|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Were the killings Kosher?
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
Were the killings Kosher?
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 07:29 am |        | Since a few remarks here on the boards and in the chatroom, I have been thinking about an oversight of mine, and maybe others have made too.
As for the medical knowledge a lot suspect he was in some way trained as a medical man. Others think it suffice in him being a butcher. Now those who are all for a butcher, here's some precaution: Do not only go looking for a professional butcher, if you can also believe him to be a Jew.
The Kosher way of slaughtering a sheep, I believe, is slitting the throat and let the animal of all its blood this way. Afterwards the belly is slit in half to get to the intestines. Almost from the top of the rib cage to the genital part. Now the MASTER OF ANY JEWISH HOME KILLS HIS SHEEP HIMSELF in the backyard those days. And WOULD TEACH IT TO HIS SONS. So a Jew WOULD NOT HAVE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL butcher to know how to slaughter an animal.(please correct me if any information is wrong up above, I haven't been Jewish religious brought up)
Let's take a look at the victims. All died of the cuttrought. Even when they were first strangulated, they weren't killed by it, but lulled. They died of bleeding to death by the cutting of the arteries. Now also go and look back at how Eddowes was mutilated. Her abdomen skin was sliced in half, from breast bone until the genital area. This was the way the killer had sliced open Eddowes to get to the intestines and other organs. And some distance away, a Jew related graffity is found in Goulston Str. the same evening.
Now I'm not saying JtR was a Jew, I'm only making an observation and a possible thinking path.
I'm also not saying that if this was the case, this was supposed to be a Kosher killing, but only the way a Jew would have been thought to kill by ritual. And aren't that what SK's murders are, a sort of ritual for them? Maybe not at first (because neither Nichols or Chapman have those spectacular rip), but that's what it eventual becomes, a ritual (and Eddowes is a studied, ritual appearing mutilation). Why else would we try to detect a MO?
And of course this is not antiscemitic intended!
Comments? |
Author: Nick B
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 09:29 am | | When we were talking about this in Chat tonight, I thought it to be quite feasable. We should research more into this possibility.
And again this is not antiscematic intended. |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 11:52 am | | | Sorry, messed up post |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 11:53 am | | | This one too |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 11:54 am | | The next one is the OK-one,
pictures from Casebook. |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 11:55 am | | It has been pointed out to me that I would be mistaken in the hugeness of the abdomen-cut of Eddowes when relying on following picture
Obviously the longness is due to post-mortem research. But I want to make it clear I'm alluding to the less longer wound made by JtR, on the following drawing according to the post-mortem report.
"We examined the abdomen. The front walls were laid open from the breast bones to the pubes. The cut commenced opposite the enciform cartilage. The incision went upwards, not penetrating the skin that was over the sternum. It then divided the enciform cartilage. "
...
"The abdominal walls were divided in the middle line to within a quarter of an inch of the navel. The cut then took a horizontal course for two inches and a half towards the right side. It then divided round the navel on the left side, and made a parallel incision to the former horizontal incision, leaving the navel on a tongue of skin. Attached to the navel was two and a half inches of the lower part of the rectus muscle on the left side of the abdomen. The incision then took an oblique direction to the right and was shelving. The incision went down the right side of the vagina and rectum for half an inch behind the rectum." |
Author: NickDanger
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 03:25 pm | | Hi Jill,
There is nothing of an anti-semitic nature involved in pursuing this line of inquiry. You are quite right about the Kosher method of slaughtering animals, but this is traditionally done by a schochet, a ritual slaughterer. The method is proscribed because it is supposed to be the most humane way to kill animals for food. A schochet is not any old Jewish individual, he is a religious functionary with an important duty. He certifies (under the supervision of a rabbi) that the carcass has been prepared under the provisions of strict Jewish dietary laws, Kashrut.
This is by no means a new area of suspicion and investigation. Jewish ritual slaughterers were mentioned as possible suspects almost immediately at the time the murders were committed and many were questioned by the police. Needless to say, the police came up with nothing regarding a possible suspect, but if you or others can make a case for it by all means proceed full speed ahead.
Best regards,
Nick |
Author: Wolf Vanderlinden
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 05:18 pm | | Everything old is new again. The idea that the Ripper may have been a ritual Jewish slaughterman, or shochet, was first put forth by Robin Odell in his1965 book, Jack the Ripper in Fact and Fiction. The fact is, only the shochet, a minor cleric or religious figure, is allowed to butcher animals under Talmudic law, and it is his skill and expertise that allows meat products to be labeled Kosher. Therefore, the "master of any Jewish home does not kill his sheep himself in the backyard those days."
