Reform argues about kosher meat, Haredim about kosher phones

UK Reform report advocates stunning before slaughter; Haredim ignore rabbis’ demand for kosher phones

Animals should be stunned before they are slaughtered, a UK Reform report has recommended, calling into question the traditional practice of shechita.

It suggested that some Jews might feel conflicted between eating meat from an animal that had been organically reared and stunned before slaughter and one that had undergone shechita without being stunned first.

The author of the working party behind the report, Rabbi Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead Synagogue, insisted Reform rabbis were not advocating changes in government policy.

The report, discussed at the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Cantors UK on Tuesday, was about “laying out options and opening up possibilities”, he said.

The working party “had investigated whether in the shechita world, change can be made,” he said. But there was not “an overall mood” at the assembly “that we ought to change the system. On balance, pre-stunning is better - but we are really only talking about a few seconds. We are not calling for government action.”

Muslims and Jews remain exempt from UK requirements for the pre-stunning of animals. Defenders of shechita say that the swift cut made by shochtim results in an almost immediate loss of consciousness for the animal.

At the other end of the religious spectrum, the kosher debate is not about meat but phones. 

In Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox suburb just a few miles east of Tel Aviv’s skyscrapers, a vicious fight is unfolding over whether smartphones are compatible with traditional Jewish law - and who should have the power to decide on internet access.

The Haredim’s solution so far has been to continue with “dumb” phones, or to allow smartphones that come with content blocking filters preinstalled: the only apps on a typical kosher smartphone’s home screen are a clock, calculator, and navigation software.

Only one body – the Rabbinical Committee for Communications – has the power to issue kosher certificates for Israel’s estimated 500,000 kosher mobile phones. It is an opaque and influential operation which can screen numbers, content and the flow of information as it pleases.