Holey Cow!

Failed Messiah and Gawker report on the latest (what? Not over yet?) scandal in the kashrut world. After the last round of scandals, Agriprocessors hired a PR firm - because as we all know, Public Relations is far preferable to tshuvah when a corporation sins- to restore its image. The firm, 5WPR, who has also represented the charming so-called "pro-Israel" pastor, John Hagee, (who hates homosexuals and Muslims and has had to apologize for sliming Catholics, oh, yeah and also blamed Jews for the death of Jesus, called liberal Jews "poisoned" and "spiritually blind," and been relatively unconcerned that he hopes for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran even though he believes it will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel) apparently has engaged in some antics of its own.

It seems that 5WPR has left multiple comments on several blogs, including JTA and Failed Messiah's, under a variety of aliases, and also posing as Rabbi Morris Allen of the Hekhsher Tzedek, as well as JVNA officer John Diamond and another frequent FailedMessiah commenter (all, as FM points out, federal crimes). The comments were designed to support Agri, bolster one another and discredit Hekhsher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement and Rabbi Allen. Failed Messiah posts screen shots of the comments - well worth looking at, if only for their utter ridiculousness.

Rebbe Smackdown

New York's supreme court ruled that two of the three main bodies of Chabad have the right to expel Congregation Lubavitch - the messianist faction- from the synagogue in the bottom of 770. Apparently this struggle has been going on for about 15 years (actually, this makes me feel much better - I hadn't known that there was much of anything going on opposed to the crazier factions of the movement, which, from all accounts now make up, at least half of Chabad) but the suit stems from when some member/s of the messianist group defaced a plaque that referred to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as "of blessed memory" because that's not what Congregation Lubavitch believed was the current state of said rebbe.

From JTA

New York State’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and Agudas Chassidei Chabad, two of Chabad’s three main bodies, giving them the right to eject Congregation Lubavitch Inc. from the synagogue located in the basement of 770 and 784-788 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The sites represent the worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch.

In that first case, the court ruled in favor of Chabad’s leadership, declaring in June 2006 that Merkos and Agudas are the rightful owners of the entire property. The current suit was brought by Merkos and Agudas in order to give them the authority to physically remove the opposing congregation, and its four gabbais, or trustees, from the premises.

but wait, there's more:
Apparently this is their fifteen minutes. Or something.

In Israel, apparently it's just gotten out that there may be problems with the beliefs of some Lubavitchers regarding their former (or not) rebbe. The Jerusalem Post reports that a former FSU immigrant who was not Jewish , but was eligible under the law of return, had become interested in converting and studied in a meshichist Jerusalem ChABAD yeshiva.

About two weeks ago, he appeared before a beit din (rabbinic court) for his conversion. He had nearly finished, when one of the rabbis asked him if he believed that the rebbe was the messiah. He answered yes, that that was what he had been taught, and the court refused to convert him.
The JPost says, "

... a source in the State Conversion Authority said that at least two leading religious Zionist rabbis ruled that messianic Chabad was beyond the pale of normative Jewish belief.

"They [messianic Chabad Hassidim] attribute to him supernatural powers years after he passed away. That is not Judaism. It's something else."

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar will be asked to decide this weighty theological question and in the process pass judgment on thousands of members of the messianic stream within Chabad Hassidism who believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, is the messiah.

This according to the article; I have heard an (unsubstantiated as of yet) rumour that, in fact, Rabbi Amar has ruled against the conversion applicant, and thus, essentially declared meshichist Lubavitch treif. I am curious as to what effect will this have on ChABAD: Is this a recognition that some beliefs are outside the pale, even if the holder of said beliefs has the outer appearance of Orthodox praxis? What effect will this have on the yeshivot that are still er, offering this perspective, either in Israel or the USA?

