Women’s Rosh Chodesh Group

We would like to restart our Women’s Rosh Chodesh Group

. . . but we need your help!!

Anyone who would like to help organize these events

please ring Blima on 029 2048 3177 so we can get them up and running again.

If we have a few women able to help, it should be a fairly easy job for each

one.

Thanks in advance for your help.

MIKVAH

Our modern mikvah is up and fully running, under the guidance of the London Beth Din.

For confidential enquiries or for further information please contact Blima Wollenberg on 07949 647 691.

ORGANIC AND FREE- RANGE CHICKENS,

WHITE EGGS, BEEF, VEAL AND FOIS GRAS

You may have noticed a feature in The Jewish Chronicle that described some of the hardships that the majority of chickens endure before they arrive on your table. I was commissioned to write this piece and was horrified when I discovered that the so called Red Tractor System which is proclaimed as relatively kind to table birds meant that 13 birds still shared the space of an A4 sheet of paper. Although these birds are not as intensively reared as some of the really cheap non-kosher birds, nevertheless this cannot be a humane way of keeping any animal. Similarly the white eggs that are deemed 'kosher' are eggs produced by birds that have been kept in batteries. I visited a battery farm many years ago and will never forget the horror of that moment and the stench of ammonia, seeing thousands of birds standing in crates stacked on top of each other. A single man walked through the gloom dragging out the dead birds. After that I vowed I would always buy free-range eggs. Mervyn and I rescued some of those birds and they arrived totally featherless and de-beaked. They had to be trained to perform as normal chickens – drinking out of feeders and perching and eventually they returned to full health – feathered and with good nutrition rewarded us with beautiful eggs. Other barbaric practices that are deemed Kosher, most cows reared for beef are kept in sheds, not seeing the light of day, fed by-products of other industries as well as growth promoters and other hormones. And then there's veal – did you know that the calf is taken from its mother at birth as it is just a by product of the milk industry – the calf is either shot or in the case of Kosher veal – sent abroad in trucks and kept in the dark, trapped into crates so that no movement is possible as any exercise would colour the meat and fed deliberately on a diet that maintains an anaemic condition. The suffering that these poor animals endure is terrifying for the sake of a piece of palepink meat. But even more agonies are endured for a slice of fois gras – a so-called kosher delicacy. Ducks and geese are mechanically force-fed by jamming metal instruments into their throats and continuously pushing food into their gullets. The reason so few birds and their engorged livers can be called 'Kosher' is because so many of the birds die or have their throats punctured as a result of this barbaric process.

May I urge you to begin asking, changing the way you think about your food at home or eating out? It is now possible to buy Kosher free range birds from your butcher but they will only remain available if there is a demand. Yes they are more expensive but you will know that bird had a good life, it will taste better and you will have fulfilled the Torah mandate, 'tsa'ar ba'alei chayim' not to cause pain to animals.