After two and a half years of tofu burgers and other unrecognizable foods such as meatless meatballs, I decided it was finally time to end my lean years and take up meat again. It just so happened that this turning point in my life coincided with the beginning of my undergraduate college career at Yeshiva University just a few short months ago.
At the Friday night meal at YU, where I reacquainted myself with the taste of chicken, the conversation turned to meat-eating, and being Shabbos, it progressed to meat eating in the Jewish religion. A friend mentioned a class he had attended a few times that taught shchita (ritual slaughter) through the rabbinical school of Yeshiva University. Those who successfully completed the course would be certified as a shochet, with rabbinic permission to butcher kosher birds. (The scope of the course was limited to fowl, although with study, one can upgrade to larger animals.)
I jumped at the opportunity to fully embrace my newly found omnivorism, and enrolled in the class, which is held once a week in a science laboratory in the affiliated Yeshiva University high school building. Every Tuesday evening, the rabbi and instructor, sets down his briefcase containing an exotic knife collection (including ancient shchita knives and Japanese blades for cutting bamboo) and begins to impart the traditions of kosher slaughter.
It is a small group that gathers; only a handful of us regularly attend. Every so often, though, a curious soul will stop by to witness the death of a chicken. The class itself covers a lot of ground. Aside from studying the straightforward laws of slaughtering, there are important skills to learn like how to sharpen a knife, how to identify birds, or – my personal challenge – how to pick up a chicken. My childhood fear of birds (rooted in memories of seagulls destroying a family beach picnic) is one of those things I have yet to get over entirely – along with the hesitation to stick my hands inside birds to clean out the insides and dealing with the horrific smell of dead animals.
Some zoological knowledge is required in order to be a shochet. To pass on the traditional distinctions between birds that are acceptable for consumption and those that are not, our Rabbi brings in a number of live examples. We have had quails, mallards, Cornish hens, teals, leghorn chickens and other examples of kosher birds flapping around our lab, as well as more bizarre varieties of unkosher fowl, like the silky chicken (which was mistaken for a rabbit on one occasion because of confusion over its downy feathers). The rabbi rattles off facts about common varieties, signs of distinction, and mating habits like an encyclopedia and on occasion will dispute scholarly findings he has read based on his first-hand knowledge of internal anatomy.
The required reading is a 400-page Hebrew text that needs to be known backwards and forwards. To make sure that we learn it, the rabbi gives three killer tests. In order to pass the course and eventually get certified, we must earn a score of 90 percent or above. In addition, certification requires that we pass a practical test: slaughtering, or shechting, as we say in class, three chickens with an outside rabbi as judge. The task would be impossible for me without the help of my tutor: a certified shochet whose day job is trading stock on Wall Street, but who makes time to study with me on Sunday mornings.
My horror at witnessing the gruesome deaths has worn off over time. Experiencing the way in which the meat I eat gets to my plate was my reason for joining the class in the first place. In fact, what is more disturbing is the shape in which some of the animals arrive. Sometimes underfed, sometimes diseased, their treatment is more hideous than their deaths.
There is a whole world hidden to us modern urbanites so accustomed to the removed convenience of the grocery—a world where meat lives before it gets cooked, broiled, or stewed. I personally feel that I am a more complete meat-eater for seeing this side of the process. Maybe one day I’ll be able to shecht, but for now I feel that I have at least earned the right to dig in.
