Parts of this article (those related to new information about Alex Hershaft) need to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(February 2024)
Alex Hershaft is an American animal rights activist, Holocaust survivor, and co-founder and president of the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM),[1][2] the nation's oldest (1976) organization devoted exclusively to promoting the rights of animals not to be raised for food. Previously, he has had a 30-year career in materials science and environmental consulting and a prominent role in movements for religious freedom and environmental quality.
Hershaft was born in Warsaw, Poland, on July 1, 1934, to fairly assimilated Jewish parents Jozef and Sabina Herszaft. Sabina was a mathematician. Jozef was a chemist researching the properties of heavy water (used as a coolant for nuclear reactors) at University of Warsaw with his colleague Jozef Rotblat.[3]
Their research was in great demand, as Western scientists began to recognize the potential of harnessing nuclear energy, and both received visas to continue their work in the U.K. and the U.S. Rotblat left for the U.K just before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and eventually received the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his subsequent opposition to nuclear weapons. Herszaft insisted on visas for his wife and young son, but those came too late.
During the war, the family was forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto, with Sabina's parents, across the street from the infamous Pawiak prison. As the Nazis began exterminating the Ghetto in late 1942, sending inmates to the Treblinka death camp, all three were able to escape to the Christian side and remain in hiding.[4][5] Sabina and Alex were liberated by the allies in the spring of 1945. After the war and five years in an Italian refugee camp, Sabina emigrated to Israel, while 16-year-old Alexander arrived in the U.S. in January 1951. Sabina died in Israel in 1996.
Hershaft began his science career at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he taught graduate classes in X-ray crystallography. He then spent a year running the chemistry department at the Israel Institute for Scientific Translations in Jerusalem. Upon returning to the United States in 1963, Hershaft analyzed naval operations for the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia.
In 1967, Hershaft joined the Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage, New York, to review potential areas of new business in air and water pollution control, and solid waste management. In 1969, one year before the first Earth Day, he launched, then managed the Environmental Technology Seminar, a regional forum for study and discussion of tri-state (New York–New Jersey–Delaware) environmental issues.
In 1972, Hershaft moved to the Washington, D.C., area. He joined the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Bethesda, Maryland, to evaluate water management alternatives, impacts of electric power plants and transmission lines, and costs and benefit of data from the Earth Resources Technology Satellite.
Between 1977 and 1981, Hershaft served as a senior scientist with the Mitre Corporation in McLean, Virginia. He studied emissions from various heating fuels and prepared protocols for assessing and cleaning up hazardous waste sites as part of the U.S. Superfund program.
Social justice career
Hershaft had been involved in student extracurricular activities throughout his undergraduate and graduate studies. At the University of Connecticut, he served on both the Student Senate and the Campus newspaper.
In November 1961, while working at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Hershaft staged a major demonstration in Tel-Aviv, leading to the formation of the League for Abolition of Religious Coercion in Israel, a massive movement seeking to end repression of secular, Reform, and Conservative Judaism, as well as mixed marriages, by entrenched Orthodox authorities.[6]
Two years later, he turned over leadership to Uzzi Ornan and his other Israeli deputies, as he returned to the U.S. to seek support for the organization. Following the upheaval of the 1967 Six-Day War, the cause of religious freedom in Israel was taken up by the Citizen Rights Party (Ratz) (now Meretz).
Between 1965 and 1978, Hershaft served on the board of the American Humanist Association (AHA), a national organization that affirms the ability and responsibility of human beings to lead ethical and fulfilling lives without reference to a supernatural being.
"My first hand experience with animal farming was instrumental [in devoting my life to animal rights and veganism]. I noted the many similarities between how the Nazis treated us and how we treat animals, especially those raised for food. Among these are the use of cattle cars for transport and crude wood crates for housing, the cruel treatment and deception about impending slaughter, the processing efficiency and emotional detachments of the perpetrators, and the piles of assorted body parts - mute testimonials to the victims they were once a part of."
In 1961, shortly after arriving in Israel, Hershaft dropped meat from his diet. In August 1975, he became involved in the vegetarian movement after attending the World Vegetarian Congress in Orono, Maine, and meeting Jay Dinshah.[5][8][9][10] He reports that Robin Hur[11] (then of Harvard Business School in Boston) persuaded him in 1981, after 20 years as a vegetarian, to become vegan.
In 1976, Hershaft founded the Vegetarian Information Service (VIS) to distribute information on the benefits of a vegetarian diet. That same year, he participated in hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, which led to the publication of Dietary Goals for the United States, and eventually to the periodic publication of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Subsequently, he testified before Congress in favor of the 1978 National Consumer Nutrition Information Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1978.
During that period, Hershaft also organized several conferences on strategies for promoting vegetarianism. Some participants, influenced by Peter Singer's 1975 treatise Animal Liberation, felt that the scope of these conferences should be expanded to include discussions of animal rights.[12]
Accordingly, in the summer of 1981, Hershaft organized Action For Life, a national conference at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that effectively launched the U.S. animal rights movement. Participants included such animal rights pioneers as Cleveland Amory, Ingrid Newkirk, Alex Pacheco, Peter Singer, Henry Spira, Gretchen Wyler, as well as radio host Thom Hartmann. These conferences continued for seven more years in San Francisco (1982), Montclair, New Jersey (1983), Los Angeles (1985), Chicago (1986), Cambridge, Massachusetts (1987), and Washington (1984 and 1991).[13][14]
Immediately following the 1981 conference, Hershaft founded the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) to promote a vegan lifestyle and animal rights.[15]
He currently serves on the Advisory Council of Jewish Veg.[20]
Hershaft has written several hundred letters to newspaper editors about the merits of a vegan diet. At the national animal rights conferences, he lectures on personal growth, leadership, social change, campaign strategies, and movement building.