The idea that a shochet may have had the skills to perform Ripper type mutilations is interesting, however any practiced butcher would possess the same type of skill. Also note that the Ripper first strangled his victims which would go against the practices of the Jewish butcher.
Police in 1888 investigated butchers, shochets and slaughterhouse workers, all to no avail. As well, the ritual knives of the shochet were examined to see if they matched the type of knife that the Ripper used and they were rejected. In the end, any butcher could be considered as a suspect but there is no evidence to single out Jewish butchers.
Wolf. |
Author: Diana
Friday, 26 May 2000 - 09:16 pm | | | The strangulation would have happened to keep the victim from crying out, a departure from the normal ritual followed by the shochet but a necessary one. I want to spell something out here. Every race and ethnic group produces its share of heroes and villains. No race has a corner on goodness or wickedness. If Jack is ever unmasked and he does turn out to have been a Jew it is no reflection on that race or religion. Every ethnic group has produced one or two monsters and some great leaders too. This is just my opinion but I believe myself to be objective. I am a gentile with no ax to grind. |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Sunday, 28 May 2000 - 05:25 pm | | Hi All, Nick, Wolf, Diana
I'd like to thank you both Nick and Wolf of pointing me to my mistake, and to explain the need of a 'schoshet' for kosher killing, of which I was in clear ignorance. I'm also glad to hear the police had followed up on this line of thought themselves. Thank you also for the reference to Robin Odell's book. I will in time try to catch up with that.
As to the comment of strangulation clearly not belonging to the kosher slaughter ritual, I had the same line of thought as Diana. With the killing of a human being, JtR would not be assisted in keeping the victim pinned down as with an animal. This he had to do himself by first helping the victims in unconsiousness. By strangulation. Both clear strangualtion cases, show they were not killed by it, merely lulled. Both victims died by the cutting of the arteries in the neck, not the strangulation. Now this seems to me intended:
if he wanted them just to die as quick as possible, why not just keep strangling them to death? No, instead he let them only lose their consciousness and then cuts the neck as the method to kill.
Again about the possibility of the killings done with the intention to appear kosher: Did schoshets have apprentices? Could kosher ritual slaughter be witnessed? If so, a jewish butcher, without being a schoshet, could still try to apply what he has seen? Or a jewish doctor? Could non-jewish people, with necessary anatomical knowledge, witness such a ritual as bystander? The killing of Nichols and Chapman show no real inclination to the kosher ritual, I find. Eddowes does. What my idea was all along in this line of thought, was that the killer has his pervert enjoyment in the killing. Gradually he notices his media succes, and wants to enhance his performance not only for his own outlet but also for media and onlookers, giving his killing say a touch of 'civility' and 'purpose'. The touch of given 'purpose' is the kosher ritual. Since police evidently saw a possible link to kosher killings, he seems to have succeeded in his extra performance. For this last remark of mine I would like to know, WHEN the police started investigating after schoshets?
Jill |
Author: Diana
Sunday, 28 May 2000 - 06:05 pm | | | Just speculating here -- Could Jack have been a rabid antisemite who deliberately killed his victims kosher style in order to create antiJewish sentiment? Couple this with the Goulston Street Graffito and the fact that Stride was attacked outside a Jewish club. If Jack wanted to create an antiJewish sentiment in the East End he surely succeeded. |
Author: Diana
Sunday, 28 May 2000 - 06:07 pm | | | As soon as I posted I thought of something else: the cry of "Lipski". |
Author: Diana
Sunday, 28 May 2000 - 08:46 pm | | | Some kind of horrible anti-Jewish plot? I keep thinking, he really made several attempts to drag the Jews into it. |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Monday, 29 May 2000 - 06:51 am | | I guess that as I, a non-jewish brought up person, had some knowledge (but not all) of what the ritual consists in a general way, that other non-jews roaming the Whitechapel area knew this too. The difference between a non- or knowledgable person could be found in detail differences. If the MO is only kosher-like in a general way I would not really consider it done by an insider. If the post mortem instead shows mutilations, that concur with details of how to perform a kosher ritual then this points to a more knowledgable person, than by just some heresay, it would at the least have been a Jew who watched the ritual up close.
Since there was an organisation to promote Jewish culture, I presume they did not only try to promote it amongst their peers, but also give cultural information for non-Jewish habitants. Would such an organisation answer to the request of information surrounding kosher food? Did such applications arrive pre-meditating at least the murder of Eddowes? Would these seemingly innocent culture questions be answered? If so, are they still to be traced?
Because I agree, with Diana, there are a lot of circumstances that wish to point to the Jewish community. Either because JtR was a Jew, or just the opposite.
