“manchester Guardian” Takes a Hand in Jewish Shechita Question: Says Manchester Jewish Community is

Stating that it reflects the opinion of Manchester Jewry, the “Manchester Guardian” takes a hand to-day in the much-discussed amendment to the Slaughter of Animals Bill, which is now before Parliament. In its editorial on this question, the “Manchester Guardian” explains that the Jews of Manchester do not agree with the views expressed by the Orthodox Jews of London.

The Manchester Jewish community, the paper writes, is more intimately concerned than any other in the country in the attempt that is being made to amend the Slaughter of Animals Bill now before Parliament. In its original form the measure contains a clause that confirms a by-law which the Manchester City Council instituted some years ago in consultation with representatives of local Jewry. It provides that slaughterers licensed by the Chief Rabbi, on the recommendation of the Manchester Beth Din – the ecclesiastical court, comprised of a number of rabbis – are recognised in the Manchester abattoir as qualified to kill beasts according to Jewish method. Other cities outside London have since accepted similar conditions.

Now that the bill before Parliament seeks, however, to make such a condition general, the paper continues, a section of the community in London – regarded in Manchester as more than orthodox – is trying, by an amendment, to restore the older arrangement, which recognised no rabbis as chief and gave every such spiritual leader licensing power. They are opposed to a “monopoly”, which the spokesman of Manchester Jewry reply exists only in name and is never exercised. To this extent Manchester regards the opposition as unreal, and is disturbed lest the representations of a synagogue speaking for about a thousand people should upset a procedure that works to the satisfaction of two hundred times as many and which, they contend, has agreeably ended that condition of chaos under which the rabbi of any congregation of ten people was vested with this special authority, the editorial concludes.