Magen Tzedek

Maximizing Animal Welfare in Kosher Slaughter

2011-04-29T11:28:00.003-05:00

Opinion
By Temple Grandin
Published April 27, 2011

There are legislative attempts around the world to require stunning of animals prior to religious slaughter. I do not get involved in the politics of this issue, but the following discussion may help clarify where there are problem areas.

Over the past 30 years I have worked closely with the kosher industry to ensure that religious slaughter is performed in as humane a manner as possible. The issue of stunning, in my view, is not the most important issue when it comes to ensuring the welfare of animals before they are slaughtered. But it is critical to recognize that performing kosher slaughter with an acceptable level of welfare does require more attention to the procedure’s details than slaughter in which the animal is stunned.

There are two animal welfare issues when slaughter is performed without stunning. They are the method used to restrain the animal and the throat cut itself.

These issues are particularly relevant when it comes to cattle. Poultry can be slaughtered easily with a sharp knife, and there is no need for stunning. Sheep are smaller than cattle and easier to restrain and kill quickly. A lamb that is slaughtered with a sharp knife out on the farm, even without stunning, probably has better welfare than a lamb that has to ride on a truck to a slaughter plant. Due to anatomical differences in the blood vessels in the neck, cattle take twice as long as sheep to lose consciousness after the cut, and their size makes them difficult to restrain.

Some of the worst animal welfare problems in the kosher industry are the stressful methods of restraint that are still being used in some slaughterhouses. In the United States, there are still some kosher plants that hoist conscious animals by one rear leg. Fortunately, most of the large American kosher plants have stopped using this traumatic method.

In South American kosher slaughterhouses, however, the handling practices are often atrocious. The live cattle are shackled and dragged and then held down by several people. The methods of restraint are so bad that it is impossible to determine how the animal is reacting to the throat cut. Large amounts of kosher beef are imported into this country from plants that are using these barbaric methods of restraint.

Even when a plant has decent restraint equipment to hold the animal in a more comfortable position, it needs to be operated correctly. This requires management that is committed to good animal treatment.

I have observed that when kosher slaughter of cattle is done well, there is almost no reaction from the animal when the throat is cut. Flicking my hand near the animal’s face caused a bigger reaction. When the cut is done well, 90% or more of the cattle will collapse and become unconscious within 30 seconds.

There are new scientific studies that show there are welfare concerns when animals are slaughtered without stunning. New Zealand researchers conducted a study on calves with a new EEG brain wave method that indicated that the knife cut caused pain. In this study, however, they used a machine-sharpened knife that may have been too short. A knife that is too short will cause gouging of the wound. The results of this study clearly show that the knife they used was not acceptable. To this date, a similar study has not been done with the special long kosher knife.

Another study has shown that one of the most difficult welfare problems to solve is aspiration (inhaling) of blood into the lungs after the cut. Cattle continue to breathe after the throat is cut. There is much variation in the percentage of animals that aspirate blood. It may be possible to improve methods and reduce this problem. Aspiration of blood is an issue that must be fixed to have an acceptable level of welfare. It will require both research and practical experimentation with technique to solve this problem.

Finally, there needs to be accountability to ensure that both restraint and slaughter are done correctly. Over the years, I have become disgusted by the frequency with which procedures in a given plant seem perfect when I am visiting, but as soon as I have left an undercover video surfaces that reveals bad practices. This has happened in both conventional and religious slaughter plants.

To prevent this problem, I am a big advocate of video auditing over the Internet. An outside auditing company can view video from a plant and evaluate its practices using an objective scoring system. Some of the variables that can be measured are electric prod use, percentage of cattle vocalizing (bellowing) and acts of abuse. Video auditing is now being used in many large, conventional slaughter plants. Unfortunately, all kosher plants have resisted video auditing.

Kosher slaughter of cattle requires special care. While some kosher plants have done well, and many others are improving, too often kosher plants have been very badly managed compared to many of the big conventional plants.

In order to maximize animal welfare, kosher slaughterhouses need to take the following steps: 1) eliminate stressful cruel methods of restraint such as dragging, shackling and hoisting or leg clamping; 2) keep animals calm before slaughter, since an agitated animal is more difficult to kill and takes longer to become unconscious; 3) perform the cut immediately after an animal’s head is restrained; 4) use restraining devices that hold animals in a comfortable upright position; 5) perform collapse scoring to keep track of the proportion of animals that quickly lose consciousness; 6) use video auditing by an outside firm, and practice transparency by streaming the video to a webpage so that the public can view it.

Adhering to these practices would enhance animal welfare, and all these steps could be implemented without transgressing the requirements of religious law. The kosher industry has an opportunity to show the world that it is doing things the right way.
Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a designer of livestock handling facilities. She is the author of “Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

Kosher Gets Ethical

2011-01-10T03:13:00.001-06:00

A new standard is about to remake American Jews’ dietary code.

By LOUIS NAYMAN

Kosher is about to get an American makeover. Sometime between Passover and Chanukah 2011, a new social responsibility certification—the Magen Tzedek (Star of Justice)—is expected to begin appearing on the labels of selected kosher food products throughout the United States.

Kosher products are those that meet the standards of kashrus, Jewish dietary law prescribing what foods or combination of foods are permissible or prohibited to eat. Pork and shellfish are forbidden. Meat and dairy products cannot be mixed. Ingredients and processes must be inspected to make certain that nothing prohibited is introduced. Even otherwise permissible meat is kosher only if slaughtered, processed and inspected according to specific procedures under the supervision of a specially trained rabbi. Some orthodox Jews insist on an additional set of inspections involving examination of the lungs and internal organs to make certain that they are smooth—glatt—and free of punctures or disease.

Kosher food is a $250 billion business, accounting for approximately 40 percent of all packaged foods sold in the United States. That makes kosher certification—by agencies specializing in rabbinic supervision of kashrus compliance—a big enterprise as well. By far the largest certifier of domestic kosher products is the nonprofit Orthodox Union, whose U inside an O symbol appears on more than 400,000 products, including Land O’ Lakes butter, Golden West beef, Jolt energy drinks, Oreo cookies, Glenmorangie Single Malt Scotch and Blue Bunny ice cream.

Those who remember the 1970s television ad for Hebrew National hot dogs (“We answer to a higher authority!”) can be forgiven for assuming that current kosher certification explicitly mandates labor standards, hygienic conditions and environmental ethics surpassing federal or state requirements. It does not.

Magen Tzedek certification, say its developers, is intended to assure purchasers that a kashrus-compliant product also conforms to Biblical and Talmudic ethical values and standards regarding the treatment of workers, animal welfare, environmental impact and fair business dealings. Criteria for product certification include: living-wage compensation and decent benefits, neutrality in labor organizing drives, documented compliance with EPA and OSHA regulations, adherence to humane animal treatment and farm standards, responsible energy and water consumption, use of sustainable materials and alternative fuels, and fair treatment of immigrant workers.

The new certification is now in beta testing, with an expected market rollout sometime during the coming year, says Rabbi Morris Allen, who is working with Cornell University meat science professor Joe Regenstein and Social Accountability International to ready the standard for market. The spiritual leader of the Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn., Allen has a history of involvement as a pulpit rabbi in issues such as prison reform and immigrants rights, and has been leading the push for Magen Tzedek during the last five years.

It has been a polarizing effort. Some Jewish leaders believe the new standard is redundant and unnecessary. Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesperson for Agudath Israel of America—a leading fundamentalist Orthodox religious, educational and advocacy organization—isn’t convinced that kashrus needs yet another certification. “I think that many consumers have no reason to distrust the government agencies and law enforcement agencies as adequate safeguards for all those areas,” he says. “I know of no halachic [pertaining to Jewish law] opinion requiring a kosher consumer to try to ensure that companies go beyond what governmental rules require of them.”

Rabbi Menachem Genack, one of the foremost experts of kashrus certification in the world and the Rabbinic Administrator and CEO of the Orthodox Union’s kashrus program, is “keeping an open mind.” Under his leadership, the Orthodox Union will allow the Magen Tzedek to be placed on labels next to the familiar OU logo.

Allen is determined to bring the new kosher standard to grocery store shelves around the country. “We have one chance to do this right,” he insists. “We as a people should not be more concerned about the smoothness of a cow’s lung than the safety of a worker’s hand.”

Louis Nayman is a longtime union organizer. The views expressed are his own.

Jews Ready To Roll Out New 'Ethical Kosher' Seals

2010-12-23T09:48:00.000-06:00

By Nicole Neroulias
Religion News Service

NEW YORK (RNS) What does it really mean for your Hebrew National hot dog to "answer to a higher authority?"

For years, it's meant a kosher certification that ensured Jewish (and non-Jewish) consumers were buying a product that met strict religious standards for slaughter and preparation that went beyond government requirements.

Now a controversial Jewish movement believes kosher food must meet an even higher ethical ideal -- and they're rolling out a stamp of approval to make it official.

The new Magen Tzedek "seal of justice," developed by Conservative Judaism's Hekhsher Tzedek Commission will be tested on at least two kosher food companies in early 2011.

Standards and fees will be adjusted after 10 weeks of reviewing a host of conditions -- including labor, animal welfare, consumer rights, corporate integrity and environmental impact -- and analyzed by a New York-based auditing firm, said Rabbi Morris Allen, the project's
director.

The new seal is a response to poor labor and animal welfare practices at the now-defunct Agriprocessors meat plant in Postville, Iowa, which had earned a kosher stamp of approval from Orthodox rabbis.

The dueling kosher certifications have opened a rift between Hekhsher Tzedek's Conservative backers and Orthodox Jews, who control most existing kosher standards and are the largest consumers of kosher products.

Kosher certification, now available from hundreds of agencies and stamped on more than one-third of American food products, costs anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on a company's size.

The new, supplemental Magen Tzedek approval will probably cost in the "low-to-mid-four figures," Allen estimates, which shouldn't result in higher prices for kosher foods.

What may raise the price, however, is if a company needs to improve conditions to meet ethical standards.

"If the company wants our seal and they're paying (workers) poorly, they may have to raise their compensation to their employees, and those sort of things," Allen said. "But most companies that are already being good food production companies, it will be a negligible cost."

Critics say the new ethical kosher movement is an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy in an industry that's already under government regulation. The (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of America released its own kosher ethical guidelines last January, but emphasized that food
supervisors don't have the expertise to recognize or handle illegal or unethical business practices.

Kosher certifications usually pay for themselves through increased market share, and skeptics are doubtful the industry will see the same benefits in a second ethical seal, on top of meeting federal USDA and work-safety requirements.

"Companies already have enough on their hands," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the rabbinic administrator of the Orthodox Union's kosher division, which had certified Agriprocessors. "We think that the government agencies have the experience and resources to do that better than us."

Menachem Lubinsky, editor of Kosher Today and president of LUBICOM Marketing Consulting, which specializes in the kosher food industry, said most companies don't want yet another symbol on their packaging, and that the Magen Tzedek stamp may even prompt a backlash from Orthodox consumers.

"There's a perspective that those companies will be seen as having caved in to Conservative demands and being more left-leaning," he said, adding that smaller kosher producers won't be able to afford or compete with Magen Tzedek's requirements.

"(Consumers) see this as being superfluous and they have full faith in the government to protect them," he added. "There are always problems slipping through the cracks ... but (ethical kosher) would unfairly burden the small producers."

Allen maintains that it's not enough to merely expect kosher food companies to meet or exceed government workplace standards, just as Jews don't leave it to state laws to ensure that food advertised as kosher is actually kosher.

"The government is oftentimes stretched, and is not able to do the kinds of inspections that should take place," Allen said. "For us, these are religious issues, no less than certifying the ritual nature of the product. It's our responsibility to see that in the production of kosher
food, the ethical demands of the Jewish people are also being met."

Allen also dismisses critics who say Conservative Jews are trying to compete with, or supplant, the Orthodox in policing the kosher food industry.

"As far as I know," he said, "there's no unique responsibility for only the Orthodox to be involved in determining standards."

The movement does have some support among the Orthodox, including Uri L'Tzedek, an Orthodox initiative that aims to ensure that kosher restaurants pay minimum wage and overtime.

Since its debut in May 2009, about 60 kosher eateries in America have earned the group's Tav HaYosher seal. Director Rabbi Ari Weiss said several restaurant owners have told him that the ethical seal has improved business among customers who care about fair workplace standards.

The same may hold true for ethical kosher food products, he said.

"We see it as bringing ethics and ethical consumption into the Jewish marketplace," Weiss said. "In any community, there are bad actors and good actors ... We're asking them to abide by the law. Nothing more, nothing less."