By the way, speaking of treif, Rubashkin (who is owned by the ChABAD Lubavitch Rubashkin family just to be on topic), has apparently had its teudat kashrut yanked by KAJ (HT to Failedmessiah)

One last note:
First, England's Jewish Chronicle notes that England's Lubavitch movement is in some serious economic trouble: apparently because of pouring an enormous amount of money into a new club for young Jews that they opened this year. Apparently nearly all the donations they received this year went into said club, "including 'almost all' of this year’s £750,000 yield," leaving them £1.5 million (that's 2,959,951 dollars American) in debt - and of course, they've had to close the club, in addition to leaving their teachers unpaid since April (although donors have now stepped in to pay the teachers' wages).

Chad Gadya

Liveblogging from the Hazon Food Conference (for more see Jewschool's posts from YehuditBrachah).



We all have a huge amount to say about the goats. I'm not sure that this was planned, but in some ways, this topic has nearly taken over the Hazon Food Conference. And I do not think that this is necessarily a bad thing. The questions that have arisen throughout the past years, regarding the ethics of eating meat - especially kosher meat produced in factory farms, slaughtered in places like Agriprocessors, where the heart of kashrut seems to have bled right out are questions which are just right for the people of this new Jewish sustainable food movement to address.

And while there is a lot going on at this conference, your intrepid livebloggers (YehuditBrachah, KungFu Jew and KRG) have set aside an entire post to talk about the shchita and the conversations surrounding it.

Thursday night, the first night of the conference, Nigel Savage of Hazon started out by explaining how it came about that it was decided to shecht a goat this year at the food conference. Last year during the conference, Nigel asked meat eaters if they would still eat meat if they had to participate in the death of the animal: some said yes, others: no; he then asked the veggies if they would eat meat if they were part of its slaughtering: again, some said no, but others, yes. From this arose the idea to try to humanely schecht a goat at the Hazon Food conference.
That is how Nigel introduced the first panel of the conference: a panel including a shochet, Rabbi Yehuda ben Chemhoun, Rabbi Seth Mandel of the Orthodox Union, who oversees all American slaughterhouses, the shepherd who raised the goats Aitan Mizrahi, the woman who continued to shepherd them when the shepherd separated them from their dams (he is a dairy farmer, and this is how female goats are kept giving milk) Rachel Gall, Dr. Shamu Sadeh of Adamah and Simon Feil.

Rubashkin's: will it never end?

The latest from the Forward: United Food and Commercial Workers are now entering the fray over Rubashkin's skeezy practices in their plants. As the Forward reported, "Activists with United Food and Commercial Workers stood outside kosher supermarkets and Trader Joe’s stores around the country last Wednesday, distributing fliers that purported to be a 'Kosher Food Safety Alert.' The fliers cited controversial reports — many of them published in the Forward — about food-safety issues at the Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse." They also made automated phone calls to households in Orthodox neighborhoods and placed full-page advertisements in Jewish newspapers.

Most of these will be violations that if you read Jewschool or Failed Messiah's excellent coverage, you will already know about - the bribery, the unsafe food handling practices, and of course the mistreatment of non-Jewish workers, prompting the Conservative Movement's creation (at least in theory) of the Hechsher Tzedek. I want to emphasize a citation from Failed Messiah's post on the topic which comes from the USDA's inspector:

There were also at least five instances in which AgriProcessors was cited for not taking the required measures to fend off Mad Cow disease. In one instance, an inspector says he asked for a suspicious cow to be taken off the line and later discovered that the cow had been slaughtered with the rest of the animals. The inspector says he informed someone at the company of the “very serious noncompliance that had occurred.”

I emphasize these words because, of course, Agriprocessor's response, published on its Web site and in Yeshiva World News, was simply to deny, deny deny. “Concerns about Mad Cow disease are simply wrong,” the letter said. “We have never had product from any suspect animals leave our plant.” they claim.

