Kolloquium: Compassion Mobilized: Emotional Agitation against Kosher Slaughter and "Jewish Cruelty”

Agitation against Shehita, the Jewish practice of kosher slaughtering, has been highly emotional since animal protection societies emerged all over Europe in the mid-19th century. This ritual method of meat production without prior stunning evoked heated protests, for animal protectionists were wedded to the idea that stunning equaled humane treatment of animals. The question of Shehita, which might appear to be a relatively minor issue at first glance, sparked much controversy, as it touched questions of emancipation, tolerance and state interference. And it called antisemites to action exploiting animal welfare for their purposes: Antisemitic parties of the German Empire were denouncing kosher slaughtering as “Jewish cruelty”, targeting the Jews as an “oriental race” which had to be excluded from the German nation. The National Socialists subsequently passed a nationwide law prohibiting slaughter without stunning in 1933 (“Reichstierschutzgesetz”) and made the allegedly sadistic Jewish treatment of animals a crucial part of their propaganda. Jews were identified as enemies of animals and implicitly Germans, characterized by cruelty and lustful mercilessness.

In my talk I shed light on the emotional resources of anti-Shehita agitations and its historical developments. After 1945, still, animal welfare alongside right-wing actors reaffirmed their “politics of rage” (Uffa Jensen, dt. “Zornpolitik”) converting mobilized compassion towards helpless creatures into disgust and revulsion towards Jews. In the context of Western Germany’s post-Shoah debates this provided an emotional strategy for relief of shame. Furthermore, the matter of Muslim immigration since the 60s widened the debate, as animal protectionists also targeted the practice of Dhabh, Muslim ritual slaughter, bringing up different anxieties.

Fabian Weber is a postdoc researcher at the Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg. His current project focuses on political, legal and public debates on ritual slaughter/Shehita in Western Germany after 1945. He received his PhD in 2020 with the publication of his book Projektionen auf den Zionismus. Nichtjüdische Wahrnehmungen des Zionismus im Deutschen Reich 1897-1933. He held fellowships of the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich-Studienwerk, FAZIT-Stiftung and at the Leibniz-Institute for European History Mainz. In spring 2023 he was Manfred Lahnstein Fellow at the Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History at the University of Haifa where he conducted a research project on the topic: “’Exceptional Jews’. Jewish interactions with Germany’s New Right”. A journal article about the New Right intellectual Armin Mohler and his hidden negative attitudes towards Jews has recently been accepted for the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.