Press

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, the founder of Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy, criticized Hasidic opposition to the ban in an email to JTA, saying that wearing shtreimels is a custom but not mandated by Jewish law. “It is not required to actualize holiness,” said Yanklowitz, who is Orthodox. “What is required, however, is the need to follow the notion of ‘tzar ba’alei chaim’: not causing needless pain to animals.”

According to Shmuly Yanklowitz, a Modern Orthodox rabbi and founder of a progressive-minded Orthodox rabbinical association, the Orthodox movement “is certainly in opposition toward capital punishment, with exception.”