Forget Sarah Silverman, Shlep this guy to your Bubbie
(Hat tip to piratejenny)
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“And You Will Incur Guilt…”
From this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tetzei:
You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is needy and urgently depends on it, else he will cry to the Lord against you and you will incur guilt. (Deuteronomy 24:14-15)
In what can only described as irony of Biblical proportions, we read these verses on the same week that the Iowa attorney general brought a myriad of criminal charges against the owners and managers of Agriprocessors:
The complaint charges that the plant employed workers under the legal age of 18, including seven who were under 16, from Sept. 9, 2007, to May 12. Some workers, including some younger than 16, worked on machinery prohibited for employees under 18, including “conveyor belts, meat grinders, circular saws, power washers and power shears,” said an affidavit filed with the complaint.
…The complaint also charges that under-age workers were not paid for all the overtime they worked and were forced to work before 7 a.m. and after 7 p.m., a violation of child labor laws. Agriprocessors managers “participated in efforts to conceal children when federal and state labor department officials inspected the plant,” the complaint says.
The silver lining? There is growing evidence that the Jewish world - across denominational lines - is ready to respond to the shandeh that is Agriprocessors. On Wednesday, the Orthodox Union threatened to withdraw kosher certification from the company unless Agriprocessors replaced its management and CEO. For their part, the good folks at Hekhsher Tzedek added their “Amen”:
The pressure from the Orthodox Union added to criticism of Agriprocessors from a movement led by Conservative Jews that is seeking to create an additional seal for kosher food to show it was produced according to ethical standards for wages and worker safety. The movement, Hekhsher Tzedek, praised the Orthodox Union’s “no-nonsense action,” saying it showed that the concept of ethical standards in kosher food “transcends denominational boundaries.”
A few weeks ago, I was asked by a congregant how traditional Jews could justify being so scrupulous about their production of kosher meat while being so unscrupulous in their flauting of the Torah’s clear laws against worker abuse. I’m not sure I had such a good answer, but it is gratifying that Jewish leaders are now publicly asking the same questions and demanding a response.
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Tyra Banks: Friend of the Working Man
In a previous blog post I discussed the Congress Hotel strike in Chicago, America’s longest running labor strike at five years and counting. The saga unfolds: it turns out that none other that “America’s Next Top Model” was prepared to cross the picket line when they announced they would be holding auditions at the Congress this Sunday.
In response, UNITE HERE, along with the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and other community groups organized a massive call-in campaign to Cover Girl (a major sponsor of ANTM). And guess what?
The waters parted! Today we learned that ANTM was pulling out of the Congress. Apparently Cover Girl Marketing Director Vince Hudson’s voice mail and e-mail inboxes were filled within minutes. Auditions will now be held at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, a union hotel.
I guess sometimes the good guys really do win. Kudos to ANTM for doing the right thing. And let’s hear it for the power of organizing…
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Honor Labor on Labor Day
You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land.
(Deuteronomy 24:14)
Want to do something meaningful this Labor Day? Consider supporting the The Employee Free Choice Act: bipartisan legislation that promotes the right to join a union as a fundamental freedom, protecting employees’ rights to form unions without interference from management.
Specifically, the legislation seeks to:
- Establish of stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations;
- Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
- Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.
The EFCA came close to passing last year, but in the end it was kiboshed by procedural stonewalling in the Senate. With a new Senate coming in next year, however, there is renewed hope for our country’s working people. This article from Business Week explains; learn more about the legislation from the Change to Win website; voice your support by signing on to a petition sponsored by the Jewish Labor Committee.
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And… Rubashkins’ is back in the news…
The Forward reports on more labor abuses, this time in their Brooklyn, NY warehouse.
Agriprocessors is engaged in legal battles against the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which the workers voted to join in 2005. Agriprocessors has refused their unionization and has appealed to every court they can–now they are appealing to the highest court in the land, the US Supreme Court. Agriprocessors’ lawyers claim the 2005 vote is defunct because 17 of the 21 workers who voted for unionization were undocumented workers–If undocumented workers aren’t legally allowed to work, how can they be legally allowed to join a union? Or so goes the logic of Agriprocessors’ team of lawyers. Problem with that argument is that in 1984, the US Supreme Court protected undocumented workers under the National Labor Relations Act–leading legal experts to presume the court will not hear the case.
