They Called Us Cruel. They Were Wrong.

This Torah class is brought [music] to you by tora anytime.com. >> The history of Shita is a dramatic example of the Jewish people's steadfast commitment to mercy at all cost. In September of 1893, the country of Switzerland became the first country to formally introduce a legislative ban on arguing that it was cruel and insensitive to the animal. The Swiss were out to ban it entirely. And thus began a long and systemic crusade to label Jews as a cruel and merciless people who revel in the pain and blood of animals. And this anti-shita tactic became quite popular in Europe and it was the perfect pretext for attacking Jews on the grounds of being cruel. This continued with bans in the kingdom of Saxony and Bavaria in February in 1894, in the landag of Schwartzenberg in July of 1897, and the German Reichag in 1898. On April 21st, 1933, the Nazis outlawed in the entire country. And Theodore Frlained [music] and promoted the Nazi position in his book, which published 39 editions and 200,000 copies by the year 1935. And in it, he wrote, "The Jew denies the existence of cruelty in their ritual slaughter. Considering that the Jew has no mercy for human beings, it is unsurprising that he possesses no pity for the animal." One of the greatest ironies in all of human history [music] was the fact that the Nazis were fanatic animal lovers. Utterly obsessed with animal warfare. Germany had the strictest and most far-reaching animal protection regulations in Europe. A German caught abusing an animal would be would be sent to a concentration camp as punishment. Joseph Gobbles wrote in his diary that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and a passionate animal lover. He also said that Hitler was planning after German victory in the war to ban animal slaughter houses altogether. The Nazi ban onita in 1933 effectively stopped the consumption of meat for the Jews in Germany. Dozens of Jewish people protested [music] and campaigned that was in fact a human method of killing animals for beef. But unsurprisingly, those complaints fell on deaf ears. The Germans required knocking the animal unconscious before butchering it, a [music] method prohibited by the Tyra. So the Jews looked for named neighboring countries to import meat. But the Germans banned all meat from Poland, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. So these were stuck. The German Jews attempted to find a new method that would satisfy both Jewish hala and German law. Because the German legislation did not banita outright, but only required the animal to be rendered insensible prior to the German Jews experimented with various stunning methods that would not make the animal a traa. They experimented with electrical shocks and nitrogen inhalation which were both found to be unsatisfactory by the leading German rabbon of the time. And one day a breakthrough was discovered by a man named Bruno Kish, a professor of experimental pathology at Cologne University. And he used an injection of Unicron which both rendered the animal unconscious and caused no harm to the animal at the same time. So the method went through extensive testing and seemed likely to get the support of the Halak authorities of the time and ecstatic the German Jews called together the Rabon to discuss this method and hopefully allow its widespread usage throughout Germany ending the poor Jews dir of meat. But in November of 1938, as the date of the meeting was drawing near, an outbreak of violence occurred near the homes of the meeting attendees, gently discouraging the meeting from taking place. The Nazis were not interested [music] in finding the most humane way to slaughter cows. They were looking to slaughter Jews. Cutting off their meat s was [music] a step in the direction of slaughtering 6 million Jews. A bunch of rabbis and a sympathizing scientist would not be allowed to get in their way. Six million deaths later, the atrocities [music] of the Holocaust eventually came to an end. And although the Nazi political party crumbled, some pre-war ideologies survived the Nazi defeat, and one of them was the anti-shita Jews are cruel to animals idea. In modern day Denmark, is only allowed in the presence of a statelicicensed veterinarian. As the case is in Ireland and the Netherlands and in Finland and in Spain to this day, religious slaughter is banned entirely in Switzerland and Norway and Sweden on the basis of cruelty to animals. But as the debate throughout Europe raged on, constantly being used as a club on the Jews heads, they were individuals who were fed up and decided to put it through a test to show the world once and for all. There were people who got together in Italy and performed the test referred to as the Alisa test, which was able to determine the exact plasma cortisol levels in an animal while going through the process. They would hook up an animal to a device and it would essentially determine how much pain the animal was feeling and for how long. And what they discovered shocked the world. The traditional stun gun slaughter process caused more pain to the animal than did the Jewish way of [music] suddenly the world had tangible evidence that an animal experiences less pain for a shorter time withita than any other method. This shocked all but the Jews. For the Jew knows that there is no more humane way of life than following the life described by the Tyra. It was, it is, and will forever be the ultimate authority on defining mercy. Even the terrorist command to wage war is not a crusade using violence as a way to shove our religion down the throat of others. It is a charge to ensure that universal mercy is what reigns supreme. The difference between Jewish and the world's method is a mere few seconds [music] of pain. And yet, the Tyra in the strongest manner forbids us to use their slaughter methods. Why? Because for us, a few seconds of pain is too much pain. And being the most merciful people on earth, no amount of pain is ever overlooked. Call us outdated, call us cruel. The world will one day see who are the only merciful ones left standing. The average response time of ambulances in the United States is 7 minutes in urban areas and 14 minutes in rural areas. The average response time of 90 seconds. Because when you are that merciful, you figure out a way to be there and be there fast. The FBI recently published its annual crime report. Do you know which city in America with at least 100,000 inhabitants has the lowest violent crime rate? Yep, you guessed it. Lakewood, New Jersey. The city with the highest concentration of Torah Jews in the United States happens to have the lowest violent crime rate. Coincidence? I doubt it. You've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by tora anytime.com.