It was one small meal for Jews, but a political leap forward for Jewish history. In 1788, Philadelphia hosted a parade celebrating Pennsylvania's ratification of the Constitution, and the procession was followed by a feast. An eyewitness reported that "there was a number of long tables loaded with all kinds of provisions, with a separate table for the Jews, who could not partake of the meals from the other tables." It is difficult to find a prior civic celebration in Jewish diaspora history that is its like. In a single setting, Jews were embraced as equals by their fellow Philadelphians, as full partners in the nascent constitutional republic, while at the same time feeling entirely able to observe the dietary habits that set them apart.
We can contrast the bonhomie manifested in this remarkable American meal with the menacing manner of a polemic promulgated at the very same time in Germany, cited by John Efron in his book All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat. Throughout the 1780s, a prominent biblical scholar at the University of Göttingen by the name of David Michaelis inveighed against the emancipation of the Jews, insisting they could never truly become part of German society. "As long as [the Jews] observe the laws about kosher and non-kosher food," he insisted, "it will be almost impossible to integrate them into our ranks." If Jews would not eat the food of Germany, he insisted, then Germany could not welcome them:
Most genuine friendships are formed at table, but with those whom I can never eat and drink, regardless of all business dealings, will seldom become as familiar with me as those whose guest I am and with he who is my guest. We [Jews and Germans] even have a kind of learned disgust (Erziehungs-Abscheu) for the food of the other, so this is a new obstacle to [fostering] closer familiarity.
Meanwhile, as Efron notes, the most famous Jewish intellectual in Germany, Moses Mendelssohn, devoted the 1780s to debating Michaelis and others who depicted Jewish ritual practice as a hindrance to civic engagement. It was ethics, Mendelssohn insisted, not culinary ritual, that truly mattered for civic engagement. Moreover, if Christians, Mendelssohn further argued, saw the keeping of kosher as unsociable, what would they say about Jesus, who had certainly observed these very same laws? Mendelssohn, it seems, would have longed for a society in which Jews and Christians could civically celebrate with each other, without seeing their different diets as an insurmountable division. He would have longed, in other words, for a Philadelphia in Germany.
It was not to be. As Efron documents in this incredibly detailed book, because meat is so elemental to European cuisine, and because, for Jews, its preparation is a ritually complex process, meat ended up at the epicenter of interactions between Jews and Christians in Germany throughout the ages. It is not too much say, he argues, that "from the Middle Ages until today, the meaning of meat in Germany, as both an object of totem and taboo, has played a crucial role in interactions between Christians and Jews as well as among Jews."
In chapter after chapter, from periods medieval to modern, Efron highlights how financial and cultural interactions surrounding meat went hand in hand with anti-Jewish polemics. Because Jews do not consume the sciatic nerve near an animal's thigh—as described in Genesis 32—and because its removal was labor intensive, Jews in Germany began selling the entire back half of the cow to Gentiles. Meanwhile, the cuisine of Germany was adopted and adapted by Jews into their Sabbath stews and casseroles, creating Ashkenazic foods that are beloved to this day. At the same time, the premodern period was marked by publications, often authored by Jewish converts to Christianity, in which kosher rituals "were depicted as being motivated and justified by cruelty and vindictiveness," and warning Gentiles not to eat of meat prepared by Jews. This literature flourished in fertile ground; anti-Semitic seeds had already been sown centuries earlier when, as Efron further describes, Jewish practices were blamed for the Black Death.
Then, as the ghettos opened and Jews became more fully part of German society, Jewish meat was targeted in another way. German legislators began seeking to ban shechitah, Jewish ritual slaughter, which took place without stunning. Faced with a modern assault on Jewish meat, traditional Jews responded in a modern way, by commissioning scientific studies that illustrated how ritual slaughter at the neck brings about death swiftly, and arguing that the form of stunning practiced in Germany was actually quite painful for the creature. The legislative attack on Jewish practice was then continued by the Nazis, who, upon assuming power, banned shechitah in the 1930s.
One of the most interesting and inspiring aspects of the book is the account of non-Jewish heroes in these debates, individuals heretofore unknown to me. Among the Europeans who stood up for Jewish religious practice in the 19th century include "the liberal politician, statesman, and pathologist who pioneered cell theory, Rudolf Virchow," and "the Bavarian chemist and pathbreaking figure in making hygiene a field of experimental science, Max Pettenkofer." Their scientific arguments were published by an organization known as the Association for the Defense Against Antisemitism (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus). To read these accounts is to be eerily reminded of our own moment, in which anti-Semitic rhetoric is all too common in Europe, but in which there are also those who have shown true friendship to the Jewish people.
It is therefore no surprise that the story of kosher meat in Europe has more chapters to come. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the late British chief rabbi, once described to me his visit to Amsterdam to lobby against a ban in the Netherlands on both Jewish and Muslim slaughter. Amsterdam, Rabbi Sacks reflected in his public remarks, was where religious freedom in Europe was born. Don't, he pleaded, let it be the place where it dies. A complete ban has gone into effect in Belgium, and as Efron notes, these bans will certainly continue to be debated in parliaments throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, kosher-keeping Jews in the United States today take part in quintessentially American experiences while remaining loyal to the faith of their ancestors. There are kosher hot dog stands in baseball stadiums across the country, so that Jews can join their fellow Americans in the traditional practice of eating unhealthy foods while observing athletics. I have purchased kosher meat at Wrigley Field, Citifield, and elsewhere without giving it a moment's thought, but a study of Jewish history reminds us this should not be taken for granted. As someone who has experienced, and officiated at, a Hanukkah party in the White House—for which the entire kitchen was koshered for the occasion—I emerged from my reading of this book about Germany aware of how rare the Jewish experience of equality in America is—and how grateful I am for the country that made it possible.
All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat
by John M. Efron
Stanford University Press, 400 pp., $32
Meir Y. Soloveichik is the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City and the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva
University.