Despite resistance from the Orthodox, ethical-kosher supporter say their efforts will appeal to the wider spectrum of Jewish and even non-Jewish consumers who care that their food comes from a place that paid, not just prayed, properly.

"At the end of the day, it's a win-win for the kosher food industry," Allen said, "because for some people, our symbol will be the only symbol that they will care about.

The Rise of Ethical Kashrut

2010-12-20T16:29:00.000-06:00

Baltimore Jewish Times
December 20, 2010

I like my meat – even though I don’t eat it often due to kosher meat’s insanely high prices in this country. But when I do buy it, I’d like to know that child labor laws, environmental standards, communal responsibility and general decent human behavior has not been violated in its preparation. (Knowing of such things does govern where I shop, which is why I don’t care to step in a Walmart or a certain kosher market in Baltimore, which are stories I’d be happy to share…).

Now, thanks to the Conservative movement – in which I was raised and remain – I and so many others are poised to actually feel good about the kosher meat available.

Many remember how scandal rocked the kashrut industry three years ago. That’s when the behemoth (pun intended) Agriprocessors was cited for hundreds of labor violations, some involving children, and so much more. No longer could one believe the label “kosher” automatically denoted “better”. Rather, at best it meant that the food preparation hit a baseline standard of Jewish law.

Now, in good news for all kosher consumers and certainly the Jewish people’s image, what for some is an unlikely player is about to bring an ethical seal of approval into the marketplace.

The Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek Commission will in early January 2011 begin testing select companies’ domestic food production standards on five levels –labor practices, animal welfare practices, consumer protection, corporate integrity and environmental impact. After a three-month trial, the Commission will decide if the company deserves the designation of a “Magen Tzedek,” or “seal of justice,” reports “The Forward.” (See: http://forward.com/articles/133979/) Even better, the results will be made public in March.

Rabbi Morris Allen, director of the project, would not identify the companies, but called them “significant players in the food industry — and in the kosher food industry.”

How big could this get? Approximately 40 percent of food manufactured in the country carrying a kashrut certification, according to “The Forward.” Thus, the potential for ethical stewardship of so much more than ingredients is massive.

We may not quite be what we eat, but how that food arrives on our plate matters to many of us. And as discerning consumers, shouldn’t we care about what Judaism instructs, our role in our planet’s health and how those two efforts intersect?

Posted by Neil Rubin on 12/20/10 at 03:56 PM

Tough New Ethics Seal Set To Be Tested in Kosher Marketplace

2010-12-20T16:20:00.003-06:00

The Jewish Daily Forward
December 15, 2010

After more than a year of fine-tuning, the criteria for earning a Magen Tzedek, the “seal of justice” to be awarded to kosher food producers that meet a detailed set of ethical standards, are about to be tested by American food companies. The seal would be added to products that already merit a hekhsher, or symbol certifying that a food item is kosher, to show that the product not only meets Jewish dietary laws, but comports with Jewish moral values, as well.

Beginning in January, several producers of kosher food will attempt to follow guidelines for everyday business conduct in five principal categories: labor, animal welfare, consumer issues, corporate integrity and environmental impact. The draft standards for these guidelines fill 150 PowerPoint pages. The companies’ efforts will be audited by Social Accountability Accreditation Services — an experienced social responsibility auditor based in New York City — with results to be announced in March.

Testing the standards represents the closest step yet to demonstrating “that Jewish ethical concerns that are based on who we are as a people are just as certifiable as Jewish ritual concerns,” Rabbi Morris Allen, a Minnesota pulpit rabbi, told the Forward. Allen is the project director of the Conservative-backed Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, which was formed in early 2007 after revelations of poor labor conditions — on top of previous exposés of brutal animal treatment — at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, shocked some Jews into activism around the practice of kashrut.

“This is a serious religious undertaking to help restore a culture of kashrut in America. Kashrut itself suffered a black eye as a result of some of this,” said Allen, who hastened to note that many kosher food producers have always behaved ethically. Covering everything from employee access to binding arbitration, the nutritional value of the food produced and recycling resources within a factory, the standards represent “the most exhaustive and comprehensive undertaking in the kosher food marketplace ever attempted,” he added.

Allen said that the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission has signed agreements for testing with two companies and is closing in on a third. He would not name them, because the parties have signed confidentiality agreements that Allen said are aimed at promoting honest and robust testing of the standards. One of the companies is a kosher-specific producer, while the other two produce kosher food along with nonkosher products, he said. Allen called them “significant players in the food industry — and in the kosher food industry.”

Some major players in kashrut, however, aren’t as excited. Asked whether people in kosher circles are buzzing over either Magen Tzedek or the “Jewish Principles and Ethical Guidelines (“JPEG”) for the Kosher Food Industry,” released early this year by the Rabbinical Council of America, which represents Orthodox rabbis, some authorities said it’s quiet on the ethical-advancement front.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator of the Orthodox Union’s Kashrut Division, said, “I don’t hear them talking about either one.” Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, executive director of the Association of Kashrus Organizations, also said, “It’s been pretty quiet. I haven’t heard any movement at all on these things.”

Genack, who visited Agriprocessors during the crisis, and whose O.U. now certifies the successor company, Agri Star, said, “I frankly would be surprised if this really took off.” It’s hard to pay for the additional infrastructure, and companies are mostly interested in the marketing aspect of certifications, Genack said — meeting federal safety regulations keeps them busy enough.

“I’m interested just to see how it works out,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.”

Magen Tzedek is one of several initiatives that sprang from the collapse of Agriprocessors, which was the nation’s largest producer of kosher meat until its harsh treatment of animals and laborers came to light (largely through reporting in the Forward). Immigration raids on its workers followed, along with the indictment and imprisonment of CEO Sholom Rubashkin, and the plant’s bankruptcy and closure in the fall of 2008.

Although many Jewish consumers and kashrut authorities have backed the Brooklyn-based Rubashkin family, other critical responses have surfaced. In addition to the RCA’s “JPEG,” the Orthodox social justice group Uri L’Tzedek now grants a Tav Ha-Yosher, or ethical seal, to kosher restaurants around the country that meet basic standards for fair treatment of workers.

Because that initiative focuses on the comsumption end, while Magen Tzedek examines production, Uri L’Tzedek’s director, Rabbi Ari Weiss, calls the efforts “complementary.” (Kosher restaurants comprise a relatively small market share, while more than 40% of all food manufactured in the United States bears a kosher certification.) “The more rabbinic organizations and rabbis and leaders in the community who are talking about the significance and importance of ethics in both the workplace and kosher production — I think that’s an amazing thing,” Weiss said.

The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission released its “Standards for the Magen Tzedek Service Mark” in September 2009 and invited the public to comment. Joe Regenstein, professor of food science at Cornell University and an official adviser to the effort, said he received input from about 10 people, activists on various sides of the issue, which helped him fine-tune the standards that the beta-testing companies will use this winter. Their experience likely will lead to further retooling in 2011, Regenstein said.

Magen Tzedek’s project manager, Rabbi Iris Richman, wrote in an e-mail that audits “will take place both on factory floors as well as within the offices of these companies, where records, logs, and documentation will be reviewed. These auditors need not be Jewish nor do they require knowledge of kashrut, because the applicant facilities will already be kosher-certified.… The facilities themselves that apply for certification pay for audits, and auditors travel to the sites themselves, where they review documents, inspect the facilities, and interview workers confidentially. The exact details of these visits are being finalized as we speak.”

Although the Agriprocessors plant, bought by Orthodox Jewish Canadian plastics manufacturer Hershey Friedman in July 2009, can expect its practices to be scrutinized in the months and years to come, spokesman Jeff Pigott says the company isn’t eager to participate in the Magen Tzedek effort. “Right now, Agri Star has kosher certification they’re comfortable with, and they’re not looking for additional certification,” Pigott said.

For now, at least, the Magen Tzedek effort will be focused elsewhere. “This is not about Postville,” Allen said. “This is not just about one company in one state. This is about who we are.”

Contact Karen Loew at loew@forward.com

Newsweek's 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America: Magen Tzedek Scores Two!

2010-07-08T18:26:00.001-05:00

by Michael Lynton and Gary Ginsberg
June 18, 2010

Two rabbi watchers release their 2010 list.

In the fall of 2006, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and his pal Gary Ginsberg, now an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., began working on a list of the 50 most influential rabbis in the U.S.

The friends devised the following unscientific criteria to rank the leaders, whose specialties range from kashrut to Kabbalah: Are they known nationally/internationally? (20 points.) Do they have political/social influence? (20 points.) Do they have a media presence? (10 points.) Are they leaders within their communities? (10 points.) Are they considered leaders in Judaism or their movements? (10 points. ) How big are their constituencies? (10 points.) Have they made an impact on Judaism in their career? (10 points.) Have they made a greater impact beyond the Jewish community and their rabbinical training? (10 points.)

NEWSWEEK published that first list around Passover, 2007, with this caveat: “Is the list subjective? Yes. Is it mischievous in its conception? Definitely.” Now in its fourth year, Lynton and Ginsberg’s list includes eight fresh names and a new rabbi in the top spot.
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10.Morris Allen—As program director for Magen Tzedek, the ethical kosher seal, Allen is changing the way the world thinks about kashrut and the ethical issues surrounding the hechsher. (NEW)
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32.Michael Siegel—In addition to serving as senior rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet congregation, Siegel is also nationally known as the co-chair of the Heksher Tzedek Commission. (NEW)

(Click here to see the complete listing.)

New ethical seal will take kashrut where it must go

2010-05-28T09:24:00.004-05:00

Jweekly.com
Thursday, May 27, 2010

The laws of kashrut have guided Jews for millennia. But like everyone else on the planet, Jews can no longer deny the link between food and the socio-ecological impact of its manufacture.

That is why we applaud the Conservative movement for devising a new hechsher, or certification, that adds to the guidelines for what is — and isn’t — an acceptable kosher product.

Our story on page 8 details the movement’s new Magen Tzedek, which acknowledges what its designers call “Kashrut for the 21st century.” After a period of testing, the new seal of approval will make its debut, probably in the first half of 2011.

Beyond the rules of kashrut enshrined in the Torah –– rules that can never be modified –– the Magen Tzedek commission created additional categories by which to assess kosher status. Those categories include the welfare of workers and animals, the environment and corporate responsibility.

Some may look askance at this and similar efforts afoot in other denominations. After all, the Torah and Talmud already address a multitude of social justice issues. Over the years, the various streams of Judaism have codified the Jewish way when it comes to how we treat the planet and our fellow human beings.

The times we live in call for more.

Nothing has a greater impact on civilization than food production. There is no greater drain on resources, no endeavor more polluting, than the food industry. We depend on an unsustainable global system powered by fossil fuels, pesticides and exploitative labor practices.

And let us not forget the horrific level of animal cruelty at its base.

As the shameful example of the Agriprocessors scandal showed us, the kosher food industry is not immune to committing abuses.

Thus we face the omnivore’s dilemma. We must eat to live, but we must make sure that the food we eat meets the highest ideals of Judaism. It is no longer enough that a shochet properly applied his trade or that a rabbi supervised production in any given factory.

It means that at every step, from farmland to dinner table, from pasture to drive-through window, the food we eat embodies respect for the Earth, respect for animal life and respect for our fellow human beings.

The new Conservative hechsher absolutely upholds the letter of the law when it comes to kashrut. As one commission adviser says, there will be no hechsher on pork sausage.
But the Magen Tzedek hechsher upholds more than the letter of the law. It upholds the spirit, as well.

Ethical Kosher Seal Nearing Marketplace for Conservative Jews

2010-05-27T22:04:00.002-05:00

Conservative movement’s ambitious ‘Magen Tzedek’ in testing stages, hoping to have certified products on store shelves within year.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Rivka Oppenheim
Special To The Jewish Week

With the trials of Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, still looming large over the kosher food industry, the Conservative movement is ready to make its mark on a field that is dominated by Orthodox companies.

After years of discussion and planning, the “Magen Tzedek” — which the Conservative movement calls the world’s first Jewish ethical certification seal — will complete beta testing with two food companies by the end of 2010.

“Our expectation is, a year from now, to have 15 companies that will be promoting the Magen Tzedek,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, project director of Hekhsher Tzedek, the commission that has developed the seal.

Rabbi Allen, 55, spoke to The Jewish Week before participating in a session at this year’s Rabbinical Assembly convention, on “Moving Magen Tzedek in the Marketplace: How the Conservative Movement is Seating Itself at the Kosher Table.”

Conservative rabbis from all over the United States and Canada crowded into the chapel of the Upper West Side’s Congregation Ansche Chesed Monday night to get an update on the initiative, which began in 2006 — two years before federal agents raided the Agriprocessors plant.

