Gruesome reality, Slaughter Options

[Prisni]

When someone mentions halal or kosher slaughter, I loose all respect for those people who do it and sanction it.
It might be political incorrect to say anything, but at this point I don't care anymore.

View at Youtube

[Prisni]

View at Youtube

I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

[Prisni]

Not just kosher and halal.

View at Youtube

[Gomer]

Don't worry about it. Sprinkle a little Kirtan Rabbi around and it makes it all OK. Shalom.

View at Youtube

[Kalisurfer]

So what do we do about it all? All one can do if they are a vegetarian and against animal slaughter is to try to tell the story of slaughter and the suffering entailed in it to those who eat meat, offer them ideas for alternative eating and meal choices, tell them the health benefits of not eating meat or possibly cut down on the amount they eat. In this case of dealing with devout Muslims and Jews who eat halal and kosher meat, this is a part of their spiritual culture, something going on for hundreds if not thousands of years, and they no more want outsiders telling them what to eat, or what to believe in as you or I would do as vegetarians.

I don't see what the Kirtan Rabbi has to do with the subject G(H)omer, for I've been told that the Kirtan Rabbi, Andrew Hahn, is a vegan and not a zionist either, but he is by all means Jewish, so how does his video have any bearing upon the slaughter of the animals any more than that of an opera or rock singer does with their music, be it considered spiritual or not? There are vegetarian and vegan Jews and Christians out there in the world, as it should be of no real surprise to anyone.

I've met many meat eating people, be they atheists, Christians, Jews and Muslims who do more for the welfare and care of other human beings, society and the environment than many vegetarians, so I find it hard to judge others who live and practice another faith or live in a culture where meat eating is a normal way to live ones life. On the other hand, I've met some very mean spirited angry vegetarians who would rather walk over you than give you a hand, so just because one is a vegan or vegetarian, it does not automatically make you a nice decent person.

As far as the suffering of animals go, yes, I see and feel it anytime the topic of slaughter comes up, especially in mechanized factory farming where the life of animals is just another objective commodity. I used to think that people who did not see and feel the same compassion that I did for animals by consuming them and supporting slaughterhouses, that they were some what flawed and barbaric, adding to the suffering in the world, but that has changed over time. I came to realize that imposing my beliefs on another human when it comes to diet and culture was unfair, especially in light that for many of us, we grew up taking part in that dietary way of life, where most of current and past family members eat meat because it was the cultural norm. At some point I came to accept that people and cultures are different, and we will not agree on everything in terms of what we believe in or how we should life our lives.

I think education and offering alternatives is the answer, but to continually being disgusted by youtube videos that show animal slaughter, even religiously sanctioned slaughter, does little other than preach to the choir when dealing with other vegetarians, as we hold hands and share our anger and disgust at animals dying by the knife, but by doing this, we possibly start playing with the personal composure of feeling superior to those who live lives culturally different than ours, which is something from my devotee days that I have to fight from reoccurring, where I can fall into some moral high ground stance and judge others negatively who think and act differently. I am not saying that you are doing this Prisni, but for me seeing all these videos here on the forum, it brought up old feelings and thoughts that used to fall into that area, and it is something that will most likely always be there in my life as an ex-devotee.

This can be an explosive issue, for like abortion, religion and politics, when morals as to an absolute right and wrong are involved, you can run into folks who see no compromise on certain issue, and I know plenty of local vegans and vegetarian activist whom disagree with the stance I take, which is fine with me.

Saying all that, I also feel greatly for the animals in the videos above, could no more do that to them than I could to my dog or another human being, and would like to think there will be a time when such practices will be considered not necessary and cruel, but this will take time for whole cultures and histories to change, if indeed such a time will ever come.

[kalki]

I've met many meat eating people, be they atheists, Christians, Jews and Muslims who do more for the welfare and care of other human beings, society and the environment than many vegetarians, so I find it hard to judge others who live and practice another faith or live in a culture where meat eating is a normal way to live ones life. On the other hand, I've met some very mean spirited angry vegetarians who would rather walk over you than give you a hand, so just because one is a vegan or vegetarian, it does not automatically make you a nice decent person.

