{"id":36876,"date":"2017-06-09T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=36876"},"modified":"2017-06-09T13:00:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T19:00:14","slug":"off-the-pulpit-a-great-moral-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/off-the-pulpit-a-great-moral-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Pulpit: A great moral question"},"content":{"rendered":"

By RABBI DAVID WOLPE<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is impossible to imagine the Master of all things, who has mercy on all creation, making it impossible for the human race to survive except by shedding blood, even the blood of animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wolpe_edt\"

There are good reasons \u2013 health, environmental impact and sustainability and the sheer cruelty of factory farming \u2013 that make vegetarianism desirable. After all, by the industry\u2019s own claims, in the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given yearly to humans and 17.8 million pounds to livestock, who frequently live in appalling conditions. The same people for whom eating a dog or cat is unthinkable, eat animals as alive and aware. And sadly no \u2013 kashrut does not ensure kindness.<\/p>\n

Ultimately it resolves to questions of conscience and appetite. We eat 150 times as many chickens as less than a century ago, and 50 billion birds suffer and are slaughtered each year to slake our appetites. Even so-called \u2018free range chickens\u2019 can be \u201cde-beaked, drugged, force molted, and cruelly slaughtered.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is moral question. What\u2019s your moral answer?<\/p>\n

(Rabbi David Wolpe is the spiritual leader of Sinai Temple of Los Angeles.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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