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Taking place during the formative years of Montreal’s Jewish community, the “Kosher Meat War” posed a critical challenge to the newly created Va’ad Ha’Ir (Jewish Community Council) and amplified tensions within the community. As butchers chafed at the centralization of kosher meat supervision, rivalries became magnified between communal and religious leaders. The events also aggravated intra-communal class divisions already heightened by the “Jewish School Question” and various labour battles, allowing internal debates to spill into the public sphere during a period of rising antisemitism.

During the early twentieth century, most Montreal Jews followed the laws of kashrut (biblical dietary restrictions), creating a lucrative market for the rabbinical supervision of kosher slaughter. The struggle to assert communal control over this industry was particularly focused on Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Cohen (supported by the established “uptowner” Jews and the Orthodox intelligentsia) and Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg (a Hasidic rabbi for various immigrant “downtowner” synagogues) – each claiming to be the Chief Rabbi of Montreal.

As head of the Va’ad Ha’Ir, established in 1922, Cohen sought to consolidate his authority with a directory of approved butchers. Previously independent butchers resisted the Va’ad’s control and ability to set prices for kosher meat. The Association of Jewish Butchers of Montreal, often described as a monopolistic cartel or the “Butcher Trust” by the Keneder Adler (Montreal’s daily Yiddish newspaper and ally of the Va’ad), sought the assistance of Rabbi Rosenberg to certify their establishments. Challenging Cohen’s control of shechita (kosher slaughter) in the city, Rosenberg created an independent directory of butchers certified under his supervision, and a rival kashrut authority, the Va’ad Ha’Kashrut (Kosher Council). The price war of 1923 reinforced intra-communal divisions, with the “Butcher Trust” attempting to undermine the Va’ad Ha’Ir’s control by pricing meat at $0.08, rather than $0.14 a pound.

An effort to use the political system to expand rabbinical power further complicated the situation. Rosenberg, while still allied with Cohen in 1922, had pressed Montreal’s mayor Médéric Martin to adopt legislation that would place poultry slaughterhouses directly under rabbinical supervision. The resulting By-Law 828, passed in 1923, ultimately helped Rosenberg’s rivals by limiting the number of authorized kosher poultry slaughterhouses, which the Va’ad Ha’Ir quickly jockeyed to control before parts of the law were found to be unconstitutional.

The “kosher meat question” spiraled into a “kosher meat war,” involving mass meetings, media campaigns, boycotts of butchers accused of selling traif (unkosher) meat, defamation of rabbis, lawsuits before the Quebec Superior Court, and even sabotage, violence and death threats. External religious leaders, including Rav Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine on a visit to Montreal, attempted to arbitrate, but were only able to cool the increasingly nasty rhetoric. In 1925, the impasse became muted, although never fully resolved, when Rosenberg and his adherents were convinced to rejoin the Va’ad Ha’Ir, which has since developed into a respected authority for kashrut around the world.

Compiled by Sarah Woolf.

Sources

Poutanen, Mary-Anne and Jason Gilliland. “Mapping Work in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal: Rabbi Simon Glazer, Social Mobility, and the Jewish Community.” 2009 Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting. Carleton University, Ottawa. 2009.

Oiwa, Keinosuke. Tradition and Social Change : An Ideological Analysis of the Montreal Jewish Immigrant Ghetto in the Early Twentieth century. PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, 1988.

Robinson, Ira. Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930. Calgary: University of Calgary, 2007.

Robinson, Ira. “Toward a History of kashrut in Montreal: The Fight over Municipal By-law 828 (1922-1924)” Renewing our days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century. Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky. Vehicle Press: Montreal, 2007. 30-41.

Robinson, Ira. “The Kosher Meat War and the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, 1922-1925.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 22.2 (1990): 41-54.

Images courtesy of the Jewish Public Library Archives, the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives, and Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg and family.