Astonishingly, according to KosherToday,a trade publication that has defended AgriProcessors, none of this has hurt Agriprocessor sales. In fact, they claim that to the contrary, “The net effect of the onslaught against Agri was that sales of its products in some stores have risen by as much as 30% and it has opened an unprecedented number of new accounts.”

AgriProcessors: When abusing people and animals isn't enough

What? Again? Can't these people get it together?
Believe it or not, AgriProcessors is in the news again.



According to the Forward, in March and September of 2006 the USDA sent the AgriProcessors plant manager a “Letter of Warning” reviewing a series of problems, including: receiving 250 non-compliance records from the United States Department of Agriculture during 2006, five of them for inadequate safeguards against Mad Cow disease, and at least 18 records for fecal matter in the food production area (Including one, on December 26, in which the inspector wrote that during multiple checks of 10 chickens “fecal contamination varied between 70 and 80%.” and another, similar, citation a day later).
Oh, yeah! MMM. Take that, all you folks who buy kosher "because it's healthier." Granted, IMO, this is not a place whose products I would be sanguine about calling kosher, as we've seen reported here on Jewschool several rounds of violations of actual kashrut, as well as violations of other halachic obligations, including the acceptable treatment of workers. See: צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה, Where’s the beef now? Kashrut update on Rubashkin’s, Another beef with kashrut in the news, and Kashrut Brouhaha Has Legs; just one month ago, Mobius added this gem to the treasury: Agriprocessors: Still trayfin’ it up,
and Failed Messiah continues to do a wonderful job documenting this unbelieveable, interminable scandal.

In case that all hasn't turned you veggie yet, just compare: the entire beef, poultry and egg industry had 34 recalls in 2006, AgriProcessors had two during the last eight months, both of them Class I, the highest risk level.

In case there's any doubt, I'd like to note that these items are not disconnected. As the Forward reports,

The documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been attempting to unionize the workers at the Postville plant. The documents all stem from incidents between January 1, 2006 and January 24, 2007. They are being released to the public by the UFCW at a press conference later today...
Jim Blau, assistant director of strategic resources at the United Food and Commercial Workers, said that workers at the plant tipped the union off to food safety problems. Blau said his organization, which represents close to 300,000 food production workers, was interested in dealing with the issues at AgriProcessors as a matter of protecting the industry.

“When you see things like this — it’s not good for the industry that there is a company that’s out there behaving like this,” Blau said.

Way back when, I spent some time working to organize workers in another industry. I want to emphasize that one of the reasons that it's so important to do so is because unions don't just protect the workers themselves. Unionized workers are able to report problems with lesser fear of reprisal. I myself know of several individuals who after whistle blowing, were protected by unions when their employer tried to fire them. It's not just a matter of some people you didn't really care about all that much who you'll never meet, and maybe who don't even speak your language.
That's pretty important according to Jewish law: they are to be protected, and paid honestly, and treated with respect. It's a Jewish obligation, and one which a kosher slaughterhouse ought to be obliged to meet before it can call itself in compliance with Jewish law. And let's not even review the problems of the slaughter itself, which fails to follow the law it claims to follow in order to make its ginormous profit off the wallets of Jews who are, essentially a captive audience (just try to find an independant shochet these days. I know of one, I'm sure there must be a few others - is there one in your city?).
But since self-interest is the cornerstone of progress, let's just say what's really going on: these folks have no qualms about doing whatever they want to increase profit. The limitations don't seem to be laws of kashrut directly pertaining to the meat itself, nor to the laws pertaining to the treatment of workers. Now it's apparent, they don't even care about the safety of the people eating the meat. It's in the best interest of the Jewish community to make sure that workers are safe and able to report on what's going on behind the scenes without threat of reprisal.
I don't know when the Tzedek Hechsher will be making its now long-promised appearance, but Baruch Hashem, it couldn't be too soon.
But don't worry, I'm sure this will all be brushed off as a plot by the liberal Jews or the anti-semites to harm Orthodoxy.

