Yoineh Meir had more compassion than God

Isaac Bashevis Singer said that he was a vegetarian for the health of the chickens. In his short story "The Slaughterer" (published in The New Yorker on November, 25, 1967 and collected in one of The Library of America's volumes of Singer's short stories, 2004), the man passed over for the post of Kolomir's rabbi was, "so that he wouldn't be left without a source of earnings," appointed its ritual slaughterer.

When Yoineh Meir heard of this, he turned even paler than usual. He protested that slaughtering was not for him...The Trisk rabbi...wrote a letter to Yoineh Meir saying that man may not be more compassionate than the Almighty, the Source of all compassion....
    After the rabbi's letter, Yoineh Meir gave in....
    Barely three months had passed...but the time seemed to stretch endlessly. He felt as though he were immersed in blood and lymph. His ears were beset by the squawking of hens, the crowing of roosters, the gobbling of geese, the lowing of oxen, the mooing and bleating of calves and goats; wings fluttered, claws tapped on the floor. The bodies refused to know any justification or excuse—every body resisted in its own fashion, and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath.
    And Yoineh Meir's own mind raged with questions. Verily, in order to create the world, the Infinite One had had to shrink His light; there could be no free choice without pain. But since the beasts were not endowed with free choice, why should they have to suffer? Yoineh Meir watched, trembling, as the butchers chopped the cows with their axes and skinned them before they had heaved their last breath. The women plucked the feathers from the chickens while they were still alive....
    Yoineh Meir wanted to escape from the material world, but the material world pursued him. The smell of the slaughterhouse would not leave his nostrils....
    Yoineh Meir returned to his bed. All his life he had slept on a feather bed, under a feather quilt, resting his head on a pillow; now he was suddenly aware that he was lying on feathers and down plucked from fowl....
    Elul is the month of repentence...when man takes an accounting of his soul.
    But to a slaughterer Elul is quite another matter. A great many beasts are slaughtered for the New Year...everybody offers a sacrificial fowl...Each holiday brings its own slaughter. Millions of fowl and cattle now alive were doomed to be killed.
    Yoineh Meir no longer slept at night. If he dozed off, he was immediately beset by nightmares. Cows assumed human shape...Yoineh Meir would be slaughtering a calf, but it would turn into a girl. Her neck throbbed, and she pleaded to be saved. She ran to the study house and spattered the courtyard with her blood....
    In one of the nightmares, he heard a human voice come from a slaughtered goat....
    Since Yoineh Meir had begun to slaughter, his thoughts were obsessed with living creatures....    An unfamiliar love welled up in Yoineh Meir for all that crawls and flies, breeds and swarms....
    Yoineh Meir rocked back and forth in the dark. The rabbi may be right. Man cannot and must not have more compassion than the Master of the universe. Yet he, Yoineh Meir, was sick with pity. How could one pray for life for the coming year, or for a favorable writ in Heaven, when one was robbing others of the breath of life?....
    A week before the New Year, there was a rush of slaughtering. All day long, Yoineh Meir stood near the pit, slaughtering hens, rooster, geese, ducks. Women pushed, argued, tried to get to the slaughterer first. Others joked, laughed, bantered. Feathers flew, the yard was full of quacking, gabbling, the screaming of roosters. Now and then a fowl cried out like a human being....
    He stood there until sundown, and the pit became filled with blood....
    Yoineh Meir thought that he would be unable to sleep that night....
    Yoineh Meir shuddered and woke up...He put on his robe and went out....
    ..."Well, and what if the rabbi said so?" he spoke to himself. "And even if God Almighty had commanded, what of that? I'll do without rewards in the world to come!...." Yoineh Meir cried. "I have more compassion than God Almighty—more, more! He is a cruel God...." Yoineh Meir laughed, but tears ran down his cheeks in scalding drops....
    He...began to walk toward the river....
    He had opened a door to his brain, and madness flowed in, flooding everything....

For two days the butchers searched for him, but they did not find him. Then Zeinvel, who owned the watermill, arrived in town with the news that Yoineh Meir's body had turned up in the river by the dam....
    Because it was the holiday season and there was danger that Kolomir might remain without meat, the community hastily dispatched two messengers to bring a new slaughterer.[pp. 546-557]

For the health of the chickens, Yoineh Meir gave up more than Isaac Bashevis Singer did. But, with a new slaughterer quickly appointed, the chickens didn't derive any benefit, any more than factory-farmed animals do when you or I or the next individual becomes a vegan for ethical or health reasons. There'll still be KFC's, there'll still be McDonalds, there'll still be Chik-fil-A's.
    Could this be God's punishment for the few Yoineh Meirs of the world?