In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapteR t hiRt een Kosher Slaughter (Shechita) and Matzah Baking Keeping kosher is an important commandment in the Jewish faith, and quite a few Jews who don’t observe other commandments try in some fashion to keep kosher in their homes. Of course, adherence to this mitzvah is a private affair by its very nature, and in the USSR no special surveys were conducted on the matter, so assessing its scope is impossible. Yet even if keeping kosher is done primarily within the family, it has at least two public aspects: shechita (kosher slaughter) and the baking of matzah (unleavened bread) for Passover. Unsurprisingly, then, the congregations were usually involved directly or indirectly in both of these practices. Shechita In the USSR, the legal practice of religion was understood very narrowly as involving ceremonial rites, and the SRA chairman noted in his letter of April 1954 that “Kosher meat is not among the objects of ritual [ne otnositsia k predmetam kul'ta] without which it is impossible to observe any religious obligation; it is rather a food [consumed by] a certain portion of the Jewish population.”1 Since the SRA was of the opinion that shechita did not count as a “religious rite,” it also did not consider itself as charged with overseeing this subject. The congregations, on the other hand, did feel that it was their duty to ensure the provision of kosher meat and would apply to the SRA representatives with requests on this issue. With regard to kosher slaughtering, a distinction should be made between the slaughter of animals, large and small, and that of fowl. Slaughter of a cow or sheep usually required a slaughterhouse, as well as veterinary supervision to ensure that health standards were met. A single family generally did not consume all the meat from a large cow (especially given the lack of freezers and refrigerators in the USSR) and thus such slaughtering necessarily was associated with the sale of the meat. Since private commerce was forbidden in the USSR, the sale of kosher meat would take place in the government stores 162 Between Private and Public Spheres or cooperative chains, which were under the close supervision of the authorities . Thus in 1945 and 1946 the Gomel' congregation applied to the district SRA representative to allow the kosher slaughter of cattle, whose meat would be sold in the government butchery chain.2 Such requests were almost certainly received from other congregations as well, so that the SRA chairman found it necessary to state as follows in an October 1945 circular: The SRA does not currently see a possibility of responding favorably to these requests, primarily because meat is a rationed product, so organizing the sale of kosher meat is a very complex affair. The soviet also takes into account that only a small circle of religious Jews consumes kosher meat.3 The authorities, then, seem to have had no objection in principle to kosher slaughter and meat sales, even as they acknowledged the practical difficulties it presented given that meat was sold in the government shops by coupon. But in late 1947 rationing officially ended in the USSR, providing the context for the April 1948 circular from the SRA chairman, in which he wrote: Commerce in kosher meat for religious Jews may be organized exclusively in the suitable consumer network of the consumer cooperative without any special designation for this purpose of shops or kiosks [kioski] and in agreement with the district consumer shop union [oblpotrebsoiuz].” A similar response was given by the SRA representative to the Minsk congregation ’s request that it be allowed to supply kosher meat.4 However, because the SRA did not, as stated, regard supplying kosher meat as a necessity of religious ritual, it warned its representatives not to get excessively involved in this subject. In this spirit, the Ukraine SRA representative instructed his subordinates that “this subject must be dealt with by the cooperatives and not the synagogues. If the heads of the district consumers’ cooperatives apply seeking your opinion you may answer: ‘We have no objection.’ But kiosks or stands selling kosher meat are not to be allowed near the synagogue.” The authorities again stressed that the sale of kosher meat was not to be permitted in or near the synagogues,5 but even so this practice didn’t disappear completely. Thus, for example, in 1945 the authorities in Khar'kov allowed kosher slaughter to be carried out in the town slaughterhouse and the meat to...

Share