Whoa. I think steam is coming out of my eyeballs. Wait, I need to go have some sweet tea or something. Hold the burger, willya?

hattip to Arieh Lebowitz at the JLC
Cross-posted to Jewschool

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה*

The Forward reported yesterday that the Conservative movement is beginning the process of creating a new ethical certification system for kosher food. The ongoing shenanigans in some of the country’s largest slaughterhouses last year (and previously) prompted the movement to set up a special commission to investigate working conditions at the AgriProcessorsInc slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa (See previous posts: Where’s the beef now? Kashrut update on Rubashkin’s; Another beef with kashrut in the news; Kashrut Brouhaha Has Legs all from earlier this year). Starting with PETA’s allegations of improper slaughter, following with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation and rounding up with allegations of improper treatment of workers, such an investigation has been long overdue.

According to the Forward,

The five-person commission, formed by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, was created following an investigative report in the Forward, which detailed a series of allegations about the treatment of workers at the AgriProcessors plant in Postville, Iowa. Members of the Conservative panel, who visited the Iowa plant in August and September, recently issued a report stating that “there are significant issues of concern at the plant, including issues of health and safety.”

The goal of the committee is to establish a “tsedek hekhsher,” or a oversight that includes justice as a guideline, to ensure that kosher food producers “have met a set of standards that determine the social responsibility of kosher food producers, particularly in the area of workers rights.”

This is the first time that any Jewish denomination has attempted to use labor as a guideline for certifying food and is also the first time that the Conservative movement would be involved in overseeing food nationally.

According to the Rabbinical Assembly Press release,

The commission intends to continue working with these and other kosher food manufacturers to ensure adherence to Jewish values in the production of kosher food and will be conducting other site visits.

As the humane treatment of animals is at the heart of the laws surrounding kosher slaughter, further visits may include assessments of the conditions and treatment of animals. Additional study may also include an assessment of the effects of their products on the environment by these same and other food processors.

The idea of this committee most likely sprang from ongoing conversations within the movement which called into question exactly what it means to certify something as kosher. As we have seen, the laws of kashrut (just for one example) have recently been taken to be exclusively about following certain ritual requirements, and have had less attention paid to other related laws which guide us as Jews to have respect for animals and their comfort, let alone to paying attention to business practices of Jewish organizations and businesses. It has been profoundly disturbing to those of us who take halakhah seriously, to see that Jewish organizations and businesspeople have selectively focused on certain halakhot and felt it within their their rights to ignore others, and still to call themselves observant.

The question arises, specifically in regards to kashrut (Although I wait with bated breath to see this sort of oversight to be directed at other Jewish businesses as well), as to whether ignoring those other, not directly related halakhot, affects in any way the status of the food that is produced by those businesses. This is reflected in a quote from the Forward,

Reached this week, the head of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division, Rabbi Menachem Genack, applauded the Conservative movement for looking at labor issues, given the weight of Jewish law dedicated to the topic. Genack also said he had spoken with AgriProcessors and the United States Department of Agriculture about the working conditions at the plant. But Genack said that the Conservative movement should be careful not to blur the line between Jewish law regarding worker rights and Jewish law regarding the kosher standard of food.

“There are lots of social issues that are really important that could be subsumed under some sort of super certification,” Genack said. “But if we just move away from strict concerns about kashruth — if we talk about what they pay workers — these kinds of standards can be less than 100% clear.”

Another question arises as well: in internal discussions the question always comes up, especially for Conservative Jews: as we are trying to increase the number of people keeping kosher and taking Jewish law seriously, what do we do when one of these places comes up short? Will we drive people away from eating kosher food?

In many places in the USA, there are no other options for meat than that produced by this company. It is no small likelihood that many people will simply take a stamp of disapproval of a kosher slaughterhouse as license to stop keeping kosher. While many of our more liberal colleagues from other movements may simply shrug and say “so?” or suggest vegetarianism, this keeps Conservative rabbis up at night, as we are already engaged in a very difficult balancing act to try and cajole, persuade, encourage, even beg people to be serious about their Judaism, and that part of being serious means taking seriously commandments which aren’t always so easy, whether that means keeping kosher, or it means paying your workers a proper wage.

