Shochet שוחט
Without him there is no meat in a small town. By law anyone who knows how may slaughter—but custom has long required a licence from a rabbi, and without that paper no one goes near the knife.
The law of slaughter is short: cut the windpipe and the gullet with a knife flawlessly smooth, in one movement, without pausing and without pressing. Everything hard is not in the rule but in the hand: any one of five faults makes the meat unfit, and only a man who knows what he is feeling can detect them.
The licence. So the Shulchan Aruch says: anyone who knows how is fit—and at once brings the custom of letting no one slaughter who has not received a licence from a rabbi. That licence tested two things at once: whether he knows the laws, and whether he can be trusted when he is alone. A shochet slaughters without witnesses, and the whole community eats on his word.
His place in the community. He usually also examined the lungs of the slaughtered beast, and was often the mohel and the chazan besides—in a small town one head wore three hats. The kahal paid his wage, or he was paid out of the sale, and disputes over who appoints the shochet and what he is paid fill the communal record books no less than disputes over taxes.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Chullin 9a — the five faults of slaughter and the duty to know them
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 1:1 — anyone who knows how is fit — and the custom of requiring a licence
Basis: Talmud and midrash.