Life After Brisket

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Life After Brisket

Veganism in Israel is taking hold among the Orthodox, who use textual sources to argue against all meat consumption

· vegan,Vegetarian

A little more than two years ago, 36-year-old Jeremy Gimpel, a Modern Orthodox Israeli rabbi, political activist, and radio and television host, finally watched a YouTube video taken in a kosher-certified chicken slaughtering plant. A vegan friend had encouraged him for months to take a look at various videos about the ugly side of industrial food production. But Gimpel, who back then found vegans annoying, had dismissed his friend, pointing out that halakha not only allows for eating meat, but also prohibits the sort of animal torture that such slaughterhouse videos purported to show.
“I was like, that’s what goyim do,” Gimpel told me. “But then he sent me YouTube links to a kosher slaughtering house. And I couldn’t stop watching. I was shocked. I was like, that’s not kosher. I don’t care what the rabbinate says.”...