Meanwhile, Tav HaYosher, a more modest initiative launched by the Orthodox social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek one year after the Rubashkin raid, has just marked its one-year anniversary — with 40 participating establishments in five states.

Rabbi Michael Siegel, national co-chair of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, acknowledged some people’s frustration with the slow pace of his project.

“People in your congregations are saying ‘Nu? Hurry up,’” he said.

Rabbi Siegel, who is senior rabbi of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, asked every congregation to appoint an ambassador who will sign on for a one-year commitment, promoting the Magen Tzedek mission throughout the Conservative movement.

“It won’t simply be the rabbis pounding on the bima,” he said.

The Magen Tzedek is not intended to replace kashrut certifications, such as the Orthodox Union’s seal of approval. That’s why Professor Joe Regenstein, who drew up the guidelines for the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, refuses to actually use the term “hekhsher tzedek.”

“That caused confusion and unnecessary concern,” he told The Jewish Week.

Regenstein, head of the Cornell Kosher and Halal Food Initiative, told the audience at Ansche Chesed that besides fruits and vegetables, which don’t need a heksher, any Magen Tzedek-certified product would also need to have kosher certification.

“Pork sausage is not going to qualify, no matter how good [the plant is] at social justice,” he said.

Hekhsher Tzedek will consider five issues in awarding its seal of approval: labor (wages and benefits, and health and safety); animal welfare; consumer issues; corporate integrity; and environmental impact.

A social auditing firm, Social Accountability Accreditation Services has been hired to help develop and implement the standards. Rabbi Siegel said he plans to work with ROI Ventures, a strategy firm, to look into the economic sustainability of Magen Tzedek.

Whereas Tav HaYosher lists only three criteria on its website, all of them issues that already fall under existing U.S. labor laws — the right to fair pay, the right to fair time (one day off per week, compensation for overtime, breaks etc.) and the right to a safe work environment — the Magen Tzedek standards go well beyond legal requirements. A summary version is available on the Magen Tzedek website.

After opening the set of standards to public comment last fall, Regenstein prepared a response for every single one.

“It’s got to be something that’s objective, auditable, fair,” said Regenstein, a professor of food science at Cornell. “The process needs to be transparent.”

And while Uri L’Tzedek works only with restaurants and grocery stores, Regenstein has bigger plans for the Magen Tzedek, which he hopes to promote internationally.

“It would be a jam processor in North Dakota who is already kosher-certified, to a Kraft, to a Unilever,” he told The Jewish Week.

Rabbi Siegel went even further, telling the assembled rabbis that there have been discussions about giving Magen Tzedek to synagogues — ensuring that fair labor practices are enforced in houses of worship, not just in restaurants and factories. An article in the Forward newspaper this fall noted that the labor standards Magen Tzedek calls for in the food industry are met in few Conservative synagogues and other movement institutions, many of which, according to that article, do not pay a “living wage” or health benefits to custodial and other part-time staff.
Like the Magen Tzedek project, Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek, is hoping to keep growing.

After receiving Orthodox rabbinical ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the 28-year-old will move to Los Angeles next month to launch his organization on the West Coast.

Yanklowitz says in the past year, 60 compliance workers have been trained to help enforce the standards of the Tav HaYosher, and that the movement now has “thousands of constituents.”
“I think that the community momentum is immense right now,” he said. “Our constituents are really demanding rapid response. I think there’s not patience for long, drawn-out processes.

“We’re at a crucial stage for the development of the ethical kashrut narrative and for the identity of the concerned Jewish, socially conscious consumer.”

Asked about expanding the Tav HaYosher to other areas besides food, Yanklowitz said that conversation is premature, and that there is a “danger of overextending.”

“We really need a serious victory on creating social change in kashrut first,” he said.

The measure of that victory? When “those that are not complying will need to comply in order to stay afloat.” Already, he said, “multiple owners have told me they’ve gotten thousands of dollars more business because of the Tav.”

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Kashrut Division, is skeptical over Magen Tzedek’s potential impact on the kosher food industry.

“I don’t see many companies willing to sign on to a standard that’s different than what’s in place, in terms of government regulations,” he said.

While Rabbi Genack said he’s willing to sanction the Magen Tzedek symbol appearing next to the OU’s, he also said the government should be the ones to handle labor issues — even as he slammed the government over its handling of the Rubashkin case.

“Everything it did was an overreaction,” Rabbi Genack said. “It destroyed a company. It destroyed the economy of the region. ... Asking for a life sentence was an absolute outrage.

“I think the one that should be in the dock is the U.S. Attorney. That’s where I think there’s an ethical outrage. The justice that was done is more reminiscent of Soviet jurisprudence.”

Sholom Rubashkin is currently being tried by the state of Iowa on child labor charges. He faces 83 counts of child labor violations. Federal sentencing has been postponed until June 22, after Rubashkin was convicted last November of 86 counts of bank fraud.

After initially pushing for a life sentence, prosecutors have asked for a 25-year sentence, which Rabbi Genack says is “essentially still a life sentence” for the 51-year-old Rubashkin.

Unlike Rabbi Genack, Magen Tzedek’s Rabbi Allen said relying solely on government inspectors to enforce labor laws might not be the best course of action.

“The mine disaster in West Virginia and the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana have demonstrated that oftentimes the government is unable, or becomes too involved, to be able to stop certain kinds of industry practices,” said Rabbi Allen, spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn.

“We wouldn’t trust New York law when it came to ritual law. We shouldn’t necessarily simply trust American law when it comes to upholding Jewish ethical norms, either.”

JTA contributed to this report.

Conservatives’ ethical seal nearing kosher marketplace

2010-05-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

By Amy Klein · May 25, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- “We will not put a hechsher on pork products.”

Counterintuitive as the need for that statement about kosher certification might sound, it was just one of the points about the Conservative movement's planned ethical seal that the group responsible for the certification wanted to clarify at this week’s gathering of Conservative rabbis in New York.

The Hekhscher Tzedek Commission announced at this week's Rabbinical Assembly convention that it had hired a social auditing firm to compile standards for what the seal will represent. The Magen Tzedek certification has been in development for three years following multiple scandals at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa.

Beta testing with two companies will be finished by the end of 2010.

“Over the course of the next year we will be in the marketplace,” promised Rabbi Morris Allen, the Hekhsher Tzedek project director and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Jacob in Minnesota.

Joe Regenstein, an adviser to the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission and professor of food science at Cornell University, said the new certification will cover five areas: wages and benefits; health and safety of workers; animal welfare; environment and sustainability; and a broad category of corporate responsibilities, such as nutritional labeling and good practices.

At the convention panel at which the certification was discussed -- “Moving Magen Tzedek Into the Marketplace: How the Conservative Movement is Seating Itself at the Kosher Table,” the co-chairman of the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission, Rabbi Michael Siegel of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, urged the dozens of rabbis in the room to make the commission's projects known to their communities.

The commission wants each synagogue to appoint one socially aware and active member to work directly with the commission for a year.

Siegel also urged the audience to make sure that their synagogues and Jewish organizations are in compliance with the ethical standards espoused by the seal, such as using fair labor practices for workers and ensuring that outside contractors, like catering companies, adhere to the standards.

“We have to set the right example in our own synagogues. It's a serious issue,” he said. “This will be our Achilles heel if we don't address it.”

The commission hired Social Accountability Accreditation Services (SAAS) for help in coming up with the standards a food company must meet in order to be approved for the Magen Tzedek, or star of justice. The commission posted draft standards at the Magen Tzedek Web site for three months, inviting public comment, and now the standards are being finalized.

“We think that social justice in the marketplace is something that we can make happen,” said Eileen Kaufman, executive director of Social Accountability International, which accredits and monitors organizations as being in compliance with social standards. “What we do at SAAS is take creditable standards and put them in a structure that enables them to be carried out and used as criteria for purchasing. That proves as incentive for organizations to follow them.”

At first the label will be targeted toward U.S. kosher food product companies, Regenstein said, estimating the number at about 10,000. It will include only products that already have been certified as kosher, including non-food items like detergents and aluminum foil, as well as products that do not require kosher certification, such as fruit and vegetables.

Even though some companies might adhere to the social justice practices enumerated, if they are not kosher, they cannot get the seal.

“We are a Conservative Jewish organization. We will not put a hechsher on pork sausages. That's just not who we are,” Regenstein said. The Magen Tzedek is “tied to Jewish ethics and to Jewish law. The companies have to meet a minimum of Jewish law.”

Regenstein prefers to call the accreditation the Magen Tzedek rather than use the term hechsher.

“The word hechsher means kosher certification, and this program is not kosher certification,” he said. “This is a social justice program attached to previously recognized kosher certification.”

Regenstein added that the term hechsher made the Orthodox community nervous.

“They thought, and perhaps rightfully so, that we were going into the kosher certification business," he said. "We are going into the ethical certification business.”

For now the seal will not apply to restaurants. Other organizations, like Uri L'Tzedek, certify kosher restaurants as ethical.

Eventually the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission hopes to certify catering companies.

After the SAAS criteria are finalized, the commission will conduct an economic feasibility study to determine the cost of accreditation, Regenstein said.

He noted that it might prove economically desirable for kosher companies to acquire the seal because it will widen the market for their foods to those who care about ethics even if they don’t keep kosher.

“By tying it to kosher products, you will have more Reform and Conservative Jews looking at products that are kosher,” Regenstein said. “They can reach the entire Jewish community and people outside the community looking for a framework to choose ethical products.”

The seal may even help people become kosher observant, he said.

“All of a sudden it's not just people who keep kosher” who will be eating kosher products, Regenstein said, “but people who are interested in social justice.”

New Ethical and Legal Guidelines by Orthodox Group Echo Central Principles of Hekhsher Tzedek - Affirm Importance of the Magen Tzedek

2010-01-22T11:52:00.002-06:00

Conservative Movement’s Ethical Certification Seal In Final Stages of Development

January 22, 2010 (New York, NY) – The Magen Tzedek ethical certification seal for kosher foods received an important vote of confidence yesterday as the Rabbinical Council of America released its Guidelines to Enhance Kosher Food Producers’ Compliance with Jewish Legal and Ethical Teachings.

Launched during the summer of 2007, Magen Tzedek is a joint project of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

“We heartily salute the RCA for developing these guidelines which obviously come in response to recent serious abuses within the kosher food industry,” stated Rabbi Morris Allen, founder and director of Magen Tzedek. “We are gratified to have the core principles of Magen Tzedek affirmed in their guidelines and feel supported in our effort by our counterpart organization in the Orthodox world.”

“The power of a good idea is magnified when it gains support from all corners,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. “The observance and promotion of kashrut is a commonly-shared value of both Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. The Rabbinical Assembly looks forward to working with the rabbis of the RCA so that our joint efforts can insure that kashrut is a kiddush Ha-Shem, a sanctification of Gd’s name for the Jewish People.”

The RCA’s announcement comes at a critical time in the development of Magen Tzedek as the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission is about to sign a contract with a major social auditing firm that will take its two years’ work on the development of standards and guidelines and transform them into objective and verifiable means to certify companies that their ethical practices meet appropriate standards of conduct in the production food, reported Rabbi Allen.

“The RCA’s announcement underscores Magen Tzedek’s message,” said Rabbi Schonfeld. “While Magen Tzedek constitutes a unique expression of our unflagging commitment to the integration of ethics and ritual, we are pleased that our Orthodox colleagues have begun to develop their guidelines.”

The world’s first Jewish ethical certification seal, Magen Tzedek will help assure consumers that kosher food products were produced in keeping with the highest possible Jewish ethical values and ideals for social justice in the area of labor concerns, animal welfare, environmental impact, consumer issues and corporate integrity.

It is designed to coexist with other rabbinic kosher seals.

The development of the Magen Tzedek seal came as a response to the egregious violations of human and animal rights at the AgriProcessors Meat Processing facility in Postville, Iowa, the largest producer of kosher meat and poultry in the US. As an expert witness on the ground, Rabbi Allen had an intimate knowledge of the situation and advocated for much-needed changes, developing Hekhsher Tzedek in the process.

The basic principle of Hekhsher Tzedek is that the ethical underpinning of kashrut is inextricable from the ritual observance.

The Magen Tzedek seal will be awarded to kosher food companies based on a number of criteria having to do with such matters as employee health, safety and training; wages and benefits; the company’s environmental impact; corporate transparency and product development, among others.