According to the Forward report, it is presumed that the appeal to the Supreme Court is a stalling tactic to avoid enacting the will of their workers to unionize and protect their wages and rights.
Will this debacle ever end?
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The Forward judges Rubashkins’ character
Following Rabbi Herzfeld’s NYTimes op-ed last week, The Forward reported on the lack of problems found by a delegation of Orthodox rabbis that toured the plant. Perhaps prompted by speculation that the newspaper was “paid off” by Agriprocessors to run that story, or perhaps motivated by concern over the issue, the Forward published an editorial criticizing the findings of the delegation on the basis that they only spent a total of three hours at the plant, and comparing the previous history of repeated violations by the Rubashkin family’s various business ventures to the discussion of the “mu’ad” or repeat offender, in the Talmud:
Well, we are reminded, meatpacking is a notoriously messy business. That’s true. What’s different about Agriprocessors is the sheer scope and scale of it all. The immigration raid last May, mounted by 16 different federal, state and local government agencies, was described by authorities as the largest such raid ever mounted against one firm. The child labor charges reported this month are described by officials and experts as unusual if not unique in scale for a single firm. And so it goes, in one category after another.
In characterizing the Rubashkin family’s history of suspect business dealings, the Forward both plays into company’s defensive stance as the victim of anti-Semitism, and makes an important point about the untrustworthy history of Sholom Rubashkin and his family. The litany of violations, suspect actions, fines and jail sentences indicates that the time for affording them “the benefit of the doubt” has passed.
Even if the Rubashkins were to reject the higher standars of “eco-kashrut” proposed by the Conservative movement’s developing Hechsher Tzedek certification, they have also disobeyed federal and state laws regarding labor, food safety, immigration and other areas. This disrespect for the rule of the law should be tremendously troubling for any potential consumers of Agriprocessors meat and the Jewish community as a whole.
The editorial argues that since they have broken laws, Agriprocessors cannot be trusted to obey the laws of Kashrut. However, even if a truly independent body, through comprehensive review, can show that the laws of Kashrut are not being violated at the Postville plant, they should not be let off the hook. There must be some system of review or recourse within Kashrut certification to account for the illegal and unethical practices of Rubashkin’s. The American Jewish community should not let Halacha stand above or in opposition to American law.
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On the Federal Minimum Wage
The many economic challenges confronting working men and women in the U.S. includes that of the Federal Minimum Wage. More than one might imagine. If you look a bit, you can find discussion of the Minimum Wage in recent headlines {hint: go to http://news.google.com and type in “minimum wage” and leave in the quotes.} But the struggle for an increased Minimum Wage is not new, and is not new to the organized Jewish community.
A decade ago, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella agency that currently has 14 national affiliated organizations and 125 local Jewish community relations councils, adopted a resolution supporting proposed legislation raising the Minimum Wage, at the JCPA’s annual convention, or Plenum. [Disclosure: the Jewish Labor Committee, where I work, was quite involved in securing passage of this resolution.]
In February 1998, according to the resolution, adoption of this legislation “would restore buying power to minimum wage workers who have seen their purchasing power fall 30 percent in the last 30 years.” Further, the JCPA said that it supported “and will advocate for the concept of linking the minimum wage to the annual Consumer Price Index to address the ongoing need to sustain a flexible, realistic minimum wage level, reflective of changing economic conditions.” The entire resolution is worth examining.
Yesterday - that is, July 24th – the second of three raises in the Federal Minimum Wage took place. The JCPA issued a statement calling it “a much-needed adjustment to ensure fair compensation and opportunity for employees across the country.” Again, the JCPA’s statement is worth reading.
Some might be surprised to learn that the trade union movement has been centrally involved in the struggle to increase the Federal Minimum Wage. Surprising, perhaps, because most union jobs pay well above the minimum wage. But Bruce Raynor, President of UNITE HERE - the union formed by the merger of UNITE {the descendant of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the Textile Workers Union of America and the International ladies’ Garment Workers Union} and HERE {the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union} – clarifies the issue in a succinct article appearing yesterday in The Huffington Post, “The Meaning of Increasing the Minimum Wage.”
