Aligning our food
choices with our
Jewish values
Featured Campaign
Is This Kosher?
As a community, it’s time to reckon with the impacts of our food choices–on farmed animals, on people, and on the planet–and ask: is this way of farming and eating truly kosher?
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What We Do
The Jewish Initiative for Animals provides new ways for the Jewish community to bring its values of compassion for animals into practice and strengthen Jewish communities in the process.
Recent blogs
Keeping Kosher in a Vegan Restaurant: A path to addressing the larger question of factory farms
In the face of the widespread harm caused by industrial animal agriculture, in what ways can Judaism promote more sustainable and ethical eating?
Kosher Production Suffers from Low or No Animal Welfare Standards
Since kosher certifications lack purview over how animals are bred, treated, and handled prior to slaughter, a third party auditor is one way to verify that farms meet higher welfare standards. Unfortunately, no third party certification currently includes comprehensive standards for kosher meat products, and therefore no kosher meat products are certified as higher welfare.
Genetic Welfare and Outdoor Access Aren’t Different for Kosher
Kosher certifications lack purview over how animals are bred, treated, and handled prior to slaughter. Unhealthy genetics and restricted or no access to the outdoors are conditions consistent across animal production in the United States and, increasingly, the world, including for animals that are certified kosher.
Our values
In order to cultivate and grow a sustainable Jewish animal advocacy movement, we must address the issues that are critically connected to and interdependent with industrial animal agriculture. We must work in partnership with Jewish communities and justice movements to achieve positive change.
Support the movement
Join us in building Jewish community support for alternatives to factory farming. Become a donor today.