“More than anything, the RCA’s new ethical and legal guidelines demonstrate that Magen Tzedek has captured the hearts and minds of American Jews, reflecting deeply-held social and religious values,” said Rabbi Allen.

STATEMENT FROM THE HEKHSHER TZEDEK COMMISSION REGARDING THE CONVICTION OF SHOLOM RUBASHKIN

2009-11-13T11:32:00.002-06:00

New York, NY (November 13, 2009) -- The news out of Sioux Falls, SD, yesterday, that Sholom Rubashkin was convicted on 86 out of 91 counts of fraud in the state’s investigation into criminal activity within the Agriprocessor’s meat processing facility in Postville, Iowa, delivers both justice and a heavy heart to those of us who champion the cause of ethical kashrut.

The investigation into Agriprocessors has unfolded in slow-motion. First there were allegations of business fraud and worker abuse, then investigations, then negotiations – all with ample opportunity for the Rubashkin family to cooperate and self-correct -- then arrogant disregard for the law, shocking revelations, indictments, a plethora of press attention, the riveting scandal of the federal raid in May of 2008, the largest scale of its kind in US history...and finally the verdict of guilty on the majority of counts of business fraud in yesterday’s trial.

It is important to note that the trial on charges of worker abuse is not even underway. The heartbreaking stories that will emerge in the course of this trial will be as cringe-worthy as they are criminal.

As the founders of Magen Tzedek, we were on the ground in Postville from the virtual start of this tragic drama in the summer of 2006, bearing witness to the terrible worker conditions and business practices at the nation’s largest manufacturer of kosher meat and poultry, trying to steer the Rubashkin family towards taking responsibility and correcting their mistakes, acting in accordance with the biblical injunction – “hokhaich tokhiach et amitecha” – “rebuke your kinsman,” that is, do not stand idly by while one of your brethren commits a grievous wrongdoing.

Although the miscarriage of kashrut at Agriprocessors was not the catalyst for the creation of Magen Tzedek, it provided an urgent context and need for us to develop our initiative, proclaiming publicly our belief that keeping kosher is inextricably linked to leading a life of ethical integrity.

There are tragedies within tragedies in the story of the fall of the house of Rubashkin, the worst of which might be the deaf ear of the Rubashkin family turned towards those who tried to prevent the collapse. We were at the epicenter of those who repeatedly reached out to the family. Yet as the investigation and trial wore on, it became clear that the deafness was a direct result of the Rubashkin family’s flagrant disregard for the law and ethical behavior.

There is neither joy nor a sense of schadenfreude in yesterday’s conviction. Those of us who toil in the field of tikkun olam are downright demoralized by this highly preventable outcome. This story could have ended very differently. Had the Rubashkin family done a sincere teshuva – heeding, for instance, the three-pronged course of action we delivered to them in the summer of 2006 -- they would now be the heroes of the kosher world instead of its villains.

Given the sad outcome of this situation, we rededicate ourselves to the birthing of our Magen Tzedek seal of ethical certification, a process that has been long and arduous but more relevant with each passing day.
After thousands of hours of meetings, deliberations, drafts of our working guidelines and compliance procedures, we are getting closer. The soul and future of kashrut depends on the development of Magen Tzedek as an actual seal on kosher food products, indicating that it has been produced in accordance with high ethical standards for employee wages and benefits, health and safety, animal welfare, corporate transparency and environmental impact. What has emerged in the course of the development of this product is that Magen Tzedek is more than just a new certification for kosher food -- it is a worldwide awareness built upon the belief that we are how and what we eat.

Achieving Magen Tzedek is our ascent to Sinai, fraught with challenge and yet possessed of a promise. Like the Law that Moses receives at the summit of the mountain, Magen Tzedek will give Jews and all people of conscience a road map towards leading lives of ethical integrity through the portal of keeping kosher.

The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission

Rabbi Morris J. Allen, Project Director

For further information about this statement or to request an interview with any member of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, please contact Shira Dicker at shira@hekhshertzedek.org; 917.403.3989. Because of the Sabbath, please make these requests prior to 4 pm EST.

New Kosher Food Certification May Be Most Detailed In the Industry

2009-09-09T23:52:00.001-05:00

Magen Tzedek’s Ethical Standards Apply Even to Workers’ Wages
By Nathaniel Popper
Published September 09, 2009, issue of September 18, 2009.

The Conservative movement has released detailed guidelines for what experts say could be one of the most comprehensive food certifications in existence.

The guidelines for the new Magen Tzedek food certification are intended to ensure that ethical standards are adhered to in kosher food production, and they delve into nearly every phase of the production process. A group of Conservative rabbis began developing the certification more than two years ago after a Forward article drew attention to the poor working conditions at what was then the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa.

The Hekhsher Tzedek commission, which created the guidelines with the backing of the national bodies of Conservative Judaism, has previously released rough sketches of what the certification would encompass. But the rules released this week go on for 175 pages and delve into great detail on the standards companies will need to meet if they want to earn a Magen Tzedek certification. (Hekhsher Tzedek means certification of justice in Hebrew, while Magen Tzedek means seal of justice.) Those standards broadly break down into five areas: treatment of employees, animal welfare, consumer issues, corporate integrity and environmental impact.

Among the specific rules laid out in the draft is one stipulating that a company would have to pay its lowest paid employee at least 115% of the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) and provide the same employee with health and other benefits that amount to at least 35% of his or her wages. These standards, and many others, would apply to workers who produce any ingredient that is at least 5% of the weight of the final product.

There are a number of certification programs that look at one or another of the specific categories that the Magen Tzedek is interested in — but industry experts say that there are almost no other food-certification systems that are as comprehensive and thorough as what the Conservative rabbis are proposing.

“The breadth is impressive,” said Scott Exo, director of the Food Alliance, which bills itself as the “most comprehensive third-party certification for the production, processing, and distribution of sustainable food.”

The guidelines are being offered for public comment, and the commission is hoping to have an application and a beta test of the program done by the end of this year — with the program starting next year. The Hekhsher Tzedek commission is in talks with an independent auditing company that would conduct the actual certifying audits.

“This shows that it is possible to take Jewish norms and to produce a set of standards that are measurable and operational,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, the Minnesota congregational leader who founded the Hekhsher Tzedek commission.

From its inception, the certification has faced skepticism from many in the Orthodox rabbinate, which has traditionally overseen kosher food certification. Many rabbis have worried that the Magen Tzedek could be seen as an effort to replace kosher certification with modern ethical standards.

The guidelines state that the new certification is targeted at kosher products “because those are specifically of interest to Jews and already claim a special status in the Jewish community.” But the guidelines are careful to note that Magen Tzedek “is in addition to, not instead of, the kosher hekhsher mark.”

Past disclaimers, however, have not satisfied critics of the Hekhsher Tzedek initiative.

“My sense is that the Orthodox world, which remains the engine behind the kosher market, will continue to insist that all social justice issues be guided by government,” Menachem Lubinsky, a consultant to kosher companies and the organizer of the largest kosher industry trade show, told the Forward in an e-mail.

Regarding the Magen Tzedek effort, Lubinsky wrote: “Industry people have told me time and again that it will have little effect on the average consumer (including Conservative Jews) who will continue to base their purchase of kosher products on kosher certification, quality, and price.”

The breadth of the new standards also make them vulnerable to the criticism that they will be hard to enforce — and the guidelines go in many directions that would be difficult to ground in Jewish law, such as the directive for the certification to look at “how many microwave ovens are in the lunchroom for workers to heat food.”

In order to blunt possible criticism, the commission consulted with a board of kosher companies that have given feedback on how to make the guidelines more workable. But Kimberly Rubinfeld, who is the commission’s program manager, said that converting rough Jewish ideals into practical rules was not easy.

“Nothing comes directly from Torah — it is all interpretation,” Rubinfeld said, “so there has been a lot of discussion and debate about how do we convert Jewish values to all of these different areas. This is talking about every step of the production process from the farm or the field all the way to your fork.”

The guidelines were drawn up for the Hekhsher Tzedek commission by Joe Regenstein, a professor of food sciences at Cornell University and an a consultant on food certification projects.

“We are trying to have standards that most companies can meet, because we want most companies to commit to improving their business ethics,” he said.

The certification allows companies to build up points that eventually add up to either a Magen Tzedek or a Magen Tzedek with distinction. In a number of the five areas of evaluation, such as animal welfare, the Magen Tzedek would rely on already existing auditing agencies.

But in many of the areas of evaluation, the new guidelines propose a broad and fresh look at a company’s operations. The most intensive area of inquiry appears to be in labor standards, in part because there are so few accepted standards in this realm.

“That is probably going to be the hardest one — for both the companies to meet and for us to assure ourselves that things are happening properly,” Regenstein said.

As they are now, the guidelines would require a company to submit information on wages, benefits, child care and annual cost-of-living increases, as well as its sick leave, vacation, bereavement and parental-leave policy.

Regenstein said that these guidelines will be particularly difficult to transplant overseas, and so, at least initially, the Magen Tzedek will be confined to companies producing in the United States. But as with the larger vision, Regenstein dreams big.

“I want it on all the products that are in the supermarket, from the pastas to the ice creams,” he said.

Contact Nathaniel Popper at popper@forward.com

New Owner of Agriprocessors Faces Old Questions About Its Plans For Company

2009-07-22T19:07:00.003-05:00

By Rebecca Dube
Published July 22, 2009

The new owner of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, whose bid of $8.5 million for the troubled kosher meatpacking plant was accepted by a federal bankruptcy court judge July 20, is stepping into a business, and an industry, that has weathered changes under a harsh spotlight in recent years.

Agriprocessors was bought at auction by SHF Industries, a company formed by Canadian plastics manufacturer Hershey Friedman and his son-in-law, Daniel Hirsch. Friedman owns Polystar Packaging Inc. of Montreal, which is a top maker of plastic packaging for meat. An observant Orthodox Jew, Friedman is also well known in the Montreal community for his philanthropy.

Those who have been watching the Agriprocessors saga have a lot of questions for Friedman — questions about what the ethical standards will be, how workers will be treated and how involved the Rubashkin family will be, if at all, in the future operation of the plant. The Rubashkins built Agriprocessors into the nation’s largest supplier of kosher meat, but they were forced to declare bankruptcy, and now they face criminal charges over their employment, and treatment, of undocumented workers.

It’s not yet clear whether, or how, Friedman will distance himself from the company’s legacy. He could not be reached for comment, but in an interview with Mishpacha, an Orthodox Jewish family magazine based in Jerusalem, Friedman described the Rubashkin family as “wonderful people” who “were victims of a massive witch hunt.”

Speaking with The Des Moines Register later, Friedman clarified his statement, saying that the former owners would have no role in upper management. “It’s a very large family,” he told the Register. “There are nice people in it and not-nice people.” He said that some members of the family might continue to work at the plant at lower-level jobs.

Critics of Agriprocessors are withholding judgment. “I hope, in the coming days, the Friedmans will understand the importance of speaking clearly about their plans for the company,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, leader of the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek effort to reform labor practices in the kosher food industry. “I hope that there can be a restoration of kosher meat in this country that is not just ritually appropriate, but ethically appropriate, as well.”

The Forward’s exposure in 2006 of subpar working conditions at Agriprocessors, and the massive 2008 federal immigration raid of the factory, which resulted in nearly 400 workers being arrested, has sparked an international debate over to what extent kosher standards should include ethical treatment of workers. And since Agriprocessors shut down its beef production lines and declared bankruptcy last year, new competitors have stepped in to fill the breach.

The $8.5 million purchase price falls well short of the $22 million that Agriprocessors owes to unsecured creditors, including back pay and benefits to employees. Another bidder, Soglowek Nahariya Ltd. of Israel, was reportedly prepared to pay $40 million for the bankrupt company last March, but rescinded the offer before the auction took place. SHF was apparently the only bidder at auction for Agriprocessors, which in 2002 reported sales of $180 million to Cattle Buyers Weekly.

In the purchase agreement approved by the bankruptcy court, Friedman is not liable for any debts owed to Agriprocessors’ unsecured creditors, including Postville-area businesses, farmers who supplied animals to the plant and former workers who are owed back wages. While the sale of Agriprocessors is undoubtedly good news for Postville, a town of 2,500 that relied heavily on the meatpacking plant for jobs, it’s doubtful whether former employees will see any of the money they’re owed.

“I think not, and it breaks my heart,” Allen said. “A lot of people in Postville who did a decent day’s work for a decent day’s pay probably will never be made close to whole. Hopefully that’s something the Friedmans will address in the coming days.”

A coalition of Jewish and local leaders called the Postville Community Benefits Alliance is pressing to meet with the new owners to discuss issues such as improving wages for workers.

