How I Became a Nazi and a Mass Murderer

I don't like meat anyway, and I don't like animals. They always seem like repulsive creatures to me - less God-fearing than secular people and smellier than ultra-Orthodox Jews. I'm terrified of dogs sniffing me, frightened of cats looking at me, and from mice I simply run away. Every encounter I've had with animals has always ended in some comical effect at my expense. Like that time at the zoo when a penguin bit me - because I tried to ask it where its shtreimel [Translator's note: fur hat worn by some Hasidic Jews] was

Food is not moral (Source)

I dreamed that I was going to buy a chicken for Shabbat, and there was a protest in front of the slaughterhouse: "Only vegetarians go to heaven - lust for meat leads to hell." "Butcher - rapist, and also murderer." "Don't sin with the sin of the calf - a red heifer is not ketchup." And the girl shouts at me: How can it be kosher if it's not moral? Tell everyone, honorable Rabbi, if you're not ashamed. And I blush and say to those gathered: On the contrary, Judaism actually preceded vegetarianism by thousands of years - with kashrut. Unlike all other nations, we don't eat wild animals from nature, but domesticated animals, and the laws of slaughter don't actually allow killing through hunting. Look at what moral sensitivity Moses had 1500 years before the Common Era! In practice, we eat the most soulless and stupid animals in the animal kingdom: cows and chickens. Eating a monkey or a dog is really not nice!

And she opens her mouth: Isn't a pig a domesticated animal? And I jump: Exactly! An animal that's only for meat - it has no life - that's not nice. On the other hand, the animals we eat are farm animals, which grow up with humans, but have additional uses, like milk or eggs or wool, and only then are eaten, because it's a shame to waste. Not their entire life is a meat factory, like today. A pig is also a smart and cute and very human-like animal, they even do experiments on them because their organs are like ours. Eating pork is really disgusting!

And people start to gather around me. And she feels she's caught me red-handed now and pulls out pictures: This is the neo-Nazi meat industry of animals that are numbered and sent in cattle cars. Here, look how they lead the cows like sheep to the slaughter. And it's all kosher mehadrin [Translator's note: strictest level of kosher certification]! And I leap: Exactly, exactly! That's the secret of kashrut, unlike the industrial extermination of animals by the gentiles, we only take lives using the ancient, manual, pre-modern, slow and meticulously detailed methods, and this makes it personal - not industrial. It also greatly limits the quantities and raises the price of meat, which is why I only buy it for Shabbat and only eat beef on holidays. It's not like Americans or secular people who gorge in diners, and that's why God punishes them and their hearts get clogged and their lives are shortened. Eating meat on a weekday is really a base desire and not a measure of piety!

And she fumes: Come on, kosher slaughter is the least humane! And I exhale: All the advanced humane methods of the gentiles are inhumane. Sterile death is the definition of a crime against humanity, because it's an inhuman death, without respect for the soul. Imagine if instead of gas they had to slaughter the Jews with kosher slaughter, and for each one waste a few minutes to sharpen the knife and find the right vein in the neck and check for defects, and make intentions and bless? Even Nazis couldn't stand it. How many Jewish children could Hitler himself kill with his own hands? He would have broken down very quickly. The most terrible murder is virtual murder without blood and without butchers, like they erased the Jews like files on a computer, without human touch. So it's good that there's blood, because it doesn't allow suppressing the action. And it's good that you need to salt the meat so there won't be a drop of blood in it, because it shows what we really think about blood: yuck!

And she says: Listen to what your mouth is saying. And I say: If only it were possible to live without eating animals. We need to wait for the future - wait until the cholent [Translator's note: traditional Jewish stew] from the future cooks on the hot plate. And if only a hundredth of the energy and resources you spend on protests were spent on scientific research of synthetic meat that's cheaper and tastier than natural, then there would be no more kashrut problems in the world at all, and everyone would be vegetarian except the French. But of course, this wouldn't allow for the real goal - to educate about morality, right? And she says: Why don't you progress? Come try to have a Shabbat meal at our place, with sprouts instead of animals. And I ask: What, can that be instead of meat? Because meat is an insanely expensive business for someone who just dreams all day. After all, everyone wants meat and spirit is worth nothing, certainly not to read dreams, which are the sausages of the spirit. And she says: Try it. You'll see. And she gives me a page that explains how to sprout, and I see that it's cheaper than chicken, and I cross over to the health food store across the street.

