The Jewish community in Abu Dhabi shechted 2,500 chickens this week under the supervision of the United Arab Emirates’ only resident Rav, Rabbi Levi Duchman, B’Chadrei Chareidim reported.
Rav Duchman is a shochet and he was assisted by Chabad shaliach Rav Menachem Mendel Chitrik, who flew in especially for that purpose from Istanbul, where he oversees kashrus supervision in Turkey, as well as by mashgichim who flew in from New York.
The local Jewish community partnered with one of the UAE’s largest chicken processing plants to provide the chickens for shechita. Emirati officials came especially to the plant to observe the process, including an Abu Dhabi health ministry official.
After the area was kashered, the staff of mashgichim from New York supervised the shechita process, the salting, and packaging with the kosher seal: “Kosher Dubai.” The meat was also certified as “chalal” [Muslim shechita].
“I very much enjoyed seeing the mehudar shechita, the care of the Emirati owner and the workers who related to the shechita process with great gravity,” said Rav Chitrik. “It was apparent that they’re doing everything they can to meet our needs and they provided us with the best possible service with great generosity.”
Rav Chitrik said that the chickens were shected for local residents, kosher catering services, and hotels, including the new kosher restaurant in the Armani Hotel in Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai. Many Jewish businessmen travel to the UAE and following the signing of the peace accords, many Israeli tourists are expected to visit as well, and the hotels want to be prepared.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
Whether kosher meat is halal is actually a machlokes between different madhabs (analogous to Sefardi/Ashkenazi traditions in psak).
The shayla is that we only make one brocha when we being shechting, and we then shecht many chickens without a hefsek, and we also hold that bedieved the brocha is not me’akev; whereas they hold that one must make a brocha over each chicken, and that the brocha is me’akev. So according to many of their “poskim” only the first chicken shechted after the brocha was halal, and all the rest are not.
However others cite a “halocho” of theirs that if the shochet had kavona to say a brocha but simply forgot to say it then the shechita is kosher anyway. So they argue that since the reason we’re not saying a brocha on each chicken is because we hold that the first brocha is still in effect and it would be a brocha levatola to say another one, therefore it’s as if we had kavona to say it.
Ashkenazi scheta? Humm?