Greetings,
Jill |
Author: John Dixon
Monday, 29 May 2000 - 07:53 am | | If this board catches the eye of someone who knows or can point me in the right direction I think the killings roughly coincide with the Jewish Maccabean festival. Is anyone able to supply the dates for 1888? It is well trodden ground so I'm surprised no one has looked at Jewish religious holidays of the period. I do realise they do not correspond to the exact murder dates but there may be other connections.
Cheers John |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 29 May 2000 - 11:59 am | | If memory serves me aright, the police, who were
very anxious not to see a revival of the threat of
antiSemitic disturbances stirred up by the
original leak that they thought the Ripper was a
local Jewish immigrant, made a point of checking
shochet's knives, and found they had curved ends,
which eliminated them from being the Ripper
weapons.
Martin Fido |
Author: NickDanger
Friday, 02 June 2000 - 07:44 pm | | Hi all,
I would like to add a belated and enthusiastic welcome to Martin Fido. It's simply wonderful to have him as a participant on the message boards and he has already contributed greatly to several discussions. I have always been fascinated by the Cohen/Kosminski/Kaminsky theory since I first read 'The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper' and remain interested in the 'Jewish Connection' in general. We had an interesting discussion on this subject some months ago on the 'Casebook Productions' website.
Next, a disclaimer. Personally I have no problem with the possibility that Jack the Ripper was a Jew and am certainly not offended by serious lines of inquiry in this direction. Perhaps some people are hypersensitive to this, but this should not prevent serious discussions of this possibility.
As far as I know (I am not an Orthodox Jew), there is nothing of a ritual nature involving cuts to the torsos of animals slaughtered by a shochet, other than the usual butchering of the carcass. Knowledge of the method of Kosher slaughtering would be easily available from many sources, but I still don't see anything unique in any of the Ripper murders that would imply specialized and specific religious practice.
As far as the Ripper cutting the throats of the victims, it was simply the fastest and surest way to induce death. Strangulation to the point of death involves a surprising amount of physical strength (I don't speak from firsthand knowledge here) and takes longer than is generally thought. For a murderer to verify that the vicitim he has strangled is dead rather than just deeply unconscious would be dangerous and risky. JTR was a quick and efficient killer and not one to waste time in the messy business of strangulation. Time was of the essence and, as the actual events show, he used this time with great resourcefulness.
Best wishes to all,
Nick Danger |
Author: Sarah R. Jacobs
Thursday, 09 November 2000 - 10:43 am | | Dear All:
The requirements of "kashrut," which is "the making-certain that something [in this case, slaughtered meat] is kosher" are mostly spelled out in a book most of you probably have held in your hands at some point in your lives. It's not some crypto-Masonic Protocol Manual, It is (drum roll, please) The Bible, the part Christians call the Old Testament and that Jews call the Tanach ("T" for "Torah," "N" for "Nevi'im" ("Prophets"), and "Ch/Kh" for "Khetuvim" ("[other] Writings").
The Laws of Kashrut are found almost entirely in the Book of Leviticus. These Laws are almost always stated as Laws Pertaining to the Animals to Be Offered to The LORD, And How Those Animals Must Be Sacrificed. Here is a very interesting one, which would exculpate any schochet (I'm not saying any Jew, but any schochet knows this part of Leviticus by heart. It's his job to know this, just like it's every mechanic's job to know where the transmission is and how to fix it.):
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, and to all the Israelite people, and say to them:
When any man of the House of Israel or of the strangers in Israel presents a burnt offering as his offering for any of the votive or any of the freewill offerings that they offer to the LORD, it must, to be acceptable in your favor, be a male without blemish, from cattle or sheep or goats. You shall not offer any that has a defect, for it will not be accepted in your favor.
And when a man offers, from the herd or the flock, a sacrifice of well-beingto the LORD for an explicit vow or as a freewill offereing, it must, to be acceptable, be without blemish: there must be no defect in it. Anything blind, or injured, or maimed, or with a wen, boil-scar, or scurvy -- such you shall not offer to the LORD; you shall not put any of them on the altar as offerings by fire to the LORD. You may, however, present as a freewill offering an ox or a sheep with a limb extended or contracted; but it will not be accepted for a vow. [My Caps.:] YOU SHALL NOT OFFER TO THE LORD ANYTHING [WITH ITS TESTES*] BRUISED OR CRUSHED OR TORN OR CUT. YOU SHALL HAVE NO SUCH PRACTICES IN YOUR OWN LAND, NOR SHALL YOU ACCEPT SUCH [ANIMALS] FROM A FOREIGNER FOR OFFERING AS FOOD FOR YOUR GOD, FOR THEY ARE MUTILATED, THEY HAVE A DEFECT; THEY SHALL NOT BE ACCEPTED IN YOUR FAVOR [IN YOUR CAPACITY AS THE ONE WHO DECIDES WHICH ANIMALS ARE SACRIFICED]....