But I also want to say this: this is potentially what the best of the Conservative movement is about. Conservative Judaism at its best is taking halakhah seriously - not simply confining ourselves to outward observance of ritual mitzvot. This is what we should be doing: serious observance of halakhah, asking people to commit themselves to God’s service broadly; not simply to keep kosher, but also to keep laws about employment and tzaar baalei chaim. To remind people that there are no minor mitzvot - they all count.

It is surely a coincidence that this has been announced shortly after our very difficult proceedings on homosexuality, but in my opinion, there is a connection. Both these matters deeply emphasize the struggle and balancing act of God’s service. Halakhah is not always obvious, and how we keep all the mitzvot is not simple. I don’t suggest that accepting homosexuality in the way that the Dorff/Reisner/ Nevins tshuvah did is necessarily equivalent to the tzedek hekhsher, but I do think that the parallel is the amount of struggle to do good and to do right. I believe that this is step in the right direction for the Consevative movement, and I hope that this initiative will be successful; this is possibly one of the most important steps that the movement has taken in years. May it be the first of many, and may this path be one of increasing observance for Conservative Jews, just as in this season we increase light in the surrounding darkness of winter.

Forward story here

*Isaiah 1:27
Crossposted to Jewschool

Another beef with kashrut in the news

IN 2004, Agriprocessors (Rubashkin’s and Aaron’s), one of the largest of the kosher slaughtering facilities in the US, got caught skeezing like crazy: first, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency joined a civil suit against them for violating the Clean Water Act. Then they were caught engaging in inhumane killing practices -incidentally bringing to the fore the question of whether tzaar baalei chayim - suffering of animals- actually makes meat unkosher, or whether it merely means that we shouldn’t do business with the companies that engage in it because they’re violating other halachot. Uh, yeah. Then last month, The Forward reported that AgriProcessors was mistreating its largely Latino employees.

Wait, that’s just the wind-up. Now Agriprocessor -and several other major kosher meat suppliers- have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation according to The Jewish Week . Which other suppliers have also been served is not clear, but let’s be honest, is this shocking to those of us who keep kosher? While it is unclear whether Agriprocessors is the focus of the investigation or simply being consulted to help in the investigation of the market, don’t we hear all the time about kosher practices which are not quite cricket?

The current state of kashrut in this country is appalling. The stakes (steaks?) are about to be very high - for those who eat meat, the problems are racking up - of course there’s no reason to assume that Jewish business people are more moral than those of other religions - but they should be. As a traditional Jew myself, I find it enormously painful to have to revisit over and over again the open evidence of the startling lack of ethical behavior in the Jewish community. And although I can’t say this makes it worse, but it is at least a bit niggling (it would be just as bad to cheat anyone. It is not acceptable to rip off non-Jews!), this particular nastiness can’t even be attributed by the somewhat insular communities that occasionally say this sort of thing as, well, it’s only forbidden to cheat other Jews- well, this is other Jews who are being cheated.

I could console myself with my dairy kitchen, but I have to say that it’s a very small consolation for me. Where is the mussar (traditional ethics) movement for our day? I do not want to hear a single person saying that they won’t condemn these aveirot (sins) because if they tell people that the meat isn’t kosher, people who now keep kosher might start buying non-kosher meat. Let them eat seitan!

At least, where are our leaders who should be publicly condemning these practices instead of sweeping them under the rug in the hope that no one will notice? The Jewish community is now mired in the practices of don’t let the non-Jews know… guess what? - they know. It won’t go away if we ignore it. It is not an application of avoiding chillul hashem (desecration of God’s name) to pretend that everything is okay.

Crossposted to Jewschool