Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the motor-mouthed conservative talk radio
host and rabbi to the stars, believes that PETA’s Rubashkin campaign
has distorted shechita and made Jews look bad. But he won’t defend
Rubashkin shechita – because he cannot:
"My area of expertise is Jewish values and ideas, not Jewish ritual
slaughter. So I will not defend AgriProcessor’s seemingly
incomprehensible practice of removing the animal’s trachea after its
throat is slit, or the company’s practice of using upside-down pens, in
which the animal is held in the air by its feet, to facilitate the shechitah."
Of
course, as even a cursory look at the PETA video shows, the animals are
upside-down, but are not held in the air by their feet and Rabbi
Boteach won’t deal with throat-ripping because there is simply no
defense for it. That does not stop him from blaming PETA for
Rubashkin’s and his rabbis’ sins:
PETA’s devotion to animals may be laudable, but its so-called "exposé" of shechita is shameful, distorting Judaism’s five thousand-year history of sensitivity to animals.
PETA
has repeatedly stated that, done properly shechita is the most humane
method of slaughter available. The only distortion here is Rabbi Boteach’s.
