Slaughterer

“ When the blow descends on the knob of the punch, the sharp part is driven with great force into the skull, and the animal drops to the ground stunned. It is not dead, and it has to he "pithed" and its throat cut in the usual way before death takes place. The theory on which humane slaughterers go is that the animal is rendered by the first blow unconscious to everything afterwards. ”

“ Ravina states that “All experts can slaughter”, - meaning all who are expert in the mechanics even though it is not known whether they can complete the slaughter without becoming exhausted. “When are these words said? When it is known that he is expert in the laws of slaughter.” – meaning that an expert also has to know the laws. ”

“ According to the above, though women are permitted to slaughter, we are all aware of the amount physical labor and careful work necessary to properly sharpen the knife used for slaughter, and therefore, women are not relied upon in this area, as they will become impatient with the exertion and will not be exacting with the knife's preparation. ”

“ For in real truth, slaughter is a great compassion on the animal, as it is the essence of its eternal repair. And therefore through the mitzwah of slaughter we sweeten the judgements at their root and refine the good from the bad, human spirit from beastly spirit, which is the aspect of lack of knowledge, the aspect of the judgments' slag; we extract them and sweeten and repair them through the knife of slaughter, in the aspect of sweetening the judgements at their root as mentioned. ”

“ The slaughter is a sad set-off against the glory; groans of anguish are the converse of exulting cheers. The field of conquest was stained with the life's blood of thousands. The dead lay all around; some on their backs, calmly sleeping as though death had inflicted no pangs; the bodies of others were writhed and twisted with the excruciating agony of their last hour. The wounded in every stage of suffering strewed the ground, mutilated by round shot and shell, shattered by grape, cut and slashed and stabbed by bayonet and sword. ”

“ So we marched with this folk of the Kymry and met the men of the cities, and whiles we overthrew and whiles were overthrown, but at last in a great battle were overthrown with so great a slaughter, that the red blood rose over the wheels of the wains, and the city-folk fainted with the work of the slaughter, as men who mow a match in the meadows when the swathes are dry and heavy and the afternoon of midsummer is hot ”

“ They had looked on while innocent and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light, the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were piled in awful heaps around the camping ground. ”

“ Seventeen thousand persons were put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex. The young and the innocent, the aged and the helpless, were mingled in the same slaughter with the strong man who resisted to the death. For two days the carnage was continued, until the dead were piled up before the doors of the houses, and the streets ran down with blood. From the cruelty of man the wretched inhabitants sought the protection of God, and, flocking to the churches, they flung themselves in terror before the altars. ”

“ When the killing was instantaneous, as when a bird was shot and dropped dead like a stone, I was not disturbed; it was nothing but a strange, exciting spectacle, but failed to bring the fact of death home to me. It was chiefly when cattle were slaughtered that the terror returned in its full force. And no wonder! The native manner of killing a cow or bullock at that time was peculiarly painful. Occasionally it would be slaughtered out of sight on the plain, and the hide and flesh brought in by the men, but, as a rule, the beast would be driven up close to the house to save trouble. ”

“ From the open door I watch a soldier in shirt-sleeves, forearms bare, slaughtering a sheep lying with its legs tied to a gate. Each agonized convulsion of the poor beast makes me feel ill; it brings back to my mind the time when, in a slaughter-house, I plunged my leg into a bucket filled with warm blood, streaming in a flood from the severed neck of a slaughtered cow!... ”

“ To wake once more to killing, killing, killing.
Give me the hunter's hand, the patriot's fervour
To hold death naught, or for my land to serve her,
Slay and still slay, with heart that holds no sorrow
For these dead men and all their carnal horror.
Was I not one who loved my land for growing
Sweet, eager life, and pretty things all blowing?
How glad these hands to give their toil, how willing,
That now, O God ! grow strong in killing, killing. ”

“ As if by magic, the savages appeared at every point, yelling like demons of death, and slaughtering all they met. The men in the fields were killed with their own hoes and hatchets. Those in the houses were murdered on their own hearth-stones. So unlooked-for and terrible was the assault that in that day of blood three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children fell victims to their merciless foes. ”

“ The whizz of arrows, the crash of descending tomahawks, and the sharp rifle-shot, mingled horribly with the groans, the cries, and oaths of the murderers and the murdered. The floor of that log-house was heaped with the dying and the dead, yet the fight raged on with a fiercer and more blood-thirsty violence, till the savages prowled among the slain like a host of incarnate fiends, slaking their vengeance on the wounded and the dead, for want of other victims. ”

“ Every old man and woman was killed, slain with a sword, or hacked to death, or speared. Babies, and little children were brained against the walls of the houses; strong men—fathers, lovers, sons—had been murdered with every wantonness of savagery conceivable. ”

“ Whose blood stains the green sward, and decks the wild flowers with colors not their own, and smokes on the sword of persecuting France? It is woman's, as well as man's? Yes, women were accounted as sheep for the slaughter, and were cut down as the tender saplings of the wood. ”

“ Ritual Slaughter 1 Who is eligible to perform slaughter 2 Whether slaughter performed by a non-Jew or a mumar (apostate) is kosher 3 Slaughter does not require intent 4 One who slaughters in the name of idolatry or for some other purpose 5 The one who slaughters for kodashim [Temple sacrifice] and the relevant laws 6 With what may you slaughter 7 One who fixes a knife in a wheel: Is it permitted to slaughter with it 8 The length of the knife for shechita 9 One who shechts with a knife that is white with heat 10 Other laws of knives 11 What time may one shecht? ”

“ When the child comes near the executioner, his sword trembles in its scabbard—an unmistakable sign that it thirsts for her blood. The huntsman's head, when it is cut off, flies towards her, and the teeth grip her frock. ”

