The European Jewish Congress (EJC) expresses its strong condemnation of the decision today by the Polish Parliament to ban the slaughter of animals for meat in accordance with Jewish practice.
“This decision puts into question the ability to maintain normative Jewish life in the Republic of Poland, and its ability to confirm with the basic norms of freedom of religious expression as a member of the European Union,” EJC President Dr Moshe Kantor said.
“For a country which saw the annihilation of virtually the totality of its Jewish population, within living memory, to now say that Jewish life is to be constrained that Jews are being prevented from practicing their religion, is shocking in the extreme.”
“We call on the Polish government to immediately bring in new legislation on this issue conforming with the right to freedom of religious expression as enshrined in the Polish constitution and European law. We will be using all political and legal channels to challenge this decision and to maintain solidarity with the Jewish community in Poland in the face of this attack on its most basic rights,” Kantor said.
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3 Responses
Some people are just so dumb, they just cannot learn. Beyond shameful.
No matter how much things chae they remain the same. Does anyone really expect te most anti-semitic country and people in existence to be fair with Jews and to respect their rights. How many Jews were slaughtered in poland after the shoah. A zebra cannot change its stripes, aleoard his dots and a pole his antisemitism.
The following is a statement of both Chief Rabbi of Poland and the president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland
Statement
The result of today’s vote in the Sejm on the permissibility of ritual slaughter was a shock to us. The completely untrue idea that such slaughter is cruel, or even intentionally cruel, has triumphed. This idea gained popularity in Europe in the 30s of the past century, when under the influence of Nazi propaganda Norway and Sweden banned ritual slaughter. Poland will now be the first EU member state in which such a ban will not be the consequence of Nazi-era regulations. It directly infringes on the basic rights of the country’s Jewish and Muslim populations, which will henceforth be forced to either buy more expensive imported meat, or endorse an enforced vegetarianism. It is impossible not to note that Polish legislation does not ban practices such as hunting in which animals are being made to suffer for pleasure. The right to this pleasure is now, in the Polish legal system, ranked higher than the basic religious freedoms of two non-Christian confessions. It is therefore difficult not to see, in the decision of the Polish Sejm, the sinister hypocrisy which usually masks the discrimination against a part of the citizenry. The majority, whose rights remain intact, should nonetheless be aware that the violation of minority rights usually bodes ill to those of the others.
At the same time we would like to thank the 178 MPs who, transcending political division, voted to uphold the religious freedoms of the Republic.
Piotr Kadlčik
President
Union of Jewish Communities of Poland
Rabbi Michael Schudrich
Chief Rabbi of Poland