A Healthy Dose of Rational Food for Thought:
Excerpted from sources below.
Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the founding dean of New York's Mesifta Torah VoDaath, became a vegetarian after the Holocaust/Shoah, simply yet powerfully declaring, "There has been enough killing in the world."
Isaac Bashevis Singer powerfully declares, "In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka." The livestock industry is a chronic and widespread form of enslavement and torture, while vegetarianism is a powerful way of actively yet nonviolently opposing the daily and brutal outrage of meat production and consumption.
Health and the protection of life are repeatedly emphasized, and even prioritized, in Jewish teachings. While Judaism teaches that we should be very careful about sh'mirat haguf (preserving our bodies and health), and pekuach nefesh (protecting our lives at almost any cost), numerous scientific studies have linked animal-based diets directly to heart disease and heart attacks (the number-one cause of death in the United States), various forms of cancer (the number-two cause of death), stroke (the number-three cause of death), high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, asthma, atherosclerosis, aneurysms, rheumatoid arthritis, impotence, endometriosis, gallstones, gout, Alzheimer's, and other ailments. About two-thirds of diseases in the United States are diet-related-and vegetarians are much less afflicted. Note that even meat-eating doctors almost always recommend eating less meat, not more, while advocating the consumption of more fresh fruit, vegetables, beans, and whole grains for better health.
Further, since more than half of all antibiotics in the United States are given to livestock (plus immense amounts of chemicals, steroids, hormones, and other drugs), resistant bacteria are increasing at an alarming rate, creating untreatable superbugs, like MRSA, that kill tens of thousands of people per year in the United States alone. And don't forget mad cow disease, bird flu, foot and mouth disease, E. coli, salmonella, and food poisoning. "If there were no poultry industry," concludes Neal Barnard, M.D., "there would be no epidemics of bird flu." And if there were no cow industry, there would be no E. coli outbreaks.
Packaged meat has been discovered to be injected with carbon monoxide to keep it looking red, even when it's rancid. Fish often contain mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium and toxic POPs, including PCBs, DDT, and dioxin, which can't be removed from the fish and which bioaccumulate in consumers' bodies.
The meat industry is unhealthy and unsafe.
A vegetarian diet (one that does not include any animals) or a vegan diet (a vegetarian diet that does not include any animal products at all, including meat, dairy, and eggs) can help prevent, and sometimes reverse, many of these health- and life-threatening conditions. Vegetarianism also reduces the need for medical attention, medicine, and drugs throughout one's life. As Albert Einstein said, "Nothing will benefit health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." It's time for us to evolve toward better personal and planetary health.
As fifteenth-century Rabbi Joseph Albo writes, "In the killing of animals, there is cruelty." Centuries earlier, Maimonides, both rabbi and physician, wrote that "There is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other animals." It is as simple as that. Compassion is not a new concept, yet it has to be continually renewed. The Sages of the Talmud (Beitza 32b) remark that "Jews are rachmanin b'nei rachmanin [compassionate children of compassionate ancestors], and one who is not compassionate cannot truly be a descendant of our father Abraham."
READ THE MESSAGE WITHOUT JUDGING THE VARIOUS MESSENGERS:
Why is it that many Jewish religious leaders advocate vegetarianism, including Chief Rabbi of Britain Jonathan Sacks, late Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Goren, and the first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel Abraham Kook?
Why is it that the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland David Rosen considers "the consumption of meat as halachically unacceptable"?
The Torah is full of commandments demanding humane treatment of animals, yet the modern factory farms that produce over 90% of the animal products we consume today raise their animals in unconscionable conditions of abject misery. Jewish teachings emphasize the grave importance of protecting human health, yet the consumption of animal products in the United States is responsible for numerous diseases including heart disease, America's number one killer. Judaism places great concern on providing for the poor and the hungry, yet while 800 million people do not have enough food to sustain themselves, our carnivorous diets are at least ten times as wasteful of food resources as a vegetarian one.
Please read and learn about the growing Jewish vegetarian movement, and think about how Jewish teachings relate to decisions we make each day as we sit down to eat. As Rabbi Isaac ha-Levi Herzog said, "Jews will move increasingly to vegetarianism out of their own deepening knowledge of what their tradition commands... A whole galaxy of thinking rabbinic and spiritual leaders...has been affirming vegetarianism as the ultimate meaning of Jewish moral teaching."
