The Hebrew Community Council in Jerusalem and Shehitah Affairs—Between Political Split and Economic Intersection

ABSTRACT: This article explores the performance of shehitah (ritual slaughter according to rabbinic law) in British Mandate Jerusalem under the guidelines of the HCC (Hebrew Community Council)—an arm of the Jewish National Institutions—and the alliances that were forged around shehitah among various social and ideological sectors of the city. A prominent example is the collaboration of HCC at times with Agudath Israel, the main political-religious opposition party to the National Institutions, and at other times with Sephardi shehitah services, while creating shehitah regulations that negated the founding principles of the National Institutions. In the present article I argue that these alliances represent compromise over national principles that favored economic and civic interests; as such, civic compromise in Jerusalem engendered alliances in the communal sphere that would have been unrealizable in the national sphere.