.
Maybe you're still thinking, “Well, that probe is more humane,
isn’t it? Why shouldn’t it be required for all livestock getting slaughtered?”
After all, requiring the same treatment for all animals isn’t hypocrisy and certainly not anti-Semitic. Except
that carp and fish don’t get stunned. Oh, and except that hunting is a popular
and encouraged sport in Poland. Try arguing that one.
Look, whether kosher or not, eating meat is cruel. But at
least in the Jewish and Muslim tradition, it is a cruelty we have to face and
accept ourselves, rather than blocking ourselves from the reality of our
actions with machines. And at least in the Jewish and Muslim tradition, life matters as much, if not more, than the short seconds of death.