READ MORE:
http://jewishveg.com/
http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/jv-why.html
15 comments:
Can we understand RSFM's aversion to fleish to be altz chapping zich a tressel from blood of any type being shed due to post-dramatic trauma and not because of a hashkafic issue? We were given animals, a lower life form to enjoy them. Even a nazir has to bring a korban for the sin of abstaining from the vine that Hashem gave us. I don't know the context of Rav Herzog. Where is it written?
Richard Schwartz of Jewish Vegetarians brings the Rashi on Adam & Chava - but that is going kodem HaChait. Even the only quote he brings to ostensibly back up Rashi from Rabbi Dr. Umberto (Moses) Cassuto is not clear what the context is.
One of Schwartz's only clear quotes is from Rabbi Dr. Samuel Dresner who Schwartz purposely neglects to mention is Conservative.
The Quote from Rav Bleich seem to back up my hypothesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonassan_Gershom
Then he quotes from this dude. Give me a break.
Then he brings seforim that becoming vegetarian is for people on a high madraigah. That's cool. So stop forcing your agenda on people, Richard Schwartz.
People in general, do not grasp the damage they do to themselves by consuming today's processed meat, poultry and in most cases fish. While the notion that vegans or vegetarians are somehow whack jobs; to those I suggest spend a few days on a factory farm, or in a slaughterhouse.
RSFM, while being America's leading proponent in his day for kashruth, he had a lifetime struggle with eating animals and for health reasons avoided meat whenever possible, and stopped completely sometime in 1945.
Sometimes "Conservative" Jews get it right...just sometimes. Was Einstein's science any less true because of his religious beliefs or lack thereof? Was Milton Friedman's economics less visionary because he was a former yeshiva boy whose struggles with his faith lasted throughout his life?
WND.com:
"Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel
Iran lays out legal case for genocidal attack against 'cancerous tumor'
[Feb 6, 2012]
By Reza Kahlili
The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.
The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.
Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.
Read the previous report from WND, when Iran warned about a coming great event.
Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.
On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.
Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.
Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.
In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.
The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.” "
Where did Milton Friedman go to yeshiva?
His father Jeno was an Ingrisher from Beregszasz. Almost immediately after being born in Brooklyn, Milton moved with his parents to Rahway, NJ. He graduated the Rahway public high school when he was just 15. Commentary Magazine said his parents were only "moderately observant".
2005 Nobel economics laureate Robert Aumann definitely has a yeshiva background. He is talmid muvhak of the alter Mirrer R' Shmuel Warshavchik at RJJ.
The Spectrum.com:
"Trainer sentenced in sexual abuse case
Feb. 1, 2012
ST. GEORGE - A personal fitness trainer convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy she worked with during 2008 and 2009 was sentenced to a minimum of one and maximum of 15 years in prison Tuesday during a hearing in 5th District Court.
Suni Faith Andersen, 36, of St. George pleaded guilty in November to two counts of forcible sexual abuse as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors agreed to dismiss three additional counts of forcible sexual abuse and five counts of forcible sodomy.
"This is a picture of my son when he was 14 years old," the victim's mother said while holding up a photo during Tuesday's hearing. "Look. Suni, look! Does this look like someone a 34-year-old adult woman would want to have a relationship with?"
The victim, now 16, and his family are not being identified in agreement with The Spectrum's policy regarding victims of sexual abuse, but the court took note of the family's claims that their identity is widely known in the community.
"I have to walk through the halls of my high school knowing that people know what happened, wondering what they're thinking," the boy told Judge Eric Ludlow.
The boy said some girls have wanted to date him because he is "experienced" and when other boys have questions about sexuality they say "just ask (him)," he said.
Deputy County Attorney Ryan Shaum said the landlord of Andersen's residence has reported that people refer to it as the place where the sexual abuse occurred. Shaum asked the court to change the address in the court's records so the landlord would not continue to be victimized.
Andersen's family has since moved to a small town in Montana where Andersen allegedly worked with her husband in coaching youth, Shaum said, citing a conversation between Andersen and an Adult Probation and Parole officer that defense attorney Thomas Ericsson refuted as "not substantiated."
The sheriff of Ravali County, Mont. told local media outlets there last month that his office was investigating to determine if anything inappropriate had happened after receiving complaints from the students' parents about Andersen's proximity to the youths...."