Between 1984 and 2000, Hershaft served on the governing council of the International Vegetarian Union. Between 2001 and 2009, he served on the board of In Defense of Animals, a national animal rights organization based in San Rafael, California.
Hershaft met Eugenie (Genia) Krystal while working at the Israel Institute for Scientific Translations, and they were married in Jerusalem in 1962. They were divorced in 1979. Their daughter, Monica Larissa Hershaft, was born in 1966 and after recovering from a ten-year-long illness which she attributes to a vegan diet,[23] she opened a holistic health and nutrition wellness center in Los Angeles in 2008.
Hershaft became a vegetarian in 1961 and a vegan in 1981. He has been physically active throughout his life, mostly by playing soccer on various school and county teams, running marathons in the early 1980s, and more recently, by engaging in weekly folk dancing and swimming.
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan.
Richard H. Schwartz is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the College of Staten Island; president emeritus of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA); and co-founder and coordinator of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV). He is best known as a Jewish vegetarian activist and advocate for animal rights in the United States and Israel.
Howard F. Lyman is an American farmer and animal rights activist known for promoting vegan nutrition and organic farming. In 1997 he was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his leadership in the animal rights movement.
The practice of vegetarianism is strongly linked with a number of religious traditions worldwide. These include religions that originated in India, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. With close to 85% of India's billion-plus population practicing these religions, India remains the country with the highest number of vegetarians in the world.
Animal welfare and rights in Israel is about the treatment of and laws concerning nonhuman animals in Israel. Israel's major animal welfare law is the Animal Protection Law, passed in 1994, which has been amended several times since. Several other laws also related to the treatment of animals: Rabies Ordinance, 1934; Fishing Ordinance, 1937; Public Health Ordinance, 1940; Wildlife Protection Law, 1955; Plants Protection Law, 1956; Criminal Procedure Law, 1982; Animal Disease Ordinance, 1985; National Parks, Nature Reserves, National Sites and Memorial Sites Law, 1991; the Law of Veterinarians, 1991; Dog Regulation Law, 2002; Rabies Regulations (Vaccinations), 2005; and Prohibition on declawing cats unless for reasons vital to the cat's health or owner's health, 2011.
World Vegetarian Day is observed annually around the planet on October 1. It is a day of celebration established by the North American Vegetarian Society in 1977 and endorsed by the International Vegetarian Union in 1978, "To promote the joy, compassion and life-enhancing possibilities of vegetarianism." It brings awareness to the ethical, environmental, health, and humanitarian benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle. World Vegetarian Day initiates the month of October as Vegetarian Awareness Month, which ends with November 1, World Vegan Day, as the end of that month of celebration. Vegetarian Awareness Month has been known variously as "Reverence for Life" month, "Month of Vegetarian Food", and more.
Gene Baur, formerly known as Gene Bauston, is an author and activist in the animal rights and food movement. He’s been called the "conscience of the food movement" by Time magazine, and opposes factory farming and advocates for what he believes would be a more just and respectful food system. Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, a farm animal protection organization. He is vegan and has been involved with animal rights since he co-founded Farm Sanctuary in 1986. Baur has authored two books and various articles.
The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant number of people are from ancient India, especially among the Hindus and Jains. Later records indicate that small groups within the ancient Greek civilizations in southern Italy and Greece also adopted some dietary habits similar to vegetarianism. In both instances, the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence toward animals, and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers.
Matthew Michael Ball is an American animal activist. He is co-founder and President of One Step for Animals.
Tza'ar ba'alei chayim, literally "suffering of living creatures", is a Jewish commandment which bans causing animals unnecessary suffering. This concept is not clearly enunciated in the written Torah, but was accepted by the Talmud as being a biblical mandate. It is linked in the Talmud from the biblical law requiring people to assist in unloading burdens from animals.
Jewish Veg is an international 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose mission is to encourage and help Jews to embrace plant-based diets as an expression of the Jewish values of compassion for animals, concern for health, and care for the environment. Jewish Veg was formerly called Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) and, prior to that, the Jewish Vegetarian Society of America.
A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World is a 2007 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Lionel Friedberg. It was distributed by Jewish Veg, then known as the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA). The film centers on Jewish teachings about caring for the planet, treatment of animals, and the environment, with a focus on Jewish vegetarianism. Interviews with rabbis, activists, and scholars are interspersed with footage and stills illustrating the points being discussed.
The Oxford Group or Oxford Vegetarians consisted of a group of intellectuals in England in the late 1960s and early 1970s associated with the University of Oxford, who met and corresponded to discuss the emerging concept of animal rights, or animal liberation.
Norm Phelps was an American animal rights activist, vegetarian and writer. He was a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and a former outreach director of the Fund for Animals. He authored four books on animal rights: The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004), The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007), and Changing the Game: Animal Liberation in the Twenty-first Century (2015).
Jewish vegetarianism is a commitment to vegetarianism that is connected to Judaism, Jewish ethics or Jewish identity. Jewish vegetarians often cite Jewish principles regarding animal welfare, environmental ethics, moral character, and health as reasons for adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) is an international nonprofit organization working to promote a vegan lifestyle and animal rights through public education and grass roots outreach. It operates ten national and international programs from its headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Animal Rights National Conference is an annual conference in the United States. Started in 1981 under a different name, since 2000 it has been organized by Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM).
This timeline describes major events in the history of animal welfare and animal rights.
This page is a timeline of the major events in the history of animal welfare and rights in the United States.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