I have also met meat eaters who have a good heart and vegetarians who are downright slimy. My only answer to this dilemna is what the Buddha had taught.

The three people implicated in the suffering of an animal are the ones who kill the animal, the ones who ask someone to kill the animal, or the ones who eat the animal knowing it was killed for them.

This means that if you buy meat that was slaughtered, you don't suffer the karma of killing unless you are one of those three people. In today's slaughterhouse industry, it is blurry because there is supply and demand, but still if you buy the meat from the store, it isn't really the store who slaughters the animal. The store has to order it from the butcher based on the demand, so i think the store is implicated more than the buyer themselves.

But frankly slaughter is just gross and it is common sense to want to stop it, yet we do have cultures who survive on eating meat. So I side with the Dalai Lama and vote for less meat eating but let those cultures who want to slaughter animals, do so at their own risk and be subject to criticsim by Peta activists to help them think a bit about it.

[Prisni]

In this case of dealing with devout Muslims and Jews who eat halal and kosher meat, this is a part of their spiritual culture, something going on for hundreds if not thousands of years,

If they are allowed to do it because in their culture they have done it for hundreds or thousands of years, I want to follow my own culture and plunder and burn other countries, since the Vikings did that thousands of years ago. (this is not seriously intended)

It is the ancient culture of up here. Why should the restrictions on culture go only one way?
So it becomes the battle between cultures. Maybe in the USA, there is a lot of influence from jewish culture, but over here there is much, much less.

Recently I figured out that the names of the weekdays, except for one, are names of scandinavian gods

Sunday (Söndag) - the god Sol (the sun god)
Monday (måndag) - the god Måne (the moon god)
Tuesday (tisdag) - the god Tyr (Ti)
Wednesday (onsdag) - the god Odin
Thursday (torsdag) - the god Thor (Tor)
Friday (fredag) - the goddess Frigg
Saturday (lördag) - it means the bathing day

Note that in English the correnspondence it is less strong. Unfortunately our own culture up here has been so raped by middle east religiouns, it is practically unknown today. There are only traces. Ok, the jews got Israel, since it was their very ancient homeland. That is alright. But it also gives us a right to claim our own roots, in our own homeland, and without being called racists for doing that. It also means that when jews claimed palestina, the christian dream of palestina as a home-land turned out to be false. It was not our christian culture ethnic homeland. Our home land is up here in the ancient scandinavian (Viking) culture.

There were no concentration or work-camps in Sweden.

[kalki]

Recently I figured out that the names of the weekdays, except for one, are names of scandinavian gods

Sunday (Söndag) - the god Sol (the sun god)
Monday (måndag) - the god Måne (the moon god)
Tuesday (tisdag) - the god Tyr (Ti)
Wednesday (onsdag) - the god Odin
Thursday (torsdag) - the god Thor (Tor)
Friday (fredag) - the goddess Frigg
Saturday (lördag) - it means the bathing day

This is a big shock to me Prisni that you uncovered this only recently. Perhaps you learned it in school and forgot? For this dumb American, yours truly, we learned it in 8th grade mythology study in our literature class along with their corresponding planets. Saturday corresponds to to Saturn or Cronos, the Greek God. It must be something special for you to broaden your horizon after asking other dumb americans to do so.

[darwin]

Cain's cruelty free vegetarian offering was not accepted. Cain of the passionless non-violent vegetarian altar who would soon murder his own brother.

When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

-- Genesis Chapter 4, verse 12 to 16

[kalki]

Don't worry about it. Sprinkle a little Kirtan Rabbi around and it makes it all OK. Shalom.

View at Youtube

that movie was gross. i only watched about 30 seconds. what are they doing? are they slitting the throat of the cow and letting it bleed to death?

i thought that kosher just meant that they drip all the blood out of the meat by hanging it upside down. that is what a jewish friend told me. must they kill the animal by slitting the throat to make it kosher?

