Rabbinically Vetted

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

A collection of taxidermized animals, pictures of kashrus expeditions to exotic locations, perhaps a shechitah knife collection. That’s what you’d expect to find in the home of the world’s only former chief rabbi who is also a vet, zoologist, pharmacologist, chemist, head of a kashrus organization, decades-long international defender of shechitah, and prolific author of seforim.

Instead, the only thing distinguishing the modest Bayit Vegan apartment of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Levinger from its neighbors is a mounted piranha, memento of a trip to South America. It sits with two vicious rows of teeth permanently bared and unblinking wicked yellow and black eyes, looking as if it’s about to attack somewhere in the Amazon.

But look further along the neat shelves to understand why Rabbi Levinger is a trailblazer. Among the rows of classical seforim — what any rav would have in his bookcase — is another shelf. Here are the many seforim he has authored, on topics ranging from shechitah and treifos to chullin to kashrus — most of them with pictures and illustrations, a genre popular today, but which Rabbi Levinger pioneered.

For the last 50 years, wherever shechitah has been attacked, it’s Rabbi Levinger who has been called on to use his scientific expertise to defend it. From fish parasites to the recent Braekel chicken debate, halachic controversies end up at the door of this mesorah expert. His is the type of encyclopedic knowledge picked up along an unusual route — on a journey from a zoologist to a rav.