Poultry was brought here before dawn. From 1912 to 1939 the courtyard of the kahal complex at 7 Arsenalna Street housed a shechita – a place for the ritual slaughter of poultry. The shochet, a specially trained slaughterer with religious authorisation, was allowed only one precise cut: the slightest mistake made the bird treif, unfit for a kosher kitchen. After slaughter the bird was inspected, and the meat was soaked and salted to draw out the blood. Only then did it go to the butcher’s stalls, taverns and the Shabbat table.
This plot is connected with the family of the founder of the Golden Rose: in 1601 Nachman Izakowicz bought it and built a community house with a hospital here, and behind it a mikveh. The shechita moved here only in 1912, when the Kahal House at today’s 27 Ivana Fedorova Street was demolished. Former small bathhouses were converted for it.
Neighbours complained about noise, poor sanitation and an entrance about 70 centimetres wide, and the magistrate even withdrew the permit. But the shechita kept working: without it the city’s kosher kitchen would simply have come to a halt. After the war its small building was demolished. The kahal house and the mikveh survive – a rare testimony to the everyday life of Lviv’s Jewish community.