Reuters.com:
"Iran boosts nuclear work in bunker: diplomats
By Fredrik Dahl
VIENNA | Mon Feb 6, 2012 1:49pm EST
(Reuters) - Iran is believed to be expanding uranium enrichment activity deep inside a mountain, diplomatic sources said Monday, a move likely to add to tension with Western powers that suspect Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons capability.
The move to increase sensitive nuclear work at the Fordow underground site near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom, even if expected, underlines the Islamic state's defiance in the face of intensifying Western pressure to curb such activity.
Iran last month confirmed it had begun refining uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at Fordow, shifting its highest-grade enrichment from an above-ground location to better protect it against any strikes by Israel or the United States.
Washington, which has not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to resolve the long-running nuclear dispute, on January 9 denounced the start-up of the Fordow plant as a further escalation of Iran's "ongoing violations" of U.N. resolutions.
At that time, diplomats said Iran was operating at Fordow two so-called cascades, each of 174 centrifuges - machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope. More centrifuges were being installed, they said.
Enriched uranium can have both civilian and military uses.
One Vienna-based diplomat said two more cascades, like the first pair connected with each other to make the process more efficient, had now also been deployed to enrich uranium.
"The second set of cascades is operational ... my understanding is they are both operational and (have) no problems," the diplomat said.
Another diplomat accredited to the IAEA also painted a picture of expanding activity at Fordow, without giving details...
Iran said last year that it would transfer its highest-grade uranium refinement work to Fordow from its main enrichment plant at Natanz, and sharply boost capacity.
The decision to move work which the U.N. Security Council has called on Iran to suspend to an underground facility could further complicate diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff peacefully.
SHORTENING TIMELINE
The United States and its allies say Iran is trying to develop the means to make atomic bombs, but Tehran insists its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity and isotopes for medical treatment...
Iran two years ago started refining uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at Natanz - far more than the 3.5 percent level usually required to power nuclear energy plants.
Tehran says it will use 20 percent-enriched uranium to convert into fuel for a research reactor making isotopes to treat cancer patients, but Western officials say they doubt that the country has the technical capability to do that.
In addition, they say, Fordow's capacity - a maximum of 3,000 centrifuges - is too small to produce the fuel needed for nuclear power plants, but ideal for yielding smaller amounts of high-enriched product typical of a nuclear weapons program.
Nuclear bombs require uranium enriched to 90 percent, but Western experts say much of the effort required to get there is already achieved once it reaches 20 percent purity, shortening the time needed for any nuclear weapons "break-out."
They give different estimates of how quickly Iran could assemble a nuclear weapon - ranging from as little as six months to a year or more...
Iran disclosed the existence of Fordow to the IAEA only in September 2009 after learning that Western intelligence agencies had detected it."
Donald Trump Takes Credit for Mitt Romney's Nevada Win
The Inquisitr
The Friedman's observed kashruth, shabbat, and by today's standards would have been considered Modern Orthodox. His wife believed Milton attended a yeshiva in the afternoons in the lower East Side of Manhattan. It could have been R' Shlomo Kluger, or RJJ....they had afternoon programs for public school children.
*
"Friedman attended Washington Public School, where he skipped the sixth grade and transferred to Columbus School in the seventh grade, both public schools in Rahway; and although he attended Hebrew school in the afternoon after public school and was “bar-mitzvahed,” Friedman became an agnostic at an early age of twelve (Champion of Economic Freedom). From 1924-1928, Friedman attended Rahway High School where his favorite subjects were political science and geometry."
http://chasamsopher.org/content/view/1/2/
Chasam Sopher also had something for public school kids.
Milton's wife was Rose Director who was born in Ukraine. I wonder if she's related to that nut Shia Director who was once slapped in the face by Rav Gifter for putting down an adam gadol and who wrote a preposterous sefer trying to debunk Igros Moshe. Zundel Berman says R' Moshe told him he has no objections to publishing it but I still don't understand why he took the job.
