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An English rabbi, the Irish Senate, and the power of argument
THE RECENT ruling by the European Union Court of Justice allowing member countries to ban ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat is just one in a long line of such measures dating back at least as far as 1893, when Switzerland voted to outlaw the practice. That prohibition continues to be in effect, while the ban on kosher slaughter in Nazi Germany was rescinded after World War II. Numerous countries and governments have deliberated the issue, including the United States, with some actually adopting the prohibition.
Faced with these challenges, Jewish proponents have mounted various defenses of the ritual slaughter known as shechita. But none was more cogent and persuasive than the petition that was argued nearly 90 years ago by a young rabbi before the Seanad Eire-ann-the Irish Senate. The presentation was exhaustive in the sweeping scope and depth of its content, compelling in its eloquence and passion, and remarkable in the singular and extraordinary personality delivering the address. His name was Isaac Halevy Herzog, and he would later become the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel.
When he rose to defend kosher slaughter in 1934, Herzog had already made a practice of defending controversial opinions. Although raised in England, he himself strongly sympathized with the Irish Nationalists, the Sinn Fein, and he counted their leader, Eamon de Valera, among his close friends. Of the rabbi, de Valera once said, "from the moment I met him, I felt in the presence of a good and holy man." Ireland was still in political turmoil in 1934. Officially the country was named Saorstat Eireann, the Irish Free State, and it had the status of Dominion of the British Commonwealth-a compromise reached under the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Irish War of Independence in 1921. That treaty would last until 1937, when the Nationalists would abolish it and pass a new constitution (which Rabbi Herzog himself helped draft) that established the independent state of Ireland.
On a cold winter day, De Ceadaoin, 17° Eanair- Wednesday, January 17,1934-Herzog would be speaking as a representative of not only the Irish Jewish community as their chief rabbi but also the greater English rabbinate...