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86 86 CHAPTER ]]]]] 3 The Radicalization of the Ritual Questions, 1880–1916 In 1892 the kingdom of Saxony promulgated a set of slaughterhouse regulations that had been championed by German animal protectionists for decades. These edicts prohibited women and children from entering the slaughterhouse and mandated stricter inspection and licensing procedures . As such, they resembled contemporary laws in all but one significant component. In contrast to other state regulations, the Saxon reforms required the rendering of all animals into a state of unconsciousness before their slaughter. Throughout the kingdom, it was illegal to conduct any form of slaughter that did not include the stunning of animals before killing them. Saxon Jews appealed for an exemption from these reforms, citing the kingdom’s supposed history of religious toleration, but the state government rejected their pleas.1 The debates concerning the right of Saxon Jews to practice kosher butchering continued for decades , even after the minister of interior exempted the Jewish practice in 1910.2 1 Das Schächtverbot in Sachsen,” Die Laubhütte 16 (1892): 152–153; “In Bezug auf das Betäuben der Schlachtthiere,” Ibis: Deutsche Thierschutz-Zeitung (Ibis) 5/6 (1892): 29; O. Hartmann, “Aus dem Rechenschaftsbericht für 1889/92.” Ibis 9/10 (1892): 49–51; “3 August Polizeiverordnung betreffend das Verfahren beim Viehschlachten,” Ibis 11/12 (1892): 66; J. Auerbach II, “Das Schächtverbot in Sachsen.” AZDJ 6 (1894). 2 1910 minister of interior order SHD MDI 16178 12; 1910 response of the Association of Slaughterhouse Veterinarians of the Rhine-provinces SHD MDI I 16178 18; March 1910 minutes of the Federation of Saxon German Jewish communities (Saxon Jewish Federation) CJA 75CVe1 340 250–255; 22 April 1910 letter from the Saxon Jewish Federation to the Verband CJA 75CVe1 243; “Das Schächten in Sachsen weider erlaubt!” Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten (LNN) (23 December 1910) CJA 75CVe1344 432; “Nachtrag Aufhebung des Schächtverbots in Sachsen,” Im Deutschen Reich (IDR) 12 (1910): 831–832; Y., “Das aufgehobene Schächtverbot,” Lehrerheim 52 (1910): 516–517. RAdiCAlizATion of THE RiTuAl QuEsTions, 1880–1916 87 Saxony was the only state in imperial Germany to allow for a statewide ban on kosher butchering, yet the events there were not unique. Over the course of the imperial period, the earlier small-scale campaigns concerning animal slaughter began to come to fruition in Saxony and elsewhere. Many German towns and states gradually engaged in some form of debate concerning animal stunning and kosher butchering, regardless of the size of their Jewish population. Just as before, some discussions focused solely on Jewish ritual behavior while many others originated within larger campaigns for slaughterhouse reform and then transformed into disputes concerning the Jewish rite. No matter their origins, these deliberations attracted the attention of a wide range of participants who contemplated the character of Jewish rituals, the rights of religious minorities, and the possibilities for state or local control over religious customs and by extension, religious minorities. As dozens of cities, villages, towns, and states considered the permissibility of kosher butchering, several German Jews and gentiles revived the circumcision question. Similar to the contemporary discussions concerning kosher slaughter, these disputes intensified in the late nineteenth century and correspondingly changed in character. Unlike the quarrels of the previous decade, these conflicts frequently originated outside the Jewish community and overlooked the rite’s relationship to communal identity. Focusing instead on the ritual’s medical and ethical character, the turn-of-the-century Circumcisionsfragen typically followed one of two events. Some deliberations took place after local children fell ill or died as a result of complications stemming from their circumcisions . In these cases, the rite’s critics, usually physicians and health professionals, lay the blame with the continued presence of oral suction among mohelim and with the allegedly poor training of ritual practitioners . Other disputes accompanied antisemitic episodes. Participants in these conversations invoked the supposed centrality of blood and knives to Jewish culture and blamed circumcision for preserving Jewish separateness and encouraging Jewish brutality. Like the historical phenomena of the 1860s and 1870s that transformed the ritual questions of the unification period, the political, social, and economic rearrangements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fundamentally changed the disputes of fin-desi ècle Germany. Participants continued to question the nature of German culture, the responsibilities of government, and the viability of minority communities in the newly created state. By the turn of the century, however, the debates concerning circumcision and kosher butchering had intensified. They occurred with greater frequency...

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