Raynor notes that the “increased minimum wage means a pay raise for those who need it most: the working poor, disproportionately women and minorities. Just as important, it will also put money into local economies, especially timely at the start of a recession.” He goes on: “This small bit of good news is easily lost in the avalanche of reports of an economy falling into recession, unemployment climbing, the bursting of the housing bubble, record levels of housing foreclosures, rising oil prices, and inequality at levels not seen since the robber barons.”
Need I say that Raynor’s article is also worth reading, especially alongside the two JCPA statements?
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In more Rubashkin news…
The New York Times has issued a searing (ha! pun not-so-much intended) editorial on the Postville affair, titled, “The Shame of Postville, Iowa”
In my opinion, skip the editorial and go straight to the source, an eye-witness essay of the handling of the workers. It is pretty disgusting and it’s too early in the morning to share any reactions; it’s really awful enough to stand on its own, no reflection necessary. Read for yourself at your own risk of queasiness and rage.
inside the essay you’ll find joyful reports, such as:
Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10. They appeared to be uniformly no more than 5 ft. tall, mostly illiterate Guatemalan peasants with Mayan last names, some being relatives (various Tajtaj, Xicay, Sajché, Sologüí…), some in tears; others with faces of worry, fear, and embarrassment. They all spoke Spanish, a few rather laboriously. It dawned on me that, aside from their Guatemalan or Mexican nationality, which was imposed on their people after Independence, they too were Native Americans, in shackles
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NYT video from Agri Worker Court Translator
On a prior post this week, commenter balabusta linked us to a video from the NYT that I’m sorry to say I had missed. The video is disheartening in that it reveals quite a bit that generally has been missing from the whole Agri commentary on the Jewish side of the question. It’s not only our outrage at the workers being treated unfairly by Agri at this point (not to mention being abused, as is clear from the variety of investigations) but the very fact that the racial component is being ignored, but even more clearly that the illegal immigrants are actually being railroaded into pleading guilty for crimes which are almost certainly Agri’s.
While everyone following this story along with us here at Jewschool from the beginning, now years ago, can see that we nearly qualify at apoplectic at the combination of injustice and chillul hashem that’s being done, listening to the words of this translator, who in all his years has not been moved to speak out -until now- makes me sad and angry all over again.
It’s too early for the boycott to be called off. The workers are being charged with social security fraud and aggravated identity theft, the court is using the greater charge to browbeat the workers into pleading guilty for the lesser charge. If they refuse to plead guilty, they are told, instead of five months in prison and then deportation (forever, with no chance to return legally) they will have 6-8months in prison, with the possibility of two years more if they lose. Most of them are the sole economic support for their families and thus are choosing to plead guilty, despite the fact that many of them - according to the translator- clearly have no idea what a social security number is or what it’s used for (and are apparently ashamed of looking ignorant about it, most cannot read or write, and when asked what the number is say they don’t know, the factory people put it there.
In other words, of the crimes of social security fraud and aggravatedidentity theft, it is Agri who should be on trial, not the workers. If Agri wants their boycott lifted, some signs of tshuvah are in order. Confession (to God and to the victim(s), Apology, Restitution and Failure to Repeat the offense when given another chance. In order for us to even think about taking them seriously, they need to admit publicly that it is they, Agri, who are behind these offenses and not allow people who are innocent of these crimes to be tried and deported for them. The workers may be guilty of illegally entering the country, but they are almost certainly not guilty of what they are being accused. There are no signs of tshuvah yet from Rubashkin. Thus we should not be revoking the boycott.
I can’t even begin to say how disgusted I remain with this whole episode, how much harm the American Jewish community’s consumption of excess amounts of meat has done to other people, and that Agri will allow their workers to take the fall for them… well, it’s despicable.
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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.
More »
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Texans in Rubashkin’s Postville
Reading the news on JTA, I came across this story.
In an effort to restore lagging production at its plant in Postville, Iowa, the country’s largest kosher meat producer has been hiring workers from homeless shelters in Texas to replace employees detained in a massive federal immigration raid last month.
