Lo Tirtach or Thou Shalt Not Kill by Aaron Frankel was published in 1899, Franco lays out a heartfelt plea for vegetarianism based, as the title indicates, on resistance to killing.

His arguments for a kinder and more simple life are illustrated by quotes from Jewish scripture and Jewish liturgy. Christian reformers of the late 19th century look to scripture for arguments for vegetarianism. But among Jewish vegetarians, Frankel is a tiny minority within a tiny minority. Most Jewish vegetarians of this era were from secular movements. They were Jews who had already shrugged off the strictures of religious practice. And we're looking to a more modern, more rational, more scientific argument for how to eat and what one should eat. Two very different Yiddish writers make the case for vegetarianism in the pages of the journal The Vegetarian Thought. One is Melika Ravich.

He writes: we vegetarians are people of the future. We are not heroes or martyrs. Anyone who willingly decides to be vegetarian, even for just a week, finds in vegetarianism great joy, inner happiness, and often the greatest delight of one's life. What kind of heroism is it not to want to be a graveyard for animals? What kind of martyrdom is it to be happy? But we are people of the future because our sharp, piercing insight to see the suffering of others, because the person of the present can see everything except suffering. And the great writer Szolem Alejchem, in his very own style, makes a similar point in a letter to the editor: “What a remarkable coincidence. Just as I received your lovely letter, I received a letter from Dr. Zamenhof, the mastermind of Esperanto, asking my permission to publish some of my stories in Esperanto. Vegetarianism and Esperanto stem from the same ideological root.

I am utterly convinced that very soon, now let's say in a thousand or two thousand years, all people will be vegetarian, all will speak one language – Esperanto, and all will observe one faith – Judaism, of course. What interests me as a Jew is if all the people of the world were suddenly to adopt your faith, that is vegetarianism,

what would be the lamentable fate of our kosher butchers and rabbis? And the question about kosher and unkosher, and the discussion of meat and milk, and the milking plate, and the flesh-pot, and the meat tax. My God, what an upheaval. I am not joking.”

He is joking. But in a larger sense, it is no joke. Szolem Alejchem is making gentle sport of the wide eyed and heartbreaking idealism of both the vegetarian and Esperanto movements.

A comic strip entitled “In a Vegetarian Restaurant” appeared in Forverts 1917. The five panels reading right to left depict a customer sitting at a table and a waiter speaking to him.

A portrait of Tolstoy is on the wall. Tolstoy is a hero to Yiddish speaking vegetarians and vegetarians worldwide. In the first panel, the waiter assures the sceptical customer that he can give him a piece of fish so good that he will be sure it is real fish. The customer is sceptical, but in the second frame he is saying: “That's right, Mr Wejtel, this is as good as real fish.”  The waiter promises that he will bring steak for the next course. And in the final panel, we shift to the back region, the kitchen, where we see the chef butchering a turkey. And we understand that the reason the food and the vegetarian restaurant tastes so good is that it is real meat and the scam is vegetarianism itself. Yiddish newspapers of this era are full of bitter and satirical takes on vegetarianism. We actually have more evidence that there was interest in vegetarianism among Jews in the backlash, in the reaction, than in the literature produced by the vegetarians themselves. While Jewish vegetarians may have been few in number, their cultural influence was disproportionately large. Immigrants and their children may not all have adopted vegetarianism, but they were stirred by similar impulses to improve themselves and society, whether to be healthier and happier, saner and more rational, closer to Jewish tradition or closer to classical philosophy.

They chose saner and safer eating as a way of creating a saner and safer future.