People might know that there are countries where it is effectively impossible for Jews to live.
What less people know is that there are countries where Jews are not banned outright, or prevented from getting work permits by law, but are made to pay a "Jew Tax" in the form of preventing Jews from producing kosher meat, requiring them to buy foreign meat that is less available and costs a lot more.
Those countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Slovenia.
These countries have a "Jew Tax" which requires their Jewish citizens to buy food at higher prices.
Canada has now joined these countries.
When I was in school and people would ask "How could people pass laws against Jews?", the answer is this... by starting with making life more difficult for Jews, then like the frog in the pot, turning up the heat.
@serge FWIW, the law in Sweden is "an animal being slaughtered must be stunned before it is cut open" (also blocking halal slaughter) and comes from an animal welfare POV. It should, I believe, be possible to do kosher slaughter with a stunned animal (for which, I believe, the operative definition is "animal killed by bleeding out"). If any Jew in Sweden wants to pursue this, talk to a rabbi for religious advice and your local authorities for legal advice.
@dukepaaron@vatine@serge it always feels like such a weird nitpick to me. Monocrop feed (and deforestation/soil degradation to grow that feed), abysmal cage sizes, hormones, perpetual pregnancy, separating the young from their mothers, waste (mis)management, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, destruction of wetlands for grazing and feed, industrial slaughter? That's a given. But, we want our industrialized slaughter machinations to be ethical, so y'know, fuck those out dated ancient practices.
What the article does not mention, or strongly emphasize are some important facts:
Kosher slaughter is considered by Jews to be cruelty free due to the means of slaughter, which ensures that the animal is killed with a single blade strike by an extremely trained expert
The blade used must be very large, and inspected daily for knicks and cuts. This ensures the animal dies quickly and without pain.
These "anti-cruelty" laws appear in European nations at the same time as rising antisemitism or "anti-immigrant" feelings around Muslims.
Very little care is given the means by which animals are made unconscious and how cruel that is, but ritual slaughter with high supervision and training is deemed "savage" by "enlightened" Christian.
'In other words, if it wasn't obvious, this isn't about animal cruelty at all, but about hate against Jews, and also Muslims, though Muslims have more flexibility in their meat production than Jews.
I believe that like most antisemitism, there's a core hate reason but then they construct an argument that fits the time.
For example in the 1400s the argument was that Jews were OK so long as they repented for their sins by converting to Christianity, thereby absolving them of the sin of killing Jesus.
In the 1930s Hitler used this and the pseudo-scientific arguments to attack Jews.
These "animal cruelty" laws operate a bit like the US "anti-trafficking" or "anti-pedophilia" laws. No one is going to say they're for sex trafficking or for pedophilia, so they pass without examination or argument.
"Jew tax" is misleading, as it suggests that these countries have banned kosher slaughter solely because of #antisemitism.
The issue is animal cruelty. Many countries have banned slaughtering animals that have not been pre-stunned, so as to render them unconscious and unable to feel pain. Traditional Jewish dietary laws ban pre-stunning.
Kashrut proponents counterargue that prestunning itself is painful, and that ritual kosher slaughter is more humane.
@barney@serge Don’t explain kosher at the administrator of the Jew instance. He knows what it is and why there is actually a “tax.” It is a tax. And I know that, too. People are very tired out by this and apparently you’ve already offended the instance enough to get blocked.
Nobody has time for this crap, honestly. We know what the words and implications mean.
Also, to add to my confusion... I follow Serge, find him to be an extremely valuable resource, and boost his posts frequently. How could I be doing all that if I'm banned from his instance?
@MichalBryxi@barney@serge Jewish culture and meaning of terms used in general. Lots of people aren’t but feel very comfortable telling us what our traditions mean. It’s happened to me all my life.
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