Ok, this sounds decent. They’re helping people find employment, moving them to a town with housing. At first glance, this could be a positive step in restoring Rubashkin’s reputation.
But…
Several officials in Postville say the new arrivals have created problems for the town.
Postville Police Chief Michael Halse told JTA that his officers had arrested four plant workers for disorderly conduct this week.
Father Paul Ouderkirk, leader of the local Catholic church, which has played a lead role in helping former workers and their families after last month’s raid, said a mentally challenged woman from Texas had come to his church looking for help with prescription medications.
And in an interview Friday with Postville’s local radio station, Diana Morris said she spent three days on a bus from Amarillo only to discover she was expected to live with 10 men in a four-bedroom house that had no electricity or hot water.
“Amarillo’s homeless problem has become Postville’s homeless problem,” Jeff Abbas, who runs the KPVL radio station, told JTA.
Um… crap. And…
In her interview with Abbas, Morris described how she was recruited from Amarillo with about 15 others and given a Greyhound bus ticket and $15 dollars to pay for food during the 1,000-mile journey. She said she was promised 30 days of free housing as well as a $100 bonus upon arrival.
What made the offer so attractive, Morris said, was the $10 per hour that Agriprocessors is now offering. “Everything down there is about $6 an hour being paid, and that’s the minimum wage,” she said of Texas.
That’s not a lot of money for 1,000 miles of travel. A quick check on Greyhound shows that the trip from Amarillo to Waterloo, IA takes 1 day, 1 hour, and 55 minutes (and then another 77 miles to Postville). In other words, a couple coffees, sodas, and a bag of chips for 28ish hours. Nutritious!
It’s great to hear that Rubashkins will be paying their employees a better wage than before, but the living conditions are unacceptable. And, if you read the full article, you’ll see that the people are being shipped to Iowa and then being screened for hiring. Why not screen them in Texas first? Why are they using two intermediary agencies (a recruiting firm in Texas and a staffing firm in Iowa)? Couldn’t the recruiting and screening be done by the same firm in Texas, before these people are moved 1,000 miles?
Do we think Agriprocessors is actually going to make good on its promise to improve working conditions? 150 replacement staff were removed by their staffing firm a couple weeks after the initial raid. Within days of starting work, a group of Native Americans who had been brought in to staff the factory left, saying conditions were worse than expected. Now these Texans… were they recruited because word of the scandal hadn’t spread to them? Will they be able to leave if the conditions still haven’t improved?
[Full article on JTA.]
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Shande on Michigan Ave.
So happy to be joining the J-School gang. I’ll be bloggin’ from the wide open spaces of the great Midwest, doing my part to help report on Jewish doings beyond the Upper West Side.
Speaking of which, I spent my afternoon yesterday with 1,000 other demonstrators in front of the Congress Park Hotel on Chicago’s Michigan Ave. - the site of the longest ongoing labor strike in the country. Marking the fifth anniversary of the strike, it was certainly the largest labor demonstration this city has seen in some time.
Some shameful stats: Congress housekeepers currently make $8.83 per hour and are not scheduled to get a raise until 2010. If a housekeeper was “lucky” enough to to work full-time at that wage, he or she would make less than the federal poverty level for a family of three. (By contrast, the standard union wage for a Chicago housekeeper is $13.90 an hour.) Workers also have no access to affordable health insurance benefits and there have been repeated complaints about unsafe and unsanitary working conditions.
It is with no small shame that I add that the Congress is Jewish-owned and operated. (It’s owner, Albert Nasser Shayo is a businessman who lives in Argentina; Shayo’s representative/manager is Shlomo Nahmias, who resides in the hotel with his family.) The Jewish-owned nature of the Congress is palpable and obvious as there are mezuzzot on every room inside the hotel.
I am proud to report, however, that the Jewish presence at the demonstration yesterday was also palpable and obvious. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs joined the over 1,000 demonstrators who marched in a circle around the hotel over the course of the day. During the program, the crowd heard from a number of labor representatives, local politicians and hotel workers. A bunch of us rabbis (above) also took the stage to pledge the Jewish community’s support of the strike, during which we repeatedly led the crowd in a chant of “What a Shande!” (This and “Si, Se Puerde!” were the two prominent foreign-language chants of the afternoon).
