The Slaughter on Franklin Street--’It’s Not a Big Deal’

It was the bleating of the lambs that alerted Sabrina Ford to the slaughter next door.

“It sounded like weird babies crying,” recalled Ford, manager of an apartment house on Franklin Street in Santa Monica. “Then there was banging, banging, loud banging. I thought, ‘Well, that’s the neighborhood,’ and then I went outside and the neighbor was freaking out.”

After police had been called to the the scene Tuesday night--a subterranean parking garage--they found a dozen dead chickens, two freshly slaughtered lambs and the remains of a third.

The neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, did not like it.

“I’m an animal lover and the whole thing makes me nauseous,” she said.

Officers were told that the slaughter was a celebration of the end of construction of the apartment building, a custom that Jewish immigrants brought with them from Iran.

But the neighbor said that she is Jewish and that she had never heard of such a thing. “It very well could be,” she said, “but how’d you like to live next door to it?”

The ceremonial slaying of the sheep and chickens was apparently conducted in the presence of a rabbi and ritually trained slaughterer “so it’s not a big deal,” said Police Sgt. Harry Kutzbach.

Nevertheless, animal control workers seized the sheep remains.

“They’re not supposed to be slaughtering anything within the city unless it’s a regular slaughterhouse,” said John Sanchez, Santa Monica’s supervisor of animal control. “You’re supposed to have a license.”

The celebrants were allowed to keep the chickens and the meat that already had been cut up. They told the police that they intended to distribute it to the poor.

Rabbi David Shofet, spiritual leader of the Nessah Educational and Cultural Center, an Iranian synagogue across the street from the new apartment house, said he had no knowledge of the incident. But he said he was familiar with the tradition, which Iranian Jews brought with them from their predominantly Muslim homeland.

“This is not explicitly written in a religious code,” he said, “but it’s a popular custom. The point is that when you go into a new house you are happy and thankful, and you want other people to share this. What do you do? You give charity, you give food, you give a meal, and the easiest way is to slaughter a lamb and distribute the meat among the needy.”

Also, he said, some people believe that slaughtering an animal may avert ill fortune.

“It (the animal) goes to the domain of death, and you stay in life,” he said.

A person who answered the phone at the number listed on the building permit said the owner was out of the country.

Responding to an increase in animal killings linked with the cult of Santeria, Los Angeles recently banned private slaughtering.

There was no apparent violation of Santa Monica law, said Jerry Gordon, head of the criminal division in the city attorney’s office.

The Los Angeles County Health Services Department also had no objection to the slaughter on Franklin Street, which filled the basement drain with so much blood that it backed up into the parking lot, police said.

As long as the blood is cleaned up, it presents no problem “from a sanitation point of view,” said Tom Barnett, environmental health services manager for the western portion of the county.

Between 28,000 and 30,000 Iranian Jews live in Southern California, most of whom arrived since the 1979 revolution, said Dr. Solomon Aghaie, president of the Iranian Jewish Federation.

Although Shofet said the practice was relatively common, Aghaie said he was surprised to hear of it in America.

“They were doing that many years ago in Iran, but I don’t know that they’re doing it here,” he said. “This is a very old-fashioned custom.”