“We’re hoping a meeting will occur sooner rather than later, and the owners will attempt to build a relationship with the community and be more transparent in how they run the plant than the previous owners were,” said Vic Rosenthal, executive director of Jewish Community Action of St. Paul, Minn., and a member of the alliance.

Federal prosecutors have filed a 163-count indictment against Agriprocessors and former plant manager Sholom Rubashkin, son of company founder Aaron Rubashkin, with charges including labor law violations, bank fraud, mail and wire fraud, and nonpayment for livestock. Meanwhile, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office has filed more than 9,000 child labor charges against the plant and its owners and former managers.

Rubashkin intends to plead not guilty to all charges, his lawyer has said. Some lower-level managers already have pleaded guilty to immigration-related charges.

Allen said he hoped that none of the Rubashkin family would be allowed to continue in management roles at Agriprocessors under the new owners.

Before the immigration raid, the bankruptcy proceedings and widespread layoffs, Agriprocessors was the nation’s largest kosher meat producer, with a work force of about 800. The company distributed its meat under the labels Aaron’s Best, Rubashkin’s and Shor Habor. The number of employees has dwindled to about 100 as the plant has maintained production of a limited amount of poultry, but not beef, in recent months.

Also in his interview with Mishpacha, Friedman said he hopes to get the beef-processing plant up and running again by the High Holy Days.

Contact Rebecca Dube at dube@forward.com

For Some Local Jews, Kosher Isn't Enough

2009-07-01T00:00:00.003-05:00

Ethics of food production is key part of 'ethical kashrut.'
By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, June 28, 2009

Malka Dubrawsky and her husband, Robert Trent, decided to go vegetarian after she heard a radio show about mad cow disease, she said.

By keeping a vegetarian diet, she and her husband are also keeping kosher, a Jewish dietary law spelled out in the Torah that prohibits mixing meat with dairy and requires that birds and mammals be slaughtered in a way that ensures they do not suffer.

"Eating that way makes you more mindful," Dubrawsky, a freelance textile designer, said. "Just like in Judaism, what you say to and about people is very important; it's really bad to deride people or insult them. What you put in your mouth is as important as what comes out of it."

Dubrawsky and Trent, both 42, are part of a trend among Jews to combine their religious views with the goal of consuming local, organic food. Called ethical kashrut, it's the idea that adherence to Jewish dietary laws is as important as the ethics and social justice involved in the creation and processing of food.

In the past, "the idea of how you would slaughter an animal was connected to the idea of appreciating that the animal was God's creation, and you're lucky enough to have the sustenance from eating it, but you are required to kill it as humanely as possible," Dubrawsky said. "It's an old idea that fits into the new idea" of ethical kashrut, she said.

A major catalyst for Jews who now practice ethical kashrut was a scandal at Agriprocessors Inc., the largest provider of kosher meat in the United States.

May 12 marked the anniversary of federal immigration raids at the Postville, Iowa, company, where 389 immigrants were arrested in the Bush administration's largest crackdown on illegal workers at a single site. For years, the company faced allegations of worker abuse and violations of labor laws. It was also criticized over code violations and slaughtering practices not in line with kosher rules to minimize animal suffering.

"I was horrified because those people know what Jewish law says about that," Dubrawsky said. "They, of all people, who put forward this righteous face, should have known better."

The Agriprocessors raid and allegations of violations reverberated at the Kosher Store at the H-E-B off Far West Boulevard, Cross said. It's the grocery chain's only dedicated kosher store statewide, and it has relied on Agriprocessors for the bulk of its meat products for years. The 2008 raid caused a flurry of questions, said Frank Efrayim Brock, the food supervisor at the store."

People in Texas are curious about where food comes from now," he said.

The discussions prompted by the raid created "a growing pain in the kosher community, the first big moment in kosher," Brock said. "Now, kosher has to reflect the values in society. Ultimately, this was going to happen, and it's for the good because we can have relatively inexpensive meat that doesn't have a stigma attached to it."

Cross said the store stopped doing business with Agriprocessors in November. "But there was no one to fill the void," he said, so he had to search for new suppliers.

He selected Wise Organic Pastures in Pennsylvania, which supplies kosher meat both to the H-E-B Kosher Store and to Central Market stores in Austin. He also chose meat suppliers in Minnesota and South Dakota.

Rabbinical authorities in charge of kosher standards, referred to as mashgichim, are developing a seal for ethical foods. The new and traditional stamps are called hekhshers. Even before the raid, Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., started work on an ethical kashrut symbol — called Magen Tzedek, which means seal of justice. He is director of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, which has worked to get the seal placed on products since 2006. He said that the commission hopes to have the seal on at least three products before Rosh Hashana in September.

Adoption of the proposed seal would be one way to make ancient Jewish practices fit a more modern society, said Lisa Goodgame, 37, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council with the Jewish Community Association of Austin.

"Ethical kashrut may make keeping kosher relevant again for my generation because it helps blend how we eat with spirituality, which is very important," Goodgame said.

The seal benefits everyone involved, Allen said. "More people will be buying kosher products, because they're kosher, they're ethical or for both reasons," he said. "It will be a win for food producers, the workers who will be treated better, the animals that will be treated better and the environment. Our product is ultimately the antidote to the horrific tragedy in Postville."

The Kaddish debate continues

2009-05-13T20:00:00.000-05:00

By Ami Eden · May 13, 2009

Another top leader of Conservative Judaism is taking issue with Rabbi Norman Lamm, the chancellor of Yeshiva University, for his recent assertion that "with a heavy heart we will soon say kaddish on the Reform and Conservative Movements."

Here's the statement put out by Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the incoming executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement's rabbinical union.

New York, NY (May 13, 2009) – One week ago today, I returned from the AIPAC conference in Washington, DC energized not only by the thrilling program but by the realization that out of the 200-plus rabbis in attendance, more than half were my colleagues, ordained by the Conservative movement and now standing at the helms of the leading Jewish communal organizations of the day. They came with delegations of committed Conservative Jews from their congregations and institutions.

During my time in our nation’s capital I also met with the Conservative rabbis who were heading up our new Office of Public Policy and Office of Israel Advocacy, respectively. These initiatives are part of a five-platform agenda of the Rabbinical Assembly which includes Social Justice Partnerships, Interfaith Work and Hekhsher Tzedek -- a star project of the Conservative movement which is focused on creating an ethical certification process for kosher foods.

The enormous popularity and success of Hekhsher Tzedek, which has captured the interest of the Jewish community at large, including many of Rabbi Lamm’s Orthodox constituents who are in agreement with my colleague, Rabbi Morris Allen’s call that we take ethical mitzvot as seriously as ritual ones in the preparation of kosher food. The message we are hearing loud and clear is that the American Jewish community is quite literally hungry to lead lives where the ritual is bound up in the ethical underpinning.

This contribution and others, however, have sadly eluded the notice of Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University, who felt moved to publicly declare the need to recite Kaddish for our allegedly-dying movement in a recent Jerusalem Post interview.

It seems that Rabbi Lamm has been so busy making funeral arrangements that he has missed the news of our movement’s great and global vitality. Our seminaries are respected houses of religious learning and pastoral training, drawing new and committed students to the rabbinate. There are exciting congregational developments around the world, especially in Israel and Europe. Our presence in Latin America is critical. Our warm and welcoming synagogues throughout the United States and Canada offer proof that our movement occupies the very heart of Jewish life in North America.

And our camping and school system could not be stronger and more in demand. If any of our schools are feeling the pinch, it is an indication of the nation’s economic crisis as a whole… not our movement’s failure.

As I prepare to assume my post as executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly this summer, I am excited and optimistic at this very moment of transition into new leadership. With Chancellor Arnold Eisen directing the Jewish Theological Seminary and Rabbi Steven Wernick heading The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, we are prepared to energetically bring the Conservative Movement forward into the new century.

My advice to Rabbi Lamm is -- save your Kaddish. The imminent demise of Conservative Judaism is a tired and false mantra. Instead, I would suggest that you direct your attention to working cooperatively within the Orthodox community to build for the Jewish future. This, and not eulogizing the institutions where Jews live their lives, ought to be the work in which we jointly and cooperatively engage.

A wakeup call, one year after immigration raid in Postville, Iowa

2009-05-13T18:15:00.000-05:00

By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 05/12/2009 11:51:41 PM CDT

Warning: The following column is rated 'R' for righteous. People younger than 17 — but especially closed-minded nativists, bigots and those folks with absolutely no sense of global history or diverse life experiences — must be accompanied by a mature adult before reading this.

Church bells rang Tuesday. Shofars — ram's horns blown to signify a call to action in the Jewish tradition — were heard coast to coast, from Malibu to Mendota Heights to Maine.

The demonstrations, in addition to a multitude of solidarity marches and prayer and candlelight vigils here and elsewhere, commemorated the massive federal immigration raid a year ago this week at the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.

Almost 400 workers, many of them undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico who were longtime residents of the northeastern Iowa community, were scooped up in a SWAT-like action replete with military-style helicopters.

Most of the workers served at least five months in prison and ultimately were deported after initially being charged with aggravated identity theft — a prosecutorial tool rejected last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. And that unanimous ruling was as stunning and crystal clear as an in-your-face LeBron James slam-dunk.

The plant's well-heeled Orthodox Jewish owners and its supervisors and underlings were charged, indicted, prosecuted or are still facing trial on employment, workplace safety and child labor violations.

The raid punched a hole in the small town's economy and financial future. Agriprocessors, which declared bankruptcy and virtually closed shop six months after the raid, was the town's major employer.

Several other businesses closed in the wake of the raid. Home vacancy rates surged after the loss of about 20 percent of the town's population, some 2,300 in July 2007.

The town's revenue base dipped to the point that the city council unsuccessfully sought to declare Postville a federal disaster zone.

A weekly food pantry giveaway still draws lines reminiscent of the Depression era.

"I don't think anyone will ever look back and say it was a good thing,'' Marilyn Olson, a coordinator for the Postville Recovery Coalition, said of the raid in a Waterloo, Iowa, newspaper interview. "This is a community that is deeply hurt and grieving."

COMING TO GRIPS

These raids are pretty much like slapping a Band-Aid on a heart attack. But we've relied on them until the recent change in presidential administrations because our leaders — regardless of party — lack the cojones to cut through the partisan politics and come up with a better way.

In the meantime, it's been the interfaith community of America that has seized the moral leadership and higher ground on this issue.

That's why I attended an interfaith service on the Postville raid, held Tuesday morning at the Beth Jacob Synagogue in Mendota Heights.

Rabbi Morris Allen, a longtime Twin Cities resident and religious leader, has garnered a national if controversial name by spearheading "Hekhsher Tzedek," or ethical seal.

Allen and many supporters believe ethical standards such as respecting worker rights should serve as a required supplement to the traditional kosher handling of meats, a practice pretty much corrupted by the aftermath of the raid at Agriprocessors.

"Judaism, absent ritual or ethic, is not a complete spiritual journey," Allen said. "It's unconscionable that we in the Jewish community were complicit in allowing this kind of behavior to continue, where the food we are obligated to eat was being produced on the backs of 15- and 16-year-old kids whose safety was endangered. This is not who we are as a people."

The Rev. Jose Santiago of Holy Rosary Church in South Minneapolis, a guest at Tuesday's service, underlined how the raid and other daily actions little known to the public needlessly tear families apart.

He peppered the audience with example upon example of discriminatory practices thrust upon members of his congregation — from ethnic profiling to demanding more marriage documentation than legally required by suburban city records clerks "who take it upon themselves to be above the law."

He cited the July 14, 2008, beating death of Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old married father of two, by a band of assailants in the small Pennsylvania town of Shenandoah. Two culprits, who cursed Ramirez's ethnicity during the incident, were acquitted of murder charges in April and found guilty of simple assault — a verdict Santiago noted was cheered by the defendants' families and friends in the courtroom.

"We need to not allow these things to happen, whether it's in our back yard or within our nation because they affect people who have simply come here to raise their families and children," he said.

TAKING ACTION

Before blowing the shofar to end the service, Allen read excerpts from a letter sent to President Barack Obama this week by Pedro Arturo Lopez Vega, a 12-year-old Postville resident affected by the raid.

Pedro's mother was among those workers arrested and deported after serving a five-month prison term based on the charges disallowed by the nation's highest court.

"I don't want anybody to suffer the way I did because it is very painful when they take away the one person you can always trust and count on," Pedro wrote in the May 6 letter.

He requested that Obama, whose administration has pretty much slapped a moratorium on such raids pending a Department of Homeland Security review, allow his deported mother to at least return to Postville to attend his graduation from eighth grade in two weeks.