“ Their position also is often so badly chosen that the children in the vicinity resort there to see the animals killed, and the poor beasts have in some cases to be driven through a narrow passage into the slaughter-house itself, where, trembling at the sight and smell of the blood and carcasses of its dead companions, it remains tethered until its turn comes to fall a victim to the blow of the slaughter-man: a blow which sometimes has often to be repeated before its object is attained, owing to the bad light and cramped surroundings of the place. ”

“ Often have I seen a man kill a hog on the floor of his house, cut it up, toast it, as one may say, at the fire, and then offer the grilled and frequently under-done flesh to his guests. Invariably the guests are obliged to witness the slaughter of the animal which is to supply their dinner. This slaughter is performed as a kind of sacrifice; the legs of the beast are the portions of the gods, and are laid, with bits of fat, upon the altars. ”

“ All the rest assemble themselves within this living circle. On a sudden, at a signal given, commence the bleating and the lowing and the struggling of animals slaughtered in sacrifice, at the farthest end of the portico, and speedily is the ground made to swim with sacrificial blood. ”

“ It is said that in the old times thousands of human beings were slaughtered here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If these mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they could describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed forms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up by the sacrificial fires ”

“ Deep were the consultations of the infidel leaders concerning the destiny of their formidable captive. The slaughter actually wrought by his hand had been so fearful, the ravages produced among their armies by his policy so unbounded, that a large majority were in favor of his instant execution; nor could human ingenuity devise, or brute cruelty perform, more hellish methods of torture than were calmly discussed in that infuriate assembly. ”

“ A great and large slaughter shall be throughout the land of darkness where the unrighteous decrees and laws have been founded. Yea, a great effusion of blood, fire, and smoke shall encrease up in the dark habitations of cruelty ”

“ In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of superstition. Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of customs are based may be assumed to med to be substantially the same. ”

“ One slaughters the windpipe above the place that is not permitted for proper slaughter. Or if one begins to slaughter in a place permitted for proper slaughter and slaughters a little and inclines the knife outside of the place fit for slaughter from above and finishes there. However, if he slaughters most of the windpipe in a place fit for slaughter and inclines the knife outside a place fit for slaughter from above and finishes their, cutting the entire windpipe it is kosher. ”

“ Our comrades had been slaughtered in a most inhuman and brutal manner, and slaves were trampling over their mangled and bleeding corpses. Revenge must have fired every heart, and strung every arm with nerves of steel, for the herculean task of blood. ”

“ On the other hand, when he engageth in warfare, quarrelling and bloodshed, he becometh viler than the most fierce of savage creatures, for if a bloodthirsty wolf devoureth a lamb in a single night, man slaughtereth a hundred thousand in the field of battle, strewing the ground with their corpses and kneading the earth with their blood. ”

“ Butchers and slaughtermen perform a necessary task from which most of us would shrink, and it is both unbecoming and nonsensical to suggest intentional cruelty on their part. I do not for a moment. But I do say that it is the business of the law so to control the methods of slaughter as to obviate to the utmost all needless suffering, however unintentionally it may be inflicted. ”

“ Finding all chance of escape impossible, and seeing their slaughtered fellows drop dead at their feet, they bellowed with fright, and in the confusion that whelmed them lost all power of resistance. The slaughter generally lasted two or three hours, and seldom many got clear of the weapons of their assailants. ”

“ It would be superfluous to recount in detail the dreary catalogue of wholesale slaughters which for centuries disgraced Europe, whenever fanaticism or the disappearance of a child gave rise to stories of the murder rite, or a blood-stained host suggested sacrilege committed on the sacrament, or some passing evil, such as an epidemic, aroused the populace to bloodshed and rapine. ”

“ To slay is to kill by a blow, or by a weapon. Butcher and slaughter apply primarily to the killing of cattle; massacre is applied primarily and almost exclusively to human beings, signifying to kill them indiscriminately in large numbers ”

“ Then followed a scene of cruelty and murder without a parallel in civilized warfare, which needed but the tomahawk and scalping-knife to exceed the worst atrocities ever committed by savages. The rebels commenced an indiscriminate slaughter, sparing neither age nor sex, white or black, soldier or civilian. ”

“ Indeed, with the exception of some savage tribes, who know nothing of Christian religion or of brotherly love, and who also know nothing of dreadnaughts, submarines, munition manufacture and war loans, the rest of the race is under this terrible narcosis. The human mind seems to be conscious of but one thing, murderous speculation. Our whole civilization, our entire culture is concentrated in the mad demand for the most perfected weapons of slaughter. ”

“ Plunder was still going on, though slaughter, insatiable still, even when gorging upon thousands, had exhausted nearly all, but only halted for want of food. Some wretched woman, indeed, or some helpless child, was dragged every now and then from its ineffectual hiding-place, and a solitary scream or a dying groan marked the new victim. ”

“ Casting our eyes over the history of nations, with horror we discern the succession of murderous slaughters by which their progress is marked. Even as the hunter follows the wild beast to his lair by the drops of blood on the ground, so we follow Man, faint, weary, staggering with wounds, through the Black Forest of the Past, which he has reddened with his gore. ”

“ The poor ereatures, almost famished for want of sustenance, having had none during the time of their elopement, were no sooner in the clutches of the barbarians, than two of them were tied to a tree, and a great fire made round them, where they remained till they were terribly seorehed and burnt, when one of the villians, with his scalping knife, ripe open their bellies, took out their entrails, and burnt them before their eyes, whilst the others were cutting, piereing, and tearing the flesh from their breasts, hands, arms, and legs, with red-hot irons, till they were dead. ”