Anti-Semitism in Disguise? Shechita as a Contested Ritual in Postwar Munich

The lecture will be dedicated to the contested slaughter practices of Jews living in Munich in the early postwar period. For a number of years already historiography has discovered German Jewish postwar history as a new field of research, concerning itself also with different contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism. It is remarkable therefore that scholarship has mostly ignored the controversial issue of kosher butchering. As a matter of fact the anti shechita movement that had been strong in Germany since the second half of the 19^th century began to regain strength in the late 1940s. It was in Munich that influential local politicians campaigned for a ban of Schächten required by those mostly Eastern European Jews who had only a few years earlier escaped Nazi persecution and as former Displaced Persons played an instrumental role in the reconstruction of the Jewish community. Ever since animal protectionists and anti-Semites have repeatedly tried to describe ritual slaughter as a both inhumane and cruel practice, linking it chronologically to the Middle Ages and geographically to Asia.

In my presentation I intend to examine non Jewish efforts to achieve a legal prohibition of ritual slaughter while at the same time focusing on the scope of action of Jewish organizations and individuals between animal welfare and religious freedom. In this manner this paper aims to contribute both to the understanding of postwar Jewish life and of Jewish-non Jewish coexistence in Germany after the Holocaust.