Though Congress workers have been walking the line at the hotel literally every day for the last five years there is, sadly, no end in sight. But as yesterday’s demonstration proved, this effort is mobilizing an increasingly diverse Chicago labor community.
And so the struggle continues. Check out yesterday’s Chicago Trib piece for more on the 5th anniversary doings…
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Sue-sy Sue, I love you….
JTA breaking news: The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to sue employers for retaliating against employees bringing bias complaints. Lots of Jewish organizations signed on as friends for this one.
It’s a pretty important ruling, but I wonder how this works together with the inability to bring suit for employment discrimination after 180 days (e.g. you discover after five years, that you, a woman, make less than any of your male co-workers…but can’t sue because your first paycheck is more than 180 days into the past). Just curious, anyone find this kinda odd?
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Conservative Law Committee Passes Living Wage Teshuvah
Mazal tov to Rabbi Jill Jacobs!! The Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) today passed Rabbi Jacobs’ teshuvah outlining the responsibilties of Jewish employers toward their employees. Check out our friends over at Jspot for a summary of the teshuvah’s conclusions; we’ll post a link to the full text once it’s available. This teshuvah has been several years in the making– yashar koach!
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Blogging the Omer Says 36 & 37; Sick of Rubashkin? “Unicorn” chaser
Week Six, Day One
Chesed of Yesod
Week Six, Day Two
Gevurah of Yesod
So first, before you get the chaser, I want to direct you to the JLC site where there is a statement regarding the current mess:
The JLC has also learned that Agriprocessors is actively waging a campaign of intimidation and harassment against workers who have expressed an interest in exercising their legal right to union representation.
In this atmosphere, it is clear that the recent ICE raid at Agriprocessors, though apparently legal, only buttresses the conviction shared by many undocumented workers that our government is not only indifferent to worker abuse, but works in collusion with management to penalize workers who challenge it…
More »
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Blogging the Omer Days 34 & 35: an update and more
Week Five, Day Six
Yesod of Hod
Week Five, Day Seven
Malchut of Hod
First I want to repost this comment by Rabbi Morris Allen (one of the spearheads of the Hekhsher Tzedek, you can read his blog about it here)from the comments section of my last post on the Rubashkin travesty, so that those who aren’t necessarily following the comments can see it:
… Th[e] statement [of the Conservative Movement on asking people to evaluate whether they should continue to purchase Rubashkin's meat] came out from the leadership of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue. Hekhsher Tzedek remains very committed to affixing a hekhsher on products certifying that both ritual and ethical standards have been met in the production of kosher food. On Tuesday we will be reviewing our objective and verifiable standards which have been produced for us by KLD analytics. When these are in place, we will then have the opportunity to clearly begin identifying producers and products that meet our standards. While it is easy to condemn the “mild†nature of this statement, the Conservative movement is alone in the Jewish community publicly calling for the avoidance of products that might be produced in Jewishly unethical ways. I hope that informed Jews begin to demand that a Hekhsher Tzedek appear on the products we are to consume, and that Jews regardless of organizational or theological orientation wholeheartedly support the one effort that has been working tirelessly to address these issues in a thorough and thoughtful fashion. For additional information please go to rabbimorrisallen2.blogspot.com Shabbat shalom
I want to offer kudos to those working on the problem, both in general (hekhsher tzedek) and in specific (the leaders of the Conservative Movement in offering this statement). As one commenter has pointed out, this is the only movement from which we are hearing anything, however substantial: the Reconstructionists have been silent, presumably for the same reason offered by the Reform (They don’t encourage their followers to keep kashrut). The Orthodox have also been -except for notable individuals- silent as well, or worse (it is, after all, Orthodox institutions offering hasgachah to Rubashkin to start with).
And I want to say that I continue to have hopes that the Conservative Movement will move itself forward and do great things. It is, nonetheless, difficult for me to see how slowly things are proceeding. In some ways, this parallels the brouhaha of not very long ago, in which the Conservative movement dragged itself through a painful process of dealing with homosexuality, More »
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Conservative Rubashkin update
My bad, the Conservative movement has come out with a new statement that, um, well, I’m not sure exactly what it suggests: I think it says that I might perhaps maybe consider taking into account the halachot on obligations to workers, treatment of other human beings, dina d’malchuta dina and the like and consider maybe perhaps possibly not buying Rubashkin’s. If I want to.
