The End Does Not Justify the Means
Dr. Richard Schwartz, President of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, College of Staten Island, published my write-up of the Stupp's Restaurant in his e-newsletter. To my chagrin and embarrassment I felt obliged to send him the following missive and to make it known publically:
Dear Richard:
Thank you for publishing my piece in your newsletter.
I am not at all sure that Amirim is the only vegetarian community in
the world. I never said that. I am almost sure that I heard that there
is a vegetarian kibbutz as well. I'm also quite sure that the Rainbow community here in Israel is vegetarian. It is very likely that there are vegetarian communities outside Israel as well.
There is a matter I wanted to bring up with you: There have been a
number of passages and quotes in your newsletter likening animal
farming to the Holocaust. There are no words to tell you how
offensive I find this. Even when one considers the experiments that
are done on animals, which to my mind is the ugliest and most brutal
mistreatment of animals, it is not because people take sadistic
pleasure in torturing them. It is misguided research. Now that
simulated testing of new products can be done by computer, more and
more research is being conducted by simulation, sparing the animals.
This proves to my mind that the experiments never were a matter of
sadistic pleasure, but rather an expedient.
Although many species of animals have been made extinct, this is not
due to a planned programme of zoocide. There is no analogy whatsoever
between the planned extermination of the Jews and the making extinct
of animal species.
To my mind your position is weakend by the use of spurious, and
tasteless, hyperbole. The emotional overkill is off-putting in the
extreme - not to eating meat, but to your newsletter. Truth to tell,
since the first time I saw an analogy to the Holocaust in your
newsletter I have not read it. I read this edition to see if my piece
was in it and once again was deeply dismayed to see yet another
reference to the Holocaust. No rational person will take that tack
seriously.
Please consider a more reasoned and rational approach.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
posted by Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat @ 4:23 PM
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