This is the first of a series of updates from the Hazon Food Conference today through Sunday.

I spent much of tonight shivering.

Part of that has to do with being up in the Connecticut Berkshires, in December where 17 degrees is a normal morning temperature. But the shivering started in earnest when I walked into a conference session called, “Lifting the Cellophane Veil: Shecting a Goat.” The session was mandatory for anyone who is thinking about attending tomorrow morning’s schecting.

The Food Conference is, of course, not simply about the goat – we have four days crammed with sessions and a collection of 240 amazing people here at Isabella Freedman. But the schecting tomorrow will be – for me, and many participants – a once-in-a-lifetime and emotionally-charged event. The hope for tonight’s session was that, by introducing the key players (the goat farmer and caretaker, organizer, shochet,-ritual slaughterer, mashgiach-kashrut supervisor, and lead educator), the participants would be able to enter the space tomorrow morning aware of the process and feeling prepared (as much as possible anway).

I think the session served it’s purpose. The educator, Dr. Shamu Sadeh, and goat farmer, Aitan Mizrahi started off the conversation explaining the importance of getting a closer to our food choices – particularly where meat comes from, giving a history of the goats and explaining logistics. By the end of the night, about 70 of the 100-ish people in the room raised their hand to indicate they would wake up early tomorrow, get on a shuttle van, and weather the cold to witness the schecting.

The two standout – and I mean, jaw-dropping (at least from my perspective) panelists were the masgiach, Rabbi Seth Mandel, and shochet, Rabbi Yehuda ben Chemhoun. Mandel is the head mashgiach at the Orthodox Union, and ben Chemhoun is a French-born shochet who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. (Black hat, check.) On the one hand, just having these two men – one a symbol of “the kosher industry,” and the other of a type of Jewish existence that is foreign to almost every other participant at the conference – on stage with a Jewish goat farmer and amongst a wide range of “foodie Jews,” was truly amazing. My first shiver rippled across my arms realizing the power of simply bringing these people together in the same space. It hit me that, as a group, we have as much potential to impact and influence them as they did us.

The second shiver came when they opened their mouths. I’m the first to admit that I have certain predjudices against the “kosher industry,” particularly when it comes to meat – and I’m also aware that both Rabbis knew their audience and were understandably tailoring it. So, I was utterly shocked to hear some of the things they said:

Mandel said, “You have to understand, the Torah did not envision us to eat as much meat as we do. Rambam in the Mishneh Torah says that Jews should eat meat at most two times a week, and if Jews decided to do that, all the problems of kosher slaughter would be solved.” He was adamant about the point that the kosher laws should not be conflated with other mandates in Jewish tradition to treat animals humanely. But here was the head mashgiach at the OU, someone who spends most of his profesional life in slaughter houses, speaking about moderation in meat consumption.

ben Chamoun, a shochet of 27 years, spoke of his own interest in schecting, which stems from passages in the shulchan aruch. His overall demeanor, and the way he spoke about animals was both humble and reverent – a true shock considering he literally kills animals for a living. “You’ve made my job much harder on me by naming them,” he told Mizrahi of the goats.  His words conveyed Jewish tradition’s deep respect for the animal’s life just before it’s death – for example, one does not say shecheciyanu before schecting the first time, because it is not something you “want to thank Hashem for.” “The shochet has to be sensitive to what he is doing,” ben Chamoun said. In the case of large, industrial slaughter houses, he said, “that can be lost.”

Again, it’s possible (even likely) that a different crowd of participants would have brought out a different conversation with these two men. But as a Jewish vegetarian who is anxiously planning to attend the schecting tomorrow and – possibly – even eat the goat at Shabbat dinner tomorrow night, I trust that the goats and the participants will be in the best possible hands.

Responding to a participant’s concern about the schecting becoming a spectacle, Rabbi Mandel looked at her and said, with grave seriousness, “If there is a spectacle, I will have failed.”

- Thanks to our amazing photographer for the weekend, Karl Schatz, for the photo.