In a joint statement released Thursday evening, the movement’s Rabbinical Association and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism declared themselves “shocked and appalled†at working conditions at AgriProcessors, which is under federal investigation for employing illegal aliens. The groups asked their members “to evaluate whether it is appropriate to consume Rubashkin products until this situation is addressed.â€
Well, I am being a little harsh.
I had such high hopes for Hekhsher Tzedek, and even though we haven’t really seen much on that happen in the last year and a half I still do. I just really want to see the Conservative movement stand up and do something to show their seriousness. Of course, specific rabbis are absolutely taking stands on this, including advising their congregants not to buy Rubashkin’s brands and not allowing it in their synagogues. And this is true for both Conservative and Orthodox rabbis.
So maybe the truth is that the boycott will have to be, for the institutions, puk chazei; go out and see - that the movement will have to be grassroots, led by local leaders who really deserve the name by showing their communities what it means to take a serious moral stand on something. It may simply be that institutions aren’t really set up to make moral stands.
So perhaps it’s time for the leaders of movements simply to follow. So I’m going to echo Josh Frankel’s excellent suggestions (Please read for yourself) and repeat this part myself: don’t buy from Rubashkin brands until they straighten up their act. I want to see them put standards in place to protect their workers: find a way to make legal all those people whom they’ve brought in illegally, since they deliberately sought out illegal workers so that they could be treated with less care and paid less; unionize their entire operation - no arguments; fire the abusers and replace them with people who receive training in the ethical halachot and to understand that if it isn’t all followed the meat is no good - and this should absolutely include the mashgichim.
When they’ve done tshuvah (repented) by apologizing to both their consumers and their employees, made reparation to their employees, and fixed the problems that led to the abuse in the first place, then we should forgive them and go back to buying from them. But not until then.
Here is the full text of the Conservative movement’s statement: More »
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Blogging the Omer Days 31 & 32: Shame on You!
Week Five, Day Three
Tiferet of Hod
Week Five, Day Four
Netzach of Hod
So much for Hekhsher Tzedek. Apparently politics wins out over justice.
In a not very surprising move, the Conservative Movement has decided not to boycott Rubashkin.
Calls this week by activist rabbis for a limited boycott have been muted out of concern that a boycott could be actionable and might discourage Jews from keeping kosher because kosher meat would be harder to access.
Actionable? Are you kidding? Seriously, what would be pure enough to get something started? Let’s see, we have major violations of Dina d’malchuta dina, loads of other, amazingly varied halachic violations that have now gone on for years - and in theory have actually spurred the Conservative movement to the unusual action of attempting to actually do something (follow-through apparently being a little slow, ahem). The moral and halachic violations range from abuse of workers’ labor to sexual abuse; apparently there are allegations of the drug methamphetamine being produced at the site, and that rabbinic supervisors, specifically have abused plant workers. Not to mention child labor violations, identity theft, illegal weapons sales, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
So, what would be enough to get the Jewish world to move? Can anyone possibly believe that they are totally innocent? That poor old Rubashkin’s is being railroaded? I mean, reality check: When is the Jewish community going to get off its collective Butt?
If for no other reason, we should be boycotting because this will make people look at us and say, if that’s what Jews do, I want no part of it. Note to the Conservative movement: This includes your followers whom you are trying so valiantly to get to keep kosher. IMO, more people will quit keeping kosher over your spinelessness than over the lack of available kosher meat. The folks who keep kosher now aren’t going to stop for this reason. Not to mention that all those young folks you’re trying to attract: they’re leaving because they look and see that something is seriously wrong here. As a Jew, I am embarrassed and ashamed about the lack of response from all the movements, but CJ, your Hekhsher Tzedek plans give you a special responsibility. Live up to it. Stand up for something, already.
And, Hey, Orthodoxy, you have a chance here to outmoral the left: get up and do something, will you? Somebody? Anybody? Before all the holiness drains out of the world?
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