Elections, Meat, and Other Things That Won’t Change My Shabbat

Every four years, or apparently whenever a country feels like it, the world goes into full panic mode about who is going to be in charge of things. Israel has its own version of this, except we do it more frequently because we enjoy the chaos, and the day off, and also because we have enough political parties that you could field an entire fantasy sports league out of them and still have players left on the bench.

The American election results came in, social media posts telling us what it meant for Israel, from people who have no idea up to people who have an idea but really did not need to post about it.

And honestly? Meh. I mean that with love.

I don’t follow it, nor do I care.

Oh, I have opinions, but here is the thing, we have lived through enough American administrations, enough pivots and policy shifts and strongly worded letters from the State Department, that we have developed a kind of institutional memory about all of it. Democrats, Republicans, they all eventually call the Prime Minister.

They all eventually send someone to Jerusalem to explain why we need to be more patient with people who are actively trying to kill us, and life goes on. Pass the hummus.

There is a persistent idea in some circles that Israel exists only as a function of American support, that we are a dependency that would collapse without Washington’s approval.

The military aid matters genuinely, and nobody is going to pretend otherwise. We could absolutely use more F-35s, and if anyone in the relevant departments is reading a personal blog on Times of Israel, feel free to expedite that.

But the notion that an election result in any state is going to fundamentally reshape whether Israel exists and defends itself, is one you can let go of. We have been doing this for 76 years through a remarkable parade of American political personalities, and we are still here arguing about parking spots, whether they are valid or just mere examples for people to follow, should they choose.

Every country goes through regime changes. The UK has had more Prime Ministers recently than most people can track without a spreadsheet. France does its thing. Israel, as mentioned, holds elections with the enthusiasm of a country that genuinely cannot agree on what to have for lunch, schnitzel, shawarma, or falafel.

The world keeps spinning. The neighbors keep being the neighbors. You learn to build your life around the things you can actually influence, which is a lesson Israelis absorb pretty early out of necessity.

Now, since we are talking about the UK, let me tell you what actually caught my attention this week, and it was not the political news. It was the proposal to label kosher meat with explicit language about the method of slaughter.

The idea, as I understand it, is to inform consumers that the animal was not stunned before being killed, so that shoppers can make an informed choice.

I have been sitting with this one, trying to figure out how I feel about it, and I keep landing in the same place: this is either genuinely good for kashrut (Jewish dietary law) in a strange roundabout way, or it is the most unintentionally funny food policy proposal I have encountered in some time.

The label is essentially going to say, in some form, that this animal was killed. As opposed to what, exactly? As opposed to the steak that walked peacefully onto your plate of its own free will? I want a hamburger. The cow had a finite future the moment it became a cow in a commercial farming operation. Nobody is under the impression that their brisket came from a retirement community.

And yet I do not recall a similar movement to label bacon with detailed information about how the pig felt about the process. Pork products move through UK supermarkets with lovely packaging and no philosophical disclaimers attached. The animal welfare conversation seems to arrive with considerable selectivity at the Kosher and Halal aisle.

If you are going to have the discussion about humane slaughter, which is a legitimate discussion to have, have it about all meat. Or have the honesty to admit the conversation is specifically about Jewish and Muslim practice, in which case at least everyone knows what we are actually talking about.

For what it is worth, shechita (kosher slaughter) has its own extensive framework around minimizing animal suffering, one that predates most modern food safety regulations by several thousand years.

I am not a rabbi, and I am not going to outline the halachic details here. What I will say is that the confidence with which people who have never studied the practice explain why it is cruel has always struck me as a particular kind of special people. My eyes can’t roll back into my head high enough.

So there you have it. American elections will not fundamentally change Shabbat in Rehovot. The UK may put a label on my hypothetical London steak that explains, with great seriousness, that it used to be a cow.

And Israel will keep holding elections until someone wins convincingly enough for everyone to agree to disagree but “try it” for 6 months, which is to say, we will be doing this for a while.

Some things change slowly, some things do not change at all, and some things arrive with great fanfare and end up looking almost identical to what came before. I find myself less interested in predicting which category any given crisis falls into, and more interested in the fact that I already know what I am eating for dinner.