They Shouldn’t Ban Shechita, But Sure They Can

One Shabbat, during the time I was studying for a Master’s degree in International Law and Human Rights, I mentioned the courses I was taking to a rabbi. He looked perplexed, then gestured towards his synagogue bookshelf loaded with thick books of Talmud and codes of Jewish law. “Human rights is all here,” he protested. “Why would you go to a university?”

Human rights and Jewish values often overlap. But unfortunately, sometimes they don’t. This was on stark display earlier this month, as the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) which was recently imposed by the governments of two regions of Belgium. The Belgium law requires that all animals be anaesthetized or stunned before slaughter, which according to Halacha, renders the meat not kosher.

Jewish and Muslim groups both protested that this requirement violates their human rights. In particular, they cited their right to freedom of religion, claiming that a ban on kosher slaughter interferes with their ability to live according to their faith. Many Jewish spokesmen were livid with the court, with the European Jewish Congress even releasing a statement saying that coupled with rising acts of antisemitism, this decision called into question whether there is a future for Jews in Europe.

The court’s ruling, however, was well grounded in human rights principles. It was based on two findings. First, preventing unnecessary pain and suffering to animals falls under a category of government responsibility known as preserving public morals. This makes ensuring humane slaughter a legitimate government interest. Second, this requirement that animals be stunned before slaughter was a narrowly tailored and proportionate method of achieving the goal of making slaughter more humane.

But what about the difficulty this causes for Jews and Muslims trying to observe their religious dietary laws? The court decided that the fact that this law interferes with some citizens’ religious observance isn’t enough to block it. The reason is that freedom of religion does not extend to situations where religious practice violates other human rights.

The right to religious freedom consists of the right to choose one’s own beliefs, and to practice those beliefs only in ways that do not violate the rights and freedoms of others. This includes the right of people to live in a society that upholds what they consider to be basic morals, such as not causing unnecessary pain and suffering for animals. So the right to freedom of religion does not protect religious practices that go against this principle. In the extreme, imagine a hypothetical religious ritual that requires torturing an animal. In such a case, the government could forbid it no matter how ancient, solemn, or important the ritual might be to members of whatever faith wants to continue the practice.

In practical terms, the Jewish community has a good argument to overturn the ban on shechita. We can maintain that shechita is humane, and causes no more suffering to the animal than what’s done in non-Jewish slaughterhouses with stunning. As long as our ancient method of slaughter is still within the parameters of what’s currently considered moral, there is no reason for governments to disallow it. While the court was right about the law, it may have the facts wrong about shechita in this case.

But protesting that we’ve been doing shechita for thousands of years — and therefore we must have the right to continue — isn’t a winning argument. Opponents will point to countless religious teachings, ranging from regulations regarding how women must dress, to unequal treatment of women in divorce, and to acceptance of polygamy and slavery in the Bible, as examples of deeply rooted religious practices that must now be banned in the name of human rights.

The rabbi I mentioned earlier was partially correct in pointing to his Jewish bookshelf. The Jewish tradition does contain many teachings that are in keeping with human rights. But in fundamental ways, the two are vastly different.

We regard Jewish values as ancient, timeless, and perhaps even emanating from God. Human rights were only conceived of within the last century, and come from our ever-evolving vision of how to make the world more free and equitable for all members of the human race. Since their sources are so different, it’s inevitable that Judaism and human rights will sometimes clash.

If we are committed to both Judaism and human rights, we need to take these conflicts seriously. The Belgium law may have exaggerated the suffering caused by ritual slaughter, and therefore given us grounds to oppose it. But how we deal with other intractable conflicts between human rights and Jewish values is a key question that each person committed to both must struggle to answer.

Rabbi Shlomo Levin is the author of The Human Rights Haggadah, which highlights modern human rights issues in this classic Jewish text.