"I can not repay you with money but I assure you that I will do my best and always help people in need," Pedro wrote in conclusion.

Allen then read an excerpt from the Torah that notes that "a stranger who dwells with you shall be to you as of one of your own citizens, you shall love them as yourself as you were strangers in the land."

Then he blew the horn, a sound hopefully heard loud and clear Tuesday in Washington, D.C., and all corridors of righteous justice.

Rubén Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454.

# To read congressional testimony on the raid in Postville, go to judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_072408.html.

Kosher that's not just for food

2009-04-07T21:12:00.006-05:00

As Passover begins, there is a movement in the Jewish community to expand the meaning of kosher beyond just food. Jennifer Collins reports.

Read Text Here(Listen Here)

Kai Ryssdal: Passover starts tomorrow night, which means kosher shopping has already begun. This year though with a twist. Marketplace's Jennifer Collins reports there is a movement in the Jewish community to expand the meaning of kosher.

JENNIFER COLLINS: Morris Allen is a rabbi in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. Today he is delivering Passover supplies to the neediest in his congregation of 400 families.

MORRIS ALLEN: Let's see I can open up a bag: Matzoh, grape juice, candles.

It's all Kosher, of course. That means the preparation of the food complies with Jewish dietary laws. Allen has started a movement to make sure that Kosher food is ethical as well. It's his response to a scandal at a Kosher meat-packing plant that took advantage of immigrant workers.

ALLEN: When you buy a Kosher product, they should be able to know, that it's really a product that speaks to the best of who we are as a people.

So, for instance, that brisket was produced by a worker who was treated well and by a company that respects the environment. He also wants to give those products a certification, what's being called the "Magen Tzedek" seal. Allen says the seal could help companies during this recession.

ALLEN: People are looking at ways that they can catch up in the market share. And I believe that the Magen Tzedek symbol will become such a vehicle by which we will ultimately elevate food production in this country.

Some in the Jewish community say Kosher law is strict enough. But Randy Fried, the manager of "Got Kosher?" a shop in Los Angeles, says his customers want ethically produced products.

RANDY FRIED: Is it organic? Is it natural? So there's certainly a moment in the Kosher food world of moving toward a more healthy, organic approach.

Fried says he expects business to be brisk when the seal is rolled out later this year, just in time for Rosh Hashanah.

I'm Jennifer Collins for Marketplace.

The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission Announces the Creation of Magen Tzedek

2008-12-23T15:26:00.003-06:00

Conservative Movement's Ethical Certification Seal
To Be Introduced to Kosher Food Industry in Coming Months

Design Features Emanating Star of David

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Shira Dicker 917.403.3989; Aliza Fried 202.265.3000

December 23, 2008 (New York, NY) - The Hekhsher Tzedek commission has announced the creation of Magen Tzedek, the new ethical certification seal that will be introduced to the kosher food industry in the coming months.

Designed as an emanating Star of David, Magen Tzedek is the symbol that will be featured on kosher foods whose companies successfully apply for ethical certification from the Hekhsher Tzedek commission.

Launched during the summer of 2007, Magen Tzedek is a joint project of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Though the initiative, as well as the actual seal, will now be known as Magen Tzedek, the group in charge will still be known as the Hekhsher Tzedek commission.

Credited with promoting the observance of kashrut within the Conservative movement and beyond, the Magen Tzedek seal is designed to coexist with other rabbinic kosher seals. Dr. Joe M. Regenstein, a professor of food science at Cornell University, has been named an advisor for the project. A renowned consultant to the kosher food industry, he will help in the creation of Magen Tzedek's compliance application and procedure.

"Magen Tzedek is a proud product of Conservative Judaism but also a gift for the entire Jewish community," said Rabbi Michael Siegel, co-chair of the Hekhsher Tzedek commission. "It is a bold new symbol that signifies kosher food produced with the highest degree of integrity."

The Magen Tzedek seal will be awarded to kosher food companies based on a number of criteria having to do with such matters as employee health, safety and training; wages and benefits; the company's environmental impact; corporate transparency and product development, among others.

The creation of Magen Tzedek follows on the heels of the $100,000 grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation received earlier this month, the second grant the foundation awarded the Hekhsher Tzedek commission.

Awarded in a time of economic recession, the $100K Cummings grant expresses a vote of confidence in the power of Magen Tzedek to effect positive change within the American Jewish world. According to the commission's second co-chair Jerold Jacobs, the funds will be earmarked towards advocacy and education efforts to promote the ethical certification initiative.

"By introducing Magen Tzedek, we are inviting the public to be a part of the conversation about kashrut, justice and Judaism," said Mr. Jacobs. "Magen Tzedek draws together consumers of kosher food around the communal table to contemplate how to bring tzedek - justice - to the world."

The focus on the ethical aspects of ritual observance has won the support of the entire Conservative movement and ignited a movement that transcends denominational boundaries. "Magen Tzedek is an authentic expression of the Conservative rabbinate and our unflagging commitment to the integration of ethics and ritual," said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, incoming executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. "It is an excellent representation of our philosophy."

Rabbi Siegel speculated that even non-Jews or Jews who do not keep kosher might select a product with a Hekhsher Tzedek certification as a way of expressing their commitment to social justice. "In this regard Hekhsher Tzedek assumes an important position in the broad social movement of ethical eating," he added.

The new Magen Tzedek seal will be introduced at the annual Hazon Food Conference this week, which features Rabbi Morris Allen, creator and founder of the Hekhsher Tzedek initiative. The conference will be held December 25-28 at the Asimolar Conference and Retreat Center in California.

"Our initiative has captured the hearts and minds of American Jews, reflecting deeply-held social and religious values," said Rabbi Allen. "Magen Tzedek presents an opportunity to deepen one's observance of kashrut alongside social responsibility."

For more information about Magen Tzedek or to set up an interview with any member of the Hekhsher Tzedek commission, please call Shira Dicker at 917.403.3989 or Aliza Fried at 202.265.3000. To view the new Magen Tzedek seal, please click here. If you intend to reproduce the seal, please use the black and white symbol. To learn more, please go to www.hekhshertzedek.org; www.magentzedek.org; www.rabbinicalassembly.org or www.uscj.org.

Rabbi Morris Allen's blog can be found at http://rabbimorrisallen2.blogspot.com/.

ABOUT THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY

Founded in 1901, the Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The Assembly actively promotes the cause of Conservative Judaism, publishes learned texts, prayer-books and works of Jewish interest, and administers the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for the Conservative movement.

Rabbis of the assembly serve throughout the world in congregations, on campus, as educators, hospital and military chaplains, teachers of Judaica and officers of communal service organizations. Its membership spans over 20 countries and numbers 1600 rabbis.

ABOUT THE UNITED SYNAGOGUE OF CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism represents and supports the synagogues of the Conservative movement in North America. We work with lay leaders and Jewish professionals on the national, regional, and grassroots levels to teach, inspire, and motivate Conservative Jews to live lives increasingly filled with Jewish learning, ethical behavior, spirituality, and mitzvot.

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Label Says Kosher; Ethics Suggest Otherwise

2008-12-11T08:27:00.001-06:00

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: December 10, 2008
The New York Times

What it means to be kosher — the nub of a debate sparked in May by sweeping labor abuse charges against the Orthodox Jewish owners of the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the nation — was pondered Tuesday night in a panel discussion at Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan, the academic nexus of Orthodox Judaism.

It was, for the most part, a subdued and scholarly discussion about ritual law, Jewish ethics and what to do if you suspect that the kosher meat on your table has been butchered and packed by 16-year-old Guatemalan girls forced to work 20-hour days under threat of deportation, as alleged in a recent case.

“Is it still possible to consider something ‘kosher certified’ if it is produced under unethical conditions?” asked Gilah Kletenik, one of the organizers of the student group that arranged the session, which drew an overflow crowd of 500, most of them students.

In keeping with the Talmudic tradition embodied by the rabbis on the panel, the answer seemed to be yes and no.

“The basic underpinning of Jewish tradition is ethics,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, a Yeshiva dean and the chief executive of kosher certification for the Orthodox Union, the group that oversees kosher standards in 8,000 food manufacturing plants around the world, including about 25 meatpacking facilities in the United States.

But he said the process of producing food that is certifiably kosher according to Jewish law is one thing; the conditions in which that process is undertaken are another. “The issues are not obvious sometimes,” he said.

In a more pointed comment, Rabbi Avi Shafran, who has defended the prerogative of the Orthodox rabbinate against what he sees as well-meaning but misguided efforts to add social-justice protections to the criteria for the production of kosher food, said, “Lapses of business ethics, animal rights issues, worker rights matters — all of these have no effect whatsoever on the kosher value.”

The realm of kashrut, or Jewish dietary law, which for 5,000 years has been the exclusive domain of orthodox authorities, has received new scrutiny from a broad spectrum of Jews since federal agents raided an Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, arresting 389 illegal immigrants. The owners, Aaron Rubashkin and his son, Sholom, members of a prominent Orthodox family in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, were charged with bank fraud and employing under-age workers.

After the raid, workers’ organizations said that many Agriprocessors employees had long complained of frequent accidents and forced overtime but did not take their claims to the authorities because they feared deportation.

The workers’ stories gave a boost to a kosher-reform campaign known as Hekhsher Tzedek (in Hebrew, kosher righteousness), which was begun in 2006 by Rabbi Morris J. Allen, a Conservative rabbi from Mendota Heights, Minn., who has long promoted ethical reforms in kosher meat plants.

Rabbi Allen said on Wednesday that though he “would have loved” to have been invited to the discussion, “the important thing is that the topic of what constitutes good kosher food production has been elevated.”

“We are proud that people in all parts of the Jewish community are taking our agenda seriously,” he added.

The four-member panel was composed of Rabbi Genack, Rabbi Shafran, Rabbi Basil Herring — executive director of the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox group — and Shmuly Yanklowitz, whose views probably came closest to those of the reform-minded Rabbi Allen.

Mr. Yanklowitz, a recent Yeshiva graduate and co-founder of Uri L’Tzedek, which describes itself as “the Orthodox social justice movement,” told the audience he had visited Postville and met a former Agriprocessors employee named Maria, a young woman from Guatemala.

“Maria worked in hot, slavelike conditions from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. so that we could have our kosher meat,” he said.

In an extended address that was at times Jeremiah-like in its condemnations, he called on the audience to rise to “a higher moral standard” in addition to adhering to the strict guidelines of kashrut as defined by traditional Jewish law.

“The consumer of goods produced immorally is morally culpable,” he said.

At the moment, Mr. Yanklowitz’s group has focused mainly on improving conditions for workers in kosher restaurants.

Rabbi Allen’s group has proposed something more comprehensive and problematic for Orthodox authorities: a seal of approval, the Hekhsher Tzedek seal, which he proposes adding to kosher products whose producers meet certain standards of employee safety and benefits, humane treatment of animals and environmental protection.

The campaign has received support from prominent members of the Conservative and Reform movements, but so far not from Orthodox circles, despite general agreement that worker protections are important in kosher food plants.

What may seem to reformers to be a mistaken separation of Jewish ritual law and Jewish ethics, however, is seen by the Orthodox as a defense of tradition.

“There is nothing in Jewish law that conflates the status of kosher food with the way the food is produced,” Rabbi Shafran said in a phone interview Wednesday. “What sticks in our craw,” he said, referring to the proposed seal, “is that it is following the zeitgeist rather than following the law. It falsifies the integrity of Jewish law.”

To be clear, he said, “Ethics is vitally important in Judaism.” Unethical acts, like illegal acts, should be punished according to the laws that apply. But the rules of what defines food as kosher were written in the Torah by divine agency and cannot be changed, he said.

Shlomit Cohen, 21, a senior at the university’s Stern College for Women and president of the Social Justice Society, a student group representative of a new wave of social activism among young Orthodox Jews, said she appreciated Rabbi Shafran’s point of view and “his desire to retain respect for the authority of legal tradition.”

“But this is more than a technical legal issue,” she said. “Change is needed, and if it is not coming from the leadership we have, it will have to come from others.”

Postvile coming unglued

2008-11-21T13:59:00.001-06:00

By Ben Harris · November 20, 2008
The Agriprocessors plant is shut down. Workers are not being paid. An estimated several hundred are stranded, broke, and out of work. And now, we have the first rumblings of a violent reaction.

Jeff Abbas, the indefatiguable force behind Postville radio, recorded a frightening interview this morning with a 50-year-old ex-Agriprocessors employee who warned that other former plant workers -- some of them ex-cons and possessing firearms -- were planning robberies around town and the kidnapping of the Rubashkin children. Abbas says the city does not consider the threat credible, but several law enforcement vehicles are expected in Postville tonight just in case.

