David Rosen (rabbi)

David Shlomo Rosen CBE (born 1951) is the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979–85) and currently serves as the Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department of Interreligious Affairs and the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding. From 2005 until 2009 he headed the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations (IJCIC), the broad based coalition of Jewish organizations and denominations that represents World Jewry in its relations with other world religions.

David Rosen in 2009

Quotes

Vegetarianism: An Orthodox Jewish Perspective

in Rabbis and Vegetarianism: An Evolving Tradition, edited by Roberta Kalechofsky (Marblehead, MA: Micah Publications, 1995), pp. 53-60. ISBN 0-916288-42-0

• The current treatment of animals in the livestock trade definitely renders the consumption of meat as halachically unacceptable as the product of illegitimate means.
  • p. 53

• Indeed, Judaism as a way of life, seeks to inculcate in us a consciousness of the Divine Presence in the World and respect for life accordingly. The more we care for life, the closer we are in fact to God. Accordingly, an ethical vegetarian way of life expresses the most noble and sublime values and aspirations of Judaism itself, bringing us closer to its vision for society as a whole.
  • p. 55

• We must clearly advocate dietary practices that are truly in consonance with the sublimest values of the Torah, and today more than ever before these are overwhelmingly incompatible with carnivorous indulgence.
  • p. 59