[Gomer]

Don't worry about it. Sprinkle a little Kirtan Rabbi around and it makes it all OK. Shalom.

View at Youtube

that movie was gross. i only watched about 30 seconds. what are they doing? are they slitting the throat of the cow and letting it bleed to death?

i thought that kosher just meant that they drip all the blood out of the meat by hanging it upside down. that is what a jewish friend told me. must they kill the animal by slitting the throat to make it kosher?

Kosher slaughter is killing the animal by slitting the throat and letting it bleed to death while it is conscious.

The facial expressions of the religious murderers are a textbook example of mindlessness mixed with brain-numbing duty. The Rabbi doing the fingering of the long knife is not someone I would feel comfortable with him being around my family.

[Brainiac]

Cain's cruelty free vegetarian offering was not accepted. Cain of the passionless non-violent vegetarian alter who would soon murder his own brother.

Haha, I always wondered about that. God spurned Cain's corn offering but was immensely pleased with Abel's lamb? One of the Bible's little-known WTF moments.

[kalki]

Kosher slaughter is killing the animal by slitting the throat and letting it bleed to death while it is conscious.

The facial expressions of the religious murderers are a textbook example of mindlessness mixed with brain-numbing duty. The Rabbi doing the fingering of the long knife is not someone I would feel comfortable with him being around my family.

It seems to me that the most humane way to kill an animal would be quickly. So this way, the animal feels less pain. So I think this type of killing, by observing the pain of the animal must be as Prabhupada had said, causing the karmic reaction of war. Soliders are many times trained to kill kill kill and divorce yourself from the feelings of the enemies. I suppose what better way than to watch animals die ruthlessly first.

However, in Judaism, animals are considered to be without any soul. So there concept must be so different that the pain of the animal does not matter. Animals are meant for enjoyment only I suppose. The Lord gave dominion over them. So there is a blind spot about animals. So this blind spot could go either way, in that really you don't mean any harm toward an animal when it dies for your food, or it could mean that you are so blind to the suffering of the animal.

I am not sure I would be afraid of a rabbi like this in my house if I knew he had a complete disconnect about the death of the animal and its feelings, but I would not have a good time talking with him since philosophically I would think he was just basically retarded.

[kalki]

Cain's cruelty free vegetarian offering was not accepted. Cain of the passionless non-violent vegetarian alter who would soon murder his own brother.

Haha, I always wondered about that. God spurned Cain's corn offering but was immensely pleased with Abel's lamb? One of the Bible's little-known WTF moments.

I thought it was quite well known. Most of the time, Christians wouldn't buy my arguments that Jesus was vegetarian or the Lord intended a cruelty free diet because of this incident with Cain and Abel. I ended up having to research this incident and after understanding it more, stopped preaching that the Bible had intended vegetarianism. It seems to me that it didn't no matter what translation you have on hand.

[Gomer]

I am not sure I would be afraid of a rabbi like this in my house if I knew he had a complete disconnect about the death of the animal and its feelings, but I would not have a good time talking with him since philosophically I would think he was just basically retarded.

There are other religious teachings that require a numbskull to live by. I'll wager that the bloody Rabbi is also qualified in those areas. After all, a Goy is a Goy, which is akin to being in the same class as cattle.

[kalki]

I am not sure I would be afraid of a rabbi like this in my house if I knew he had a complete disconnect about the death of the animal and its feelings, but I would not have a good time talking with him since philosophically I would think he was just basically retarded.

There are other religious teachings that require a numbskull to live by. I'll wager that the bloody Rabbi is also qualified in those areas. After all, a Goy is a Goy, which is akin to being in the same class as cattle.

I don't know what a Goy is at all. But yes, there are many teachings that a person has to live by and could have success in some and not in others. But why would a person who slaughters animals be a numbskull? Couldn't it just be pure ignorance of the suffering of the animal? Ignorance and stupidity are a bit different. I think slaughtering animals is kinda stupid, but it is mainly due to the person's ignorance and it is not that he is really stupid.