And in my heart, a decision forms to become a vegetarian. After all, why should I get involved in a dubious moral problem, who knows if she's not right, and I don't really have the energy to think about it, and it doesn't interest me, because I don't want to think at all - but to dream. I don't like meat anyway, and I don't like animals. They always seem like repulsive creatures to me - less God-fearing than secular people and smellier than ultra-Orthodox Jews. I'm terrified of dogs sniffing me, frightened of cats looking at me, and from mice I simply run away. Every encounter I've had with animals has always ended in some comical effect at my expense. Like that time at the zoo when a penguin bit me - because I tried to ask it where its shtreimel was. On the other hand, I really love plants. Even a cactus. In my opinion, plants are simply dreaming all the time, and this sleep state preceded the waking state in evolution - which is mistakenly called life. Certainly in my case. And a person who dreams all his life is called a vegetable.

So I sprout. And sprout. And sprout and sprout more and more. And now my whole bed is full of bowls and bowls of sprouts. I've turned the sheet into a greenhouse. And I sit among all my nice growths, everyone I've grown and nurtured and succeeded with, and feel like I'm in the Garden of Eden. And in the end, even though I feel very sorry for them, after all the investment and watering, to waste them on myself, I get really hungry. And I see that the chicken in the fridge is already finished, and there's no choice but to start tasting my little ones. And I eat the sprouts, more and more, which make a crunch crunch between my teeth, and it's tasty and feels fresh and refreshing and so alive, much much better than dead meat, each such sprout with its tail full of fresh life, and then I realize with nausea - - that I'm actually chewing babies. Chewing masses of helpless babies, day-old babies who have just begun to sprout, and I don't even give them a chance to live two days in this world, after I finally caused them to open in hope to the world and put out a tail - and I'm actually now committing a crime against humanity, or actually against vegetarianism. I'm Dr. Mengele of plants! Just now the life instinct came out of them, and already I'm eliminating them and grinding them with my teeth, in a strange and terrible death, in wholesale destruction, without any conscience. And it seems to me a million times more shocking than eating meat.

And I think, why doesn't their tremendous life force overcome me, why don't they continue to sprout in my stomach, and grow out of me and eat me instead of me eating them, because how much life they have, and why does death - which is me - defeat them, and not they kill me from within? They seem to me much more vital and young and beautiful and hungry for life than me, each cute root tail that comes out of them in longing to search for water, full of dreams and aspirations, it's all pure will to live - which I lost years ago. And I realize that all these babies are entering my stomach - and dying a terrible death in acid, they have no chance. This is worse than a gas chamber, this thing, and then in the bathroom I repress the terrible thing I did, it's like the crematorium, and there I send them to the sewers far away from me, like the mountains of Jewish ashes, and my behind is actually a disgusting Sonderkommando [Translator's note: Jewish prisoners forced to work in Nazi death camps]. What kind of terrible thing am I. A walking Holocaust. A death machine. An extermination camp. Auschwitz, that's what I am. I am Auschwitz.

And I can't believe I was capable of doing this all my life. Rice, after all, what is it? I suddenly realize. And wheat? They're all seeds that were taken out of the plant, countless embryos torn from their mother's womb, while she was still alive, exactly as the Germans would do. No no, I grasp, it's such a convenient lie that we call them seeds! As if it's our human seed that we can spill millions of, and it's so fun. After all, we're not talking about microscopic seeds that haven't even met an egg yet and won't grow on their own, but really about small children. Hot corn - it's a human atrocity, to cook the mother with all her children. And just because we don't perceive the suffering of plants, after all today we know that plants do feel, and do respond, even to classical music, which chickens don't understand in their lives. Just because of our terrible insensitivity to plants that are different from us, and the dehumanization we've done to them, we're able to eat bread, or crush the poor grapes, and drink their blood, their life juice that wasn't intended for us at all, but was their precious children. No, no, it's a million times worse than meat. Eating rice is like grinding thousands of live chicks in your mouth every day. With your teeth. Yes, I'm guilty of crimes against vegetarianism, inhuman crimes - complicit in the historical sin with the most evil and therefore the most banality of man - and the only fitting punishment is death, to rot in the grave and become fertilizer for plants. But in the meantime - I've switched to a paleo diet.