Poland: ENTER AT YOUR OWN EUCHARIST

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.