I could have ended up doing the same. I used to eat chicken and I got a job at a chicken fry place once. I only quit because I thought dead chicken carcasses were gross, but I didn't really think of the animal's suffering at all. That came way later.

[Gomer]

I don't know what a Goy is at all.

"A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”

Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers.

Shas is a chief coalition partner in the current Israeli government.

Yosef, also a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, was quoted by the right-wing newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, as saying that the basic function of a goy, a derogatory word for a gentile, was to serve Jews.

“Non-Jews were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world-only to serve the People of Israel,” Yosef said in his weekly Saturday night sermon which was devoted to laws regarding actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on the Sabbath.

Yosef also reportedly said that the lives of non-Jews in Israel are preserved by God in order to prevent losses to Jews.

Yosef, widely considered a prominent Torah sage and authority on the interpretation of Talmud, a basic Jewish scripture, held a comparison between animals of burden and non-Jews.

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them…With gentiles, it will be like any person-They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

“This is his servant…That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

Yosef further elucidated his ideas about the servitude of gentiles to Jews, asking “why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap; and we will sit like an effendi and eat.”

“That is why gentiles were created.”

The concept of gentiles being infra-human beings or quasi-animals is well-established in Orthodox Judaism.

For example, rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement, a supremacist but influential Jewish sect, teach openly that at the spiritual level, non-Jews have the status of animals.

Abraham Kook, the religious mentor of the settler movement, was quoted as saying that the difference between a Jew and a gentile was greater and deeper than the difference between humans and animals.

“The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews — all of them in all different levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

Some of Kook’s manifestly racist ideas are taught in the Talmudic college, Merkaz H’arav, in Jerusalem. The college is named after Kook."

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/10/18...-to-serve-jews/

But why would a person who slaughters animals be a numbskull?

Believing that god is pleased by killing an animal with a cruel death requires a numbskull.

[kalki]

But why would a person who slaughters animals be a numbskull?

Believing that god is pleased by killing an animal with a cruel death requires a numbskull.

Right but I had said right after that,

Couldn't it just be pure ignorance of the suffering of the animal? Ignorance and stupidity are a bit different. I think slaughtering animals is kinda stupid, but it is mainly due to the person's ignorance and it is not that he is really stupid.

Numbskulls are usually just stupid people. Ignorant people may or may not be numbskulls.

[Gomer]

Numbskulls are usually just stupid people. Ignorant people may or may not be numbskulls.

Numb is the important term. The reasons for numbness are many and varied.

Some ex-devotees seem to think that they must throw out all remnants of GV thought to be intellectually free. Compassion for the animals being one of the leftovers. Funny enough, these types were often the very ones' who were sitting on the nose-bleed chairs explaining the 'facts' in the Bhagavatam to the less intelligent.

Numbskulls come in all flavours.

[kalki]

Numbskulls are usually just stupid people. Ignorant people may or may not be numbskulls.

Numb is the important term. The reasons for numbness are many and varied.

Some ex-devotees seem to think that they must throw out all remnants of GV thought to be intellectually free. Compassion for the animals being one of the leftovers. Funny enough, these types were often the very ones' who were sitting on the nose-bleed chairs explaining the 'facts' in the Bhagavatam to the less intelligent.

Numbskulls come in all flavours.

Well if you are taking the word literally, then I agree with you. You do have to be "numb" to kill an animal. Of course. I took it in the more colloquial sense of a numbskull just being a dumb guy.

While I agree with you that ex-devotees need not be deprogrammed of everything to be "free," although unfortunately, some do have to be really cleaned out, and even eat meat before they come to their senses and love animals again. But really i think the concept of harming animals is more complex. Killing an animal and eating an animal are different things in Buddhism at least and incur different karmas.

I also have at least some respect for someone who is willing to hunt for his prey and eat only what he kills. But hunters usually kill the animal without letting it suffer. This kosher thing really freaks me out a bit and seems preposterous really.