---Leviticus 22:17-25
At any rate, you may see the Jewish loathing for anyone who in any way damages or mutilates or makes full of disease the reproductive organs of any other human being. Jack the Schochet would have killed healthy men, in a much more orderly way than JtR killed those women.
Here are some digested Laws of Kashrut:
1) The animal must be male.
2) The animal's testes must be intact, or else
the gelded animal must have been gelded
in one clean, swift stroke, without any kind
of harness attached.
3) The animal must be completely disease-free.
4) THe animal's blood must be as completely
drained out of him as possible (this is why
we have "kosher salt." "Kosher salt" is a
misnomer -- it's actually "kosher*ing* salt,"
used to leach the final leachable drops of
blood out.
5) The killing must be done with a knife with no
defects visible to the naked eye.
6) The schochet gets exactly one stroke to com-
plete the job.
7) If an inner blemish or disease is found, or if
there is question about the animal's health,
the animal is declared unkosher.
8) THe animal is suspended from the ceiling of
the kosher slaughterhouse by its limbs in
order that the schochet can make the kill
in one stroke.
9) The animal must suffer as little as possible,
as his anguish may cause a blemish (old-time
thinking).
10) There is a koshering-prayer that must be said over the animal prior to the killing.
Now you know why kosher meat is so expensive, and so salty. And you also know why Jack, though he may have been a Jew ignorant of his own laws, was not a schochet. Schochets who are cruel lose their schocheting jobs, and are, in effect, banished by the community. Why? Because any community that's been around for 4-5,000 years pretty much knows that a cruel slaughterman doesn't stop with bulls, he goes on to unsuspecting humans. Serial murder is nothing new. It's just the label and its connotations which are new. |
Author: NickDanger
Thursday, 09 November 2000 - 11:14 pm | | Hi all,
Thank you Sarah for giving us the required laws for Kosher slaughtering and meat preparation. Not being an Orthodox Jew, and not having memorized Leviticus, I appreciate your posting of these provisions so we can all have it for future reference.
Just one question. Are there any specific religious laws that dictate the type of knife used to cut the animal's throat, or could it be any knife generally used for that purpose as long as it met the sharpness and defect free test that you mentioned above?
Best regards,
Nick
Best regards,
Nick |
Author: NickDanger
Thursday, 09 November 2000 - 11:16 pm | | Hi all,
Thank you Sarah for giving us the required laws for Kosher slaughtering and meat preparation. Not being an Orthodox Jew, and not having memorized Leviticus, I appreciate your posting of these provisions so we can all have it for future reference.
Just one question. Are there any specific religious laws that dictate the type of knife used to cut the animal's throat, or could it be any knife generally used for that purpose as long as it met the sharpness and defect free test that you mentioned above?
Best regards,
Nick |
Author: NickDanger
Thursday, 09 November 2000 - 11:54 pm | | Apologies for the double post, I thought I cancelled the first one.
Nick |
Author: Sarah R. Jacobs
Saturday, 11 November 2000 - 04:41 pm | | Nick--
Not that I know of, but I'll ask my rabbi. Where's Rabbi Leen when ya' need 'im, anyhow? :-)
Sarah
P.S. I'm actually not Orthodox, myself. You'd never know I was Jewish if you saw me on the street (which is another thing to keep in mind when thinking of any Jew who would've been Jack -- probably not religious, so he could've looked like anyone, slept with anyone, gone anywhere -- There's no "force-field" around ANY Jew or Christian which prevents intermingling of any kind, nor, to my knowledge, has there *ever* been, so he wouldn't necessarily "look Jewish", which phrase puts me off so greatly about the notes of any of the so-called tolerant policemen of the time. THey thought they could tell a Jew from a Brit from an Irishman from a mulatto. REminds me of one of my father's former employers, who, AT MY BAT MITZVAH CELEBRATION, said of a red-haired Jewish boy I'd invited, "His mother has a lot to explain -- messing around with the Irish!")
Bye, anyhow! |
Author: peter j. richards
Sunday, 12 November 2000 - 01:48 am | | Nick and Sarah,
If I may, the knife need only meet the specified requirements. It is not a ritualistic item so much, but must meet the guide lines as Sarah has identified. Typically there are two, one kept in reserve in case the first should become damaged.As this would render the knife, and the animal unclean.
Peter |
Author: NickDanger
Sunday, 12 November 2000 - 11:10 pm | | Hi all,
Peter, Thanks very much for clarifying the point about the knife used by a Schochet. I've wondered about it and I'm glad that we have answered the question.
Best regards,
Nick |
|
|
|
|
