1. Jewish New Year for Animals
2. Israel bans starving hens, overcrowding
3. Israel proposes fur ban
4. New videos on Judaism and factory farming
5. Eating veg makes you happier
1. Jewish New Year for Animals!
JVNA is spearheading a coalition of Jewish groups and rabbis in reviving the ancient Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah LaBeheimot, and we've been getting a lot of press about it! Read about it in The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Haaretz, Tikkun Daily, Rabbis for Human Rights, and other newspapers and radio shows.
Be part of history by joining one of our seders on Sunday, August 19, in New York City, San Francisco, and Jerusalem! Contact us for more info.
Can't make it? Hold your own vegetarian seder -- contact us for resources! Tell your rabbi, and Jewish community about this celebration, and ask them to take this opportunity to talk about Jewish teachings on concern for animals.
2. Israel bans overcrowding hens in cagesGovernment decision prohibits starving of hens, increases cage size. Farmers will no longer be able to starve their hens for prolonged persiods in order to increase egg output. (These practices remain legal in the US.) Read more.
3. Israel proposes fur ban
A Knesset bill introduced would forbid most sales of fur in Israel. Animal rights activists praised the legislation. Read more.
4. Moving videos on Judaism and factory farmsC
5. Eating veg makes you happierSome Jews feel obligated to eat meat on yom tov because they believe "there is no joy without meat." Science shows that just the opposite is true. Read more.
Tisha B'Av commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. Today the entire world is threatened by destruction by a variety of environmental threats, and modern intensive livestock agriculture is a major factor behind most of them.
On our wedding day last year, my wife and I decided that, due to our Jewish convictions, we would no longer drink milk or consume any dairy products. Then we found out that one of the greatest Jewish legal authorities in America, Rabbi Herschel Schachter, has made public that he had stopped consuming dairy products due to kashrut concerns
Israel has banned foie gras. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the great 20th-century Orthodox halachic authority, prohibited milk-fed veal on the grounds of this needless suffering. Rabbi Seth Mandel, who oversees kosher meat production for the Orthodox Union in North and South America, told me that veal or foie gras violates other Jewish values.