A recording of the interview is here.

Meanwhile, a judge is expected to make a determination today about whether Sholom Rubashkin will be held in jail until his trial. And Postville's Jewish community, which numbers in the several hundred, is beginning to feel the pinch. The kosher grocery is reportedly shuttered and folks are without food and -- irony of ironies -- kosher meat. And if that alone20isn't worthy of a novel, who comes to the rescue? Rabbi Morris Allen, he of Hekhsher Tzedek fame, whose Minnesota synagogue sent a trailer of food to Postville this week.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

Kosher Ethics

2008-10-07T02:03:00.003-05:00

Religion and Ethics News Weekly
October 3, 2008

Watch this Report

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about a question facing many Orthodox and Conservative Jews who eat only kosher food. Meat is kosher if it has been prepared according to Jewish law and certified so by a rabbi. But what if the plant managers were accused of unfair labor practices? Should kosher certification depend not only on how an animal is slaughtered but on how workers are treated? Lucky Severson reports from Iowa, where a kosher meat packing plant is owned and run by Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn.

LUCKY SEVERSON: This was the scene in the early hours of May 12, when authorities staged a commando style raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. They arrested hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants. But then they uncovered evidence suggesting serious safety violations and child labor abuse by plant officials. People in this small town are still in shock, and the reverberations have rattled and divided the American Jewish community. It's a debate not so much about the raid itself, but what it uncovered. Rabbi Morris Allen:

Rabbi MORRIS ALLEN (Beth Jacob Congregation, Minneapolis, MN): The Jewish community is going to have to ask, is it enough for us to be satisfied that we have kosher food on our plate? Or are we also concerned that in the fulfillment of the laws of kashrut, which is a fulfillment of a way in which we bring holiness into our lives that there has not been a desecration of people's dignity in allowing me to fulfill my holy act?

SEVERSON: It was an odd match in the beginning in 1988 when Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, New York showed up in rural Postville and bought the defunct meat packing plant on the edge of town. But over the years, Christians and Jews lived side by side and both sides seemed to prosper. Agriprocessors grew into the largest producer of kosher food in the U.S. Including the slaughterhouse, the plant employed over a thousand workers, with rabbis supervising the actual killing to make sure it's done in keeping with Jewish law.

MENACHEM LUBINSKY (Spokesman, Agriprocessor, Inc.): It has to be done by a shochet, by a kosher slaughterer who is a God-fearing Jew.

SEVERSON: In fact, kosher rules are so strict rabbis like Yosiede Lstein work in kosher restaurants and markets to make certain all foods coming in meet biblical standards.

Rabbi YOSIEDE LSTEIN (Caravelle Restaurant): A kosher animal is delineated in the Bible, chapter 11 of Leviticus. God says in the Bible what animals may be eaten. For example, only certain types of animals and those animals are kosher only because they have split hooves and chew their cud. Why these are the signs for kosher, we have no idea. God said it. We believe it. Simple as that.

SEVERSON: It's believed that almost 90 percent of Orthodox Jews eat only kosher food, and around 20 percent of conservative Jews adhere to the tradition. Consumers look for the kosher label much as they do the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. So they were taken aback when the animal rights group PETA took this video and accused Agriprocessors of not slaughtering in a humane way.
Elinore Ehrlich

ELINORE EHRLICH (Kosher Customer): I do a lot of my kosher meat shopping at Shop Rite, and I have spoken to the manager of the butcher section, and I said I was really very upset and very disturbed about what I had heard about the plant, the Agriprocessors plant in Iowa, and he too was very upset and very disturbed.

SEVERSON: But the consternation over the kosher slaughter and processing of animals has grown into concern over the ethical treatment of humans, of workers, and there are some rabbis now who want to expand the meaning of kosher.

Rabbi ALLEN: We believe that most consumers, when given a choice between a product that says it's ritually kosher, and a product that says it's ritually kosher and it's been produced in an ethical fashion, we'll choose the latter.

SEVERSON: Nearly 400 immigrants were charged with immigration violations. The men are still in prison or have been deported. The women, mostly mothers, wear electronic monitoring bracelets. And it's left to religious leaders, like Father Paul Ouderkirk of St. Bridget's Catholic Church, to feed and care for the moms and kids.
Rev. Lloyd Paul Oudekirk

Father LLOYD PAUL OUDEKIRK (St. Bridget's Catholic Church): The more I talk about it, the madder I get, because we're going into our fifth month of this. They have these women with no money, no income. Plus they need food, and shelter, and so on. So Immigration is asking us to pay for their being incarcerated right on the streets of this town.

SEVERSON: Father Paul introduced us to Rosa Samora, mother of two daughters whose father was taken to a Missouri prison. For five months she has been wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet, leaving her unable to work or to leave town.

ROSA SAMORA (speaking in Spanish)

Father OUDEKIRK: She said, "There isn't much I can do because I, because I depend so much on the charity of the church here." So even if her husband were deported, she wouldn't have enough money to go with him.

SEVERSON: The Agriprocessors raid was the biggest of its kind in U.S. history. Company spokesman Menachem Lubinsky questions the government's motives.

Mr. LUBINSKY: I'm not going to be the one to accuse anyone of being that selective to pick on that company because of the way they look. Maybe they look like Hasidim, maybe they're Jewish. I'm not going to deny that their very entry into Postville, Iowa wasn't under the most friendly terms. I believe that there was something here that just didn't add up.

SEVERSON: But Rabbi Allen, who leads a Conservative congregation in Minneapolis, says he doesn't think Agriprocessors was targeted because it's operated by Orthodox Jews, but because they treated their workers poorly. He points to the over 9,000 criminal misdemeanor charges authorities have filed against the company for, among other things, hiring underage workers and putting them in hazardous jobs. Rabbi Allen visited the plant before and after the raid.
Rabbi Morris Allen

Rabbi ALLEN: People shared with us unbelievable stories of pain and suffering that they endured because they had no choices. If they raised their voice, they could have been deported back, and they really didn't have any place to turn to.

Mr. LUBINSKY: The government's going to have to prove that the management knew every day that these people were of underage. Remember, the imperative for these people was they wanted to make money. They wanted to help their families, and as in every immigrant group, they'll do anything under the sun to get those jobs and to bring money into the house.

SEVERSON: Rabbi Allen says Leviticus details kosher laws, but there are equally important laws about the treatment of workers in Deuteronomy 24.

Rabbi ALLEN: You should not abuse the needy and destitute labor, whether a fellow countrymen, or a stranger in one of the communities of your land -- and one text telling us what kind of meat to eat isn't written in boldface, and another text telling us about how to treat the worker isn't written in small print.

SEVERSON: Rabbi Allen is pushing a plan to add an additional symbol to the kosher certification -- a "justice" certificate that says the kosher product meets biblical, ethical standards as well. He says he's received enthusiastic support for his justice certificate from rabbis across the religious spectrum, but certainly not all.

Mr. LUBINSKY: I think it's more that the Orthodox feel, look, we are -- we're the basic customers. We buy this product 365 days a year. We're interested in kashrut the way it was for 3,000 years. We're not interested in redefining it.
Rabbi Yosiede Lstein

Rabbi LSTEIN: In America there are plenty of labor laws to deal with that, and if the government is not doing enough to enforce it, then you just have to step up what the laws are doing already.

Rabbi ALLEN: It's a religious concern, and we should never leave to the government those issues that are the responsibility of a particular religious community to address.

SEVERSON: Even though some Jewish leaders are opposed to the notion of a justice certificate, the idea may be gaining steam among Jewish consumers.

Ms. ERHLICH: I discussed it with my rabbi, and he's not happy about putting this into a solid written down kind of thing. Certain things should be done without having to put them down, and yet behind this movement I think there is something worthwhile.

Rabbi ALLEN: This is a major undertaking. This is the first time that a religious community has staked, has set out to say that it is possible to demonstrate that good corporate citizenship is something that can be rewarded from a religious point of view.

SEVERSON: The Agriprocessors plant has hired a new person to run its operation with promises to make things better. The plant itself is not operating nearly at capacity because not enough people can be found to do the unpleasant work, and the illegal immigrants are still waiting to learn their fate.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Lucky Severson in Postville, Iowa.

In the Diaspora: Unetaneh tokef

2008-10-05T15:22:00.004-05:00

by Samuel Freedman
The Jerusalem Post
October 5, 2008

For two days earlier this week, as many of us stood in synagogue, we recited one of the most famous and challenging passages in the Rosh Hashana liturgy, the acrostic poem of Unetaneh Tokef. At the very outset, the text reminds us we are in the "awesome and terrible" time of judgment. For those who fall short, the verses declaim a variety of hideous deaths: by beast, plague, stoning, famine, earthquake, sword.

In its refrain, however, Unetaneh Tokef offers the formula for survival. U'teshuva, u'tefilla, u'tzedaka ma'avirin et ro'a hagezera, go the words. Repentance, prayer and righteousness can avert the evil decree.

As American Jews, we're not particularly vulnerable these days to famine or beasts, and stoning was something we gladly partook of in college. We need deliverance more from hypocrisy, a hypocrisy bred by comfort. Hearing the Rosh Hashana service, it was hard to conceive of a more appropriate focus of New Year soul-searching than Agriprocessors.

By now, the scandal of Agriprocessors has been chronicled from Stephen Bloom's book Postville to Nathaniel Popper's investigative reports in the Forward to Julia Preston's coverage in The New York Times to the muckraking blogger FailedMessiah.com. No sensate American Jew has any reason to be unfamiliar with the rudiments of the case: The largest kosher meat plant in the nation has been charged with violating federal or state laws on pollution, workplace safety, child labor and the employment of illegal immigrants.

Early on in the series of exposures, Morris Allen, a Conservative rabbi in St. Paul, Minnesota, began campaigning for a new designation of kashrut called hechsher tzedek that reflected how a food producer treated its human employees as much as its animal raw material. With the explosion of news about Agriprocessors since last spring, when federal authorities swooped down on the Iowa plant to arrest several hundred Hispanic immigrants, the hechsher tzedek proposal has gathered momentum from its base in the Conservative movement to Reform and even certain Modern Orthodox quarters. Just in the past few weeks, the Orthodox Union threatened to withdraw its valuable hechsher from Agriprocesssors' meat unless the company replaces its CEO. The Rabbinical Council of America, the major association of Orthodox rabbis, announced it would form a task force to determine ethical guidelines and practices in producing kosher food.

SO, WHILE I hardly was in the position to take a field survey, I would guess that hechsher tzedek and Agriprocessors figured prominently in a great many Rosh Hashana sermons. Which is all to the good. And at the same time, I've become aware of a dismissive counterargument that portrays hechsher tzedek as an easy issue, a lofty stance that costs nothing to the person holding it. That premise I deeply dispute.

At a minimum, an American Jew who refuses to buy Agriprocessors' meat is willing to be inconvenienced because its distribution network is unmatched in the industry. If there is indeed a kosher-meat shortage in parts of the country, as has been reported, then prices will almost certainly rise.

Paying that kind of literal price is the least important cost of conscience. Far more importantly, the Agriprocessors situation requires us to look into ourselves, our values. America as a whole has been unwilling to acknowledge the elephant in the room - the illegal immigrants, given no plausible way to become legal, who babysit our kids, mow our lawns, bus our tables, build our homes. No, the discussion on the subject consists of one side: the fantasy of walling off Mexico and shipping all the illegals to the far side.

Agriprocessors offers our own specifically Jewish version of this American embarrassment. The biggest producer of the meat we consider to be holy was doing so by taking advantage of the desperate and weak.

IT ISN'T Agriprocessors' fault that Congress has repeatedly caved in to the nativist lobby and failed to enact a rational reform of immigration law. But it is Agriprocessors' fault, enabled by our complicity at the registers, that the powerlessness of its workforce, the inability of the exploited to protest against their own exploitation lest they be uncovered and deported, made possible all the other forms of workplace abuse. To endorse and live by and buy by hechsher tzedek would require you (or me) to look unflinchingly at the casual hypocrisy that lets you separate what you consume from how it got to your plate.

What kind of religion cares more about how a cow's neck is slit than about child labor? Imagine if, after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, the prevailing Jewish concern hadn't been about the young seamstresses locked into a burning factory, but whether the clothes they made had mixed wool and linen.

