The Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, has a Jewish
problem.
In a painful affront to the Jewish community, it recently defeated a
government initiative to reinstate the legality of kosher slaughter of
animals. This prompted Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, to
threaten resignation and triggered sharp criticism of the Sejm from
Jewish communities in Poland and around the world.
What happens in Poland regarding Jews has special significance because
of the Holocaust. More than 90 percent of the country’s three and a half
million Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation. Poland began
legislating against kosher slaughter in 1936, and once the Germans
occupied the country three years later, the practice was banned
entirely.
Since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, however, Jewish life in
Poland has undergone a remarkable, and previously unimaginable,
renaissance. Full recognition of the rights of Jews to practice their
faith – including kosher slaughter – was enshrined in an agreement the
government signed with the Jewish community in 2004.
Indeed, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, addressing an
overflow crowd at the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum in
Washington several weeks ago, declared it was his country’s
responsibility to ensure “that today’s Jewish community in Poland is
safe, welcome and respected.”
He honored Poland’s Jewish community “not just for how it died, but for
how it lives, and how it is coming back to life.”
When legislation was adopted a few years ago mandating the use of
electronic stunning equipment before an animal is killed – a practice
prohibited under Jewish law –the Jewish community was granted an
administrative exemption. In January, however, a court ruled the
exemption unconstitutional. Alleged violations of animal rights trumped
age-old Jewish religious practice.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government framed legislation to override
the court decision. What should have been a fairly easy corrective
measure was instead defeated on July 12 by a vote of 222 to 178, leaving
in place the judicial ban.
Thirty-eight Sejm members representing Tusk’s ruling Civic Platform
party joined with the opposition in voting to outlaw ritual slaughter.
In Poland, this was viewed as a major victory for animal rights
advocates, as their views prevailed against the nation’s farmers and
meatpackers, who had developed a lively business exporting kosher and
halal meat to Israel and Muslim countries.
Jews, however, see matters quite differently. From their perspective,
the Sejm’s action stigmatizing kosher slaughter as inhumane blatantly
contradicts Foreign Minister Sikorski’s pledge to make Jews “safe,
welcome and respected.” They point out that kosher slaughter, whereby
the animal is rendered immediately unconscious by severing the carotid
artery, is humane, and that the continued legality of hunting in Poland,
which results in far greater and more indiscriminate pain to animals,
suggests there may in fact be another, unstated reason for outlawing
kosher slaughter: anti-Semitism.
In the wake of the Sejm vote, pejorative comments about Jews in some of
the Polish media and online give some credence to these fears.
Unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident. The situation for
European Jews looks even grimmer in a broader context. Just a few months
ago, a similar scenario unfolded in Germany when a court banned ritual
circumcision, another fundamental element of the Jewish religion, on the
grounds that it mutilated children without their consent. There, too,
anti-Semitic motivation was not hard to discern in certain quarters amid
the talk about physiological and psychological harm.
Fortunately, Chancellor Angela Merkel navigated a bill through the
German parliament overruling the court and reestablishing the religious
freedom of Jews to continue an age-old tradition of their faith. Whether
Poland will successfully follow her example and push through a law
guaranteeing the right to kosher slaughter remains to be seen.
Such attacks on Jewish religious practice, in fact, constitute just one
front in a wider struggle over the future of Jewish life in Europe.
Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise, increasing by 30 percent between
2011 and 2012. In France, there was an astounding 58 percent jump over
that same period, including the targeted murder last year of four Jews,
three of them small children, in Toulouse.
Vocally anti-Semitic political parties are represented in the Greek and
Hungarian parliaments and are gaining power on the local and regional
levels in other countries. Public opinion polls show alarmingly high
levels of anti-Semitic attitudes. Demonization of Israel in the media
and among some intelligentsia is often indistinguishable from
Jew-baiting. No wonder that opinion surveys point to a striking number
of European Jews contemplating emigration.
Sourcet: http://www.jewishpress.com/i
0 comMENTS:
Post a comment