4,991
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Considering how strong the taboo against blood consumption in Judaism is, it's hard to understand how it was possible for Christians throughout Europe and over many centuries to believe an absolutely dumb and vicious gossip about Jews using Christian children's blood for making matzah. In Poland, some monarchs attempted to suppress it. As early as in 1264, Duke Boleslav the Pious of Greater Poland issued a famous charter of Jewish privileges, known as the Statute of Calisia (Kalisz), whose article 30 explicitly forbade anyone from spreading the spiteful rumour. Seventy years later, King Casimir the Great extended the law from the province of Greater Poland to the entire Kingdom of Poland. But despite these efforts, the canard continued to serve as an excuse for anti-Jewish pogroms for centuries, including the particularly shameful post-Holocaust Kielce Pogrom of 1946.
What does the prohibition against blood consumption mean in practice? Well, the animal must be slaughtered butchered in such a way that lets it bleed out as quickly and as amply as possible, and then the carcass must be dressed in a way that will remove almost all of the remaining blood. This so-called Jewish ritual slaughter is practised by specially trained butchers who are required to cut the animal's throat with a single move of a long, very sharp, unserrated knife, severing the wind pipe, the food pipe and major blood vessels at the same time. Next, the carcass is quartered, larger blood vessels are removed, the meat is soaked in water, buried in salt and rinsed with water again, so as to get rid of the last drops of blood. The liver, which is especially well supplied with blood, must be additionally grilled.
[[File:Kosher salt.jpg|thumb|Coarse uniodized salt which is used for kashering (making kosher) meat is known as "kosher salt" in American English.]]
=== Ritual Slaughter Controversy ===
Let's return to the question of ritual slaughter, as it's a topic capable of arousing quite strong passions. In Poland (and not only), it's been raised from time to time since before World War 2. Two viewpoints are at loggerheads here: on the one side, the right of the Jews to practice their religion; on the other, the right of animals to a humane death. And also the right of farmers and the meat-processing industry to make loads of money (about 30% of the beef exported from Poland is either kosher of halal; Muslim ritual slaughter is quite similar to the Jewish one). That makes three viewpoints actually. Animal rights advocates maintain that an animal subjected to ritual slaughter without prior stunning may agonize for up to several minutes before it finally dies. What's more, in some Jewish butcheries, animals are turned upside down before the slaughterthey are killed; while it makes the death quicker, it also increases the level of stress prior to death. On the other hand, for meat to be kosher, the slaughtered animal must be in good health (no major injuries and no defects in internal organs; lungs are particularly closely examined after the slaughter) and conscious. And this rules out stunning.
[[File:Noże do szechity.jpg|thumb|A set of knives for ritual slaughter, coming in various sizes: for poultry, for sheep and goats, and for cattle.<br>{{small|Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw}}]]
