Each year on Yom Kippur, when Jews fast for 25 hours, we abstain not only from food and water, but also from the wearing of leather footwear. One of the most beautiful interpretations for this regulation comes from Rabbi Moshe Schick, a late-19th-century Hungarian rabbi, who suggested that the reason we do not wear leather on Yom Kippur is rooted in our commitment to compassion. On Yom Kippur, we stand before the creator asking for mercy. How can we ask for God’s compassion when we are not ourselves showing compassion to animals?
Taking up his thread, I wonder: What would our world look like if we abstained from the cruelty of factory-farming products every day of the year, not only on our major fast days, Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av?
Here is my challenge to everyone, not just my Jewish siblings: Let us all show grace and compassion in our everyday choices around food.
Now, Judaism also has regulations around the food that we eat every day throughout our lives — the laws of kosher eating known as “kashruth.” But kashruth is not sufficient. I would go even further, and say something that may surprise you to hear from a rabbi who keeps strictly kosher in accordance with the Orthodox halacha I live my life by: Kashruth, currently, is not morally superior to nonkosher eating. It is not concerned with the workers, the animals, the environment or our health.
Of course, I consider kashruth holy. It is a set of ancient, sacred laws from the Torah. In an ideal world, the ethical and the religious would be braided together inexorably. I believe that they once were, in the time before industrialized meat and dairy production, when much of the legal structures of kashruth arose. However, the advent of factory farming has resulted in kashruth decoupling from moral choices around food. The kosher industry today is utterly entangled with the most pernicious sides of hypercapitalism. Until the industry can decouple itself from factory farming, the only true form of ethical eating in line with Jewish values is a plant-based diet.
I have felt great reservation about offering this public argument. Am I feeding into the antisemitism of anti-kosher rhetoric, I asked myself? After all, the European Union has become notorious for attempting to ban shehitah — Jewish ritual slaughter. Kosher animals suffer no more than any other factory-farmed animal. For the EU to target minorities — not just kosher-keeping Jews but also Muslims who follow halal — is plainly prejudiced. The EU is wrong — the kosher meat and dairy industries are no worse than their secular counterparts, but, in today’s current state, they also are no better. We must do better.
In general, I consider the discussion of the final moments of the animal’s life to be a red herring. The argument over which methods of slaughter are more humane misses the point entirely. The issue is not the animal’s final moments before death; the issue is the entirety of farmed animals’ suffering from birth until slaughter and the utter lack of regard for the sentience of these animals whose bodies are exploited for profit.
For what matters, kosher and nonkosher products are identical. A factory-farmed chicken destined for kosher slaughter will live its life in filthy, cramped conditions just like a nonkosher one; it will be subjected to the cruelties of beak breaking and other cost-saving measures just like a nonkosher one; it will suffer from birth to death like a no-kosher one.
What’s more, kosher factory farms for meat, milk and eggs exploit their workers as much as nonkosher ones. They are no different in their devastating environmental impact or their potential as sites of foodborne illnesses.
You may be saying to yourself: But Rabbi Shmuly, it’s the United States Department of Agriculture’s job to monitor the conditions of farms and slaughterhouses. I am sorry to report that the USDA is woefully underfunded and in no way equipped to properly inspect or regulate animal product industries. Consumers and kosher certification agencies cannot rely on the USDA as adequate: Its standards are neither high enough nor enforced enough. The Environmental Protection Agency, designed to regulate the environmental impacts of factory farms, has been severely weakened this year, and it was already woefully ill-equipped prior to that.
As consumers committed robustly or loosely to kashruth, we need to demand that kosher certification include a higher standard of humane conditions for animals — not just in how they die, but in how they live — and higher standards of labor and life conditions for workers responsible for every step of the process. Until that happens, a plant-based diet is our only option for true compassion.
As Jews, we fast on Yom Kippur not because it is better to be angels who don’t eat, but because it is better to be humans who pause for more morally refined eating. This is not just a Jewish issue. I encourage our non-Jewish brothers and sisters to consider whether factory farming is in keeping with their religious and moral values. There is tremendous potential for interfaith solidarity here, as we rethink what it means to adhere to our principles in how we eat.
There are so many burning questions of morality in the world today. On Yom Kippur, as we focus on the many transgressions of our lives, we make sure to do so standing in shoes that embody our own capacity for compassion. As we make our way through every day doing what we can to repair a broken world, let us make sure we are nourishing our bodies with food that demonstrates our compassion for all life.
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is president and dean of the Valley Beit Midrash, founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek, founder and president of YATOM and the author of 30 books on Jewish ethics.