Last month the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) upheld a Belgian law effectively proscribing kosher and halal slaughter, which had been challenged on religious-liberty grounds. Rafi Eis explains what differentiates the Jewish conception of the moral treatment of animals from that underlying the Belgian law—and similar regulations in other European countries. He takes as his point of departure the prohibition against partaking of a limb torn from a living animal, which, according to rabbinic tradition, God gave to Noah when first permitting him and his descendants to eat meat:

Were God merely concerned with animal pain, the Bible would have just prohibited the ripping off of animal limbs while the animal was alive. Instead, the Bible also prohibits consuming these limbs, even if they get amputated by accident. This prohibition is not about animal pain; rather, it forces man to reckon with the value of animal life. Once humans are allowed to eat meat, they must also have additional training to respect the life of the animal. The act of snuffing out animal life can lead to human cruelty, and this must be prevented.

Kosher slaughter similarly has a dual requirement. Not only must the animal be slaughtered in precise fashion; if it is killed in any other way, it may not be eaten. Jewish law, in fact, requires the butcher to see the loss of life. This enables the slaughterer to appreciate fully what he is doing. He is taking a life. If he ignores the act that, he will first become indifferent to the death that he causes and eventually cruel. Stunning the animal before killing it, [as the Belgian law requires and kashrut forbids], allows the butcher to disregard the weightiness of his act.

[Animals’] purpose is not to be human food, but rather to “be fertile and increase on earth” (Genesis 9:17). . . Man may kill animals to support human life, like for food, shelter, and therapeutic medical experimentation. This permission, however, can never lead to cruelty. The animal must be slaughtered with care and compassion, while the slaughterer is fully aware of the seriousness of the act that he is performing.

For this reason, Jewish law prohibits hunting for sport, which degrades and harms animals. That the CJEU prohibits sh’ḥitah, but has little problem with hunting for sport, highlights its moral hypocrisy. The EU is concerned with minimizing pain, but in the process allows the human character to become indifferent to the loss of animal life.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].