So he went to the American Talmud Torah aka as "Cheder" that's one of the biggest failures in chinuch in the history of Jewry! Milton Friedman's theories seem so quaint in today's Obama's socialist top-heavy world that's the "rosemary's baby" of the post 2008 economic crash (induced by the capitalists Bush & Co) and current worldwide recessions and depressions, see this latest report that will soon cut the billionaires in China off at their arrogant economic knees:
"Europe crisis could halve China's growth: IMF
(AFP) – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON — An escalation of Europe's debt crisis could slash China's economic growth in half this year, the International Monetary Fund said Monday, urging Beijing to prepare stimulus measures in response.
The IMF, in an economic outlook report on the world's second-largest economy, highlighted China's vulnerability to global demand.
"The global economy is at a precarious stage and downside risks have risen sharply," the IMF said, citing the possible deep crunch in the financial sector in Europe that would be felt around the globe.
"Should such a tail risk of financial volatility emanating from Europe be realized, it would drag China's growth lower."
The IMF outlined the negative impact if the eurozone crisis tipped Europe into a deep recession, dragging China's growth lower mainly due to shocks through trade.
In that "downside scenario" China's growth would fall by around 4.0 percentage points this year from the 8.2 percent rate the IMF projected in January.
"The risks to China from Europe are, therefore, both large and tangible."
In that case, "China should respond with a significant fiscal package."
China's exposure to financial spillovers is limited, it said, noting foreign assets, including sovereign debt, represent only 2.0 percent of Chinese bank assets.
However, the export-dependent economy is highly exposed through trade linkages. Nearly half of China's exports go to Europe and the United States.
Lower global demand would further reduce investment and employment and may trigger a decline in China's property market.
The IMF recalled that China's vulnerability was revealed in the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, when global growth plunged.
China launched a huge credit and fiscal stimulus in response, limiting the sharp impact on the domestic economy -- and yet growth still sank by five percentage points.
"However, a track record of fiscal discipline has given China ample room to respond to such an external shock," the IMF said.
If the euro area falters, the IMF recommended Beijing launch a substantial stimulus program, equivalent to roughly 3.0 percent of gross domestic product spread out over 2012-2013.
That would limit the decline in growth to around 1.0 percent, cushioning the negative fallout on employment and people's livelihoods, the IMF said.
The stimulus measures could include reductions in consumption taxes, advancing plans for social housing and scaling up investments in the social safety net, among others.
"Unlike in 2008, the stimulus package... should pass through the budget and not be reliant upon a public infrastructure," the IMF said, referring to the way the spending boost was previously dealt through the banking system, state enterprises and local government financing vehicles.
"The weak external outlook underscores the importance of accelerating the transformation of China's economy to reduce its vulnerability to the vagaries of global demand," it added."
Wait a minute! Let me find out if "Uncle Milty" Friedman was ever in RJJ and I will get the story out and take all the credit for being mefarsem. I could use a story like this.
Yeshiva Eitz Chaim opened on The Lower East Side in 1886 and temporarily merged for a few years with Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchok Elchonon in 1915. Eitz Chaim, which is not the same yeshiva from old 13th Ave Boro Park, was gone by the late 1920s. YRYE (which was not yet the modern orthodox RIETS) did not move Uptown until the late 1920s either, so Milton Friedman could have been in either yeshiva.
The Mattersdorfer Rov opened Chasan Sofer (not the same as Chasam Sopher) in 1938 which would have been too late. This yeshiva eventually merged with R' Shlomo Kluger which had opened in 1902.
I heard Margo was looking into the bus driver position at Eitz Chaim before it closed.
Torah Vodaas was also around at least in a makeshift form early enough for Milton Friedman. Were they always in Willy or did they also start on the LES?
UOJ would know about YTV in it's infancy. And so would Norman Lamm who would know from his grandfather.
If Margo was looking into that position in the 1920s it must be that one of two ferds pulling a wagon was niftar.
Thanks for repeating this story of Rabbi Mendelowitz's character. If this is true, he was truly a wise and merciful man. I had always lumped him in the with the flawed "greats" of the previous generation (Rav Hutner etc) who really never "practiced what they preached". I didn't realize what an exceptional "living Torah" character Rabbi Mendelowitz was.
I'm going to have to learn more about this man and his life thanks to this story.
It's just too bad that there is not one rabbi in today's world who does honor the Rabbi Mendelowitz's teaching by emulating his behavior.
Trash such as the Lakewood "roshei yeshivos (Mike Kotler etc) dishonor Torah and the tzaddikim of the past by their shameful behavior, ignorance, and dishonesty.
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