One of the lasting shames of the Triangle fire is that it was the company's Jewish owners who exploited its Jewish workers. In the case of Agriprocessors, the Jewish owners, the Rubashkin family, have had plenty of defenders among the Orthodox. One delegation of rabbis, having taken a plant tour paid for by the company, pronounced the facility state-of-the-art - as if the issue here were the age of the equipment, not the conditions of the workers. Lenin had a phrase for that Orthodox delegation: "useful idiots."

It will be far from an easy issue to have an intra-Jew battle over hechsher tzedek. A lot of liberal American Jews, who never before showed much concern about kashrut, will have to make a persuasive case. Surely, the Rubashkins and their apologists are counting on their Jewish critics to lose energy, drift away, alight on some other cause du jour. Even if Agriprocessors changes its CEO, as the Orthodox Union has insisted, the shift could prove purely cosmetic unless sustained pressure on the company to rectify its day-in, day-out practices continues.

When it comes to Agriprocessors and hechsher tzedek, tefilla is the easy part, the lip service. Tzedaka and teshuva, righteousness and repentance - those demand action.

www.samuelfreedman.com

Living - not just eating - kosher

2008-09-29T13:34:00.002-05:00

Anderson Cooper 360
September 29, 2008

Rabbi Morris J Allen
Beth Jacob Congregation
Mendota Heights, MN

Being at the center of an effort to change how American Jews think about “what’s Kosher” is a double-edged sword when you are the rabbi of a modest congregation in suburban St. Paul and it is the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

This is the busy season for rabbis, the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. There are sermons to write and congregants to counsel. There are holiday preparations to look after, festive meals to plan, family members to invite.

Then add on interviews to be done – for radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the web. During this time of celebration and reflection I can most strongly make the case for a “Heksher Tzedek” or “Justice Certification” for Kosher meat and poultry.

Outside of the Jewish world, the word “Kosher” has become part of the vernacular, usually applying to whether one is acting properly or ethically. For Jews, Kosher means the rules that apply to what we eat and how we eat.

Kosher is a big business. There are about 6.5 million Jews in this country, but more than 10 million Americans who buy Kosher products.

We have proposed an additional standard as it relates to Kosher food – taking into account, for example, not only whether an animal is slaughtered according to Jewish law, but also how the animals are treated beforehand. This concern must also be matched, just as importantly, with how the people doing this work are treated. And not simply with meat, but Hekhsher Tzedek is addressed to all products which bear a kosher symbol. For these concerns also occupy a central place in the discussion of Jewish life. Yet, this undertaking is controversial.

Hekhsher Tzedek has sparked a national conversation among Jews about the contemporary meaning of Kosher. People who previously knew little about keeping Kosher are receiving a crash-course education. And they are responding beautifully. Our work has allowed us to demonstrate that when so important an issue is brought to a community, people respond.

Naturally, this brings a smile to a rabbi’s face (even one who, ironically, is a vegetarian). After 23 years of promoting the observance of Kashrut, people are now really listening! They are listening because we have demonstrated to the Jewish community that keeping Kosher is central to Jewish self-understanding and a perfect way to demonstrate that both ritual and ethical aspects of Jewish life can be present at our dining room tables.

Some people know about the Hekhsher Tzedek campaign because of the federal immigration raid in May and the investigation into the Agriprocessors meat processing facility in Postville, Iowa. The national Hekhsher Tzedek commission has gone on the record regarding charges of worker abuse at the plant, which produces kosher meat and poultry, insisting that the ethical treatment of workers and corporate responsibility be part of how we view Kosher companies.

Though this story has captured national headlines, Hekhsher Tzedek exists above and beyond this deplorable case, promoting the simple yet profound message that ritually kosher food tastes best when it is prepared in accordance with the ethical Jewish norms and values that are also found inside our tradition.

Keeping kosher has always been an integral part of Jewish identity. Kashrut provides us with a daily opportunity, with every meal, to sanctify our lives, to create a sense of holiness and awareness of God in our lives. Keeping kosher must translate into living kosher and exploiting a worker, the environment, or an animal in the process of producing kosher food makes that an impossibility. Our Justice Certification will insure that it is indeed possible to buy kosher food and be assured that it meets with all the criteria that we as Jews should live.

A Hekhsher Tzedek is being developed by a renowned group of rabbis and food industry experts. Marketing will commence when we are sure that we have developed a system that can evaluate from a Jewish perspective in an objective and verifiable manner. The appearance of this Justice Certification symbol alongside the traditional ritual hekhsher (Kosher seal) will provide consumers with assurance that the food they are buying is produced by companies that embrace Jewish ethical values as well as follow ritual practices.

This certification will be based on adherence to standards in five categories: Employees’ Wages and Benefits; Employee Health and Safety; Product Development; Corporate Transparency; and Environmental Impact.

It is important to understand that the goal of this initiative is not to replace any existing, honored hekhsher, nor to revise any traditional beliefs or practices. Rather it is intended to enhance what living kosher means.

And despite what some critics have said, Hekhsher Tzedek does not aim to overthrow existing standards of kashrut. Nor does it aim to be divisive, as others have charged. In fact, from our experience, Hekhsher Tzedek has built bridges between Jews of various walks of life. It will be a win-win for the producers of Kosher food. And here’s why.

Within my own movement, the Conservative movement of Judaism, Hekhsher Tzedek has gained unanimous support from the governing bodies of both rabbis and congregations. Simply put, Hekhsher Tzedek has served to re-energize Conser vative Judaism, which has always occupied the solid center of the American Jewish community. We have been able to speak about kashrut with new assuredness and confidence.

And we’ve received support from the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. Many Orthodox leaders have also praised the initiative, with a prominent rabbinical group announcing a similar type of initiative earlier this week. Hekhsher Tzedek has been endorsed by a consortium of organizations dedicated to social justice, including HAZON and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. When all is said and done, more Jews ( and many non-Jews) will buy more kosher products as a result of our work.

These have been exciting and dizzying times for those of us involved in Hekhsher Tzedek. What began as a modest initiative in my own community of Mendota Heights, MN to further promote the observance of the laws o f kashrut has snowballed into a national, interdenominational effort to create a culture of kashrut in America. I first spoke of this on the eve of Yom Kippur in 2006. Today, articles written about the kashrut in America frequently reference our work.

It seems that American Jews are hungry to live kosher lives, which is an expansion of the idea of simply keeping kosher.

Response to RCA Announcement

2008-09-25T23:18:00.001-05:00

We welcome the RCA's decision and encourage them to join with us, as the Reform Movement has recently done, in the work of Hekhsher Tzedek. Such a move would demonstrate that the entire Jewish community appreciates the need for restoring a culture of Kashrut in America Jewry. This decision by the RCA is an indication that Hekhsher Tzedek has been quite successful in demonstrating that our work matters--in terms of religious action and in terms of the everyday impact it has had already on the Jewish consumer.

Hekhsher Tzedek underscores the approach we have long advocated for Jewish life: an equal reverence for both "mitzvot bein adam l'makom" and "mitzvot bein adam lhavero"(what might be termed ritual and ethical commandments). This decision also underscores the fact that those who for the longest time dismissed this sacred work may well have been doing so simply because it emanated from the religious understanding of Conservative Jews and not because of the content of our work. Today, on the cusp of the New Jewish Year, perhaps a new recognition of the sacred work which all Jews are engaged in doing can be celebrated.

Rabbi Morris J Allen
Director Hekhsher Tzedek

A Different Kind Of Kosher Sermon

2008-09-24T23:37:00.003-05:00

by Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
New York Jewish Week

The most-contested presidential election in a generation. The worst stock market performance since the Depression. The always-precarious geopolitical situation in the Middle East. If you’re in shul during this High Holy Days season, you’ll hear your rabbi give sermons on these topics.

You’ll probably hear sermons about a slaughterhouse in rural Iowa, too. As the Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur season —the one time a year when rabbis deliver their sermons to packed pews — approaches, a likely sermon topic for many rabbis will be the ongoing controversy over the Agriprocessors plant in Postville and the resultant, growing acceptance of the Hekhsher Tzedek movement, which has cast a critical eye at the kosher food industry. The plant was raided by federal immigration officials in May, and its owners were charged earlier this month with criminal child labor violations.

Created by the Conservative movement two years ago and pitched to rabbis this year as a subject to be raised on the pulpit, Hekhsher Tzedek offers a seal, in addition to the standard Orthodox-endorsed kashrut labels, which attests that the approved product was made in accordance with ethical concern for animals and employees. Hekhsher Tzedek, a relatively new cause in the Jewish community, has apparently struck a responsive chord.

A representative sampling of rabbis contacted by The Jewish Week indicates that they have responded favorably to Hekhsher Tzedek, as well as a wide variety of other topics suggested in recent months by Jewish organizations. “The response [to the Hekhsher Tzedek sermon proposal] has been significant,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn., and Hekhsher Tzedek’s project director. “We’ve been contacted by rabbis across the denominational spectrum. Rabbis are planning to speak about it; rabbis have already spoken about it.”

“Almost everyone I heard from is talking about Hekhsher Tzedek” and planning to continue doing so in the coming weeks, said Rabbi Charles Savenor, executive director of the Metropolitan New York Region of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. “Some [local Conservative rabbis] are talking in terms of ‘justice.’ Some are talking about how kashrut is relevant in terms of personal responsibility.

The timing is perfect” for the Conservative movement to propose Hekhsher Tzedek as a sermon topic, Rabbi Savenor said.“I definitely will speak about Hekhsher Tzedek,” said Rabbi Laurence Sebert of the Town and Village Synagogue in Manhattan. He was inspired in part by the e-mail notice. “It’s a well-timed excellent suggestion.”

And Rabbi Sebert will discuss Darfur in the context of the wider subject of chesed, or kindness. These topics “fit in with things I had wanted to talk about. It’s certainly true for most of my colleagues,” he said.“It’s not either-or for me,” said Rabbi Sebert, referring to traditional themes or issues du jour. He tries to meld contemporary issues into “the eternal verities” of the Days of Repentance, he says. “If I’m taking about Darfur, I will talk about it in the broader context of teshuvah [return], tefilah [prayer] and tzedakah [charity]. It’s what the time of the year speaks to most clearly.

“Some things are prompted by [events] that happen the week before,” he says. Israel’s fighting in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 inspired many of the rabbi’s sermons. “September 11,” the orchestrated attacks on the U.S. the week before Rosh HaShanah in 2001, “that’s the obvious example,” he said.Discussions of contemporary issues receive a mixed reception from congregants, Rabbi Sebert said. “Some people love it when you talk about politics. Some people roll their eyes and take a nap.”

“The odds would be good” that many Reform rabbis in the New York City area will include Hekhsher Tzedek and Darfur, a topic suggested by American Jewish World Service, among their High Holy Days sermon topics, said Rabbi Eric Stark, director of the Union for Reform Judaism Greater New York Council. “My sense is that many rabbis who may be giving five or six sermons” during the yom tov period “were looking for ideas or suggestions... looking for a political topic. The issues of our day include topics like Darfur and the ethical treatment of animals.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue said he will include some remarks about Hekhsher Tzedek and Darfur in his yom tov sermons. “There needs to be both glatt kosher [a rigorous standard of kashrut] and glatt yosher [unscrupulous ethical standards],” Rabbi Schneier said of the Hekhsher Tzedek principles. The increasing acceptance of such quasi-political topics by a cross-section of American rabbis indicates both a change in the rabbinate, and the mounting influence of the Internet as a medium for reaching rabbis, observers told The Jewish Week.

Once, synagogues’ spiritual leaders turned mainly to traditional Jewish texts and liturgy for their sermon topics, especially on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Today, it’s often email. As always, rabbis say, they try to seek a balance between the old, standard concerns of repentance and self-examination, and the news. In the next two weeks, they say, they will devote their remarks to subjects, in addition to Hekhsher Tzedek, that come from their heart or from conversations with congregants.

“The economy is as the top” of the list, said Rabbi Potasnik. “Rabbis I have spoken to are very concerned about addressing the economy in some fashion. People are hurting. We are concerned... with what we are going to do to help people rebuild their lives.” Rabbi Potasnik, who serves as spiritual leader of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, said he will also deliver a sermon on “The Bucket List,” the to-do priorities of aging people, inspired by last year’s popular film directed by Rob Reiner. “Our generation is getting older,” Rabbi Potasnik said; people facing their own mortality ask themselves, “What spiritual legacy do I want to bequeath to my family?”

And the rabbi plans to speak, in some way, about Darfur, the ongoing genocide in Sudan that has taken some 450,000 lives during the last five years. “We have to keep the community fire going,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Westchester Reform Temple and a member of the American Jewish World Service board of trustees told a group of 70 rabbis who participated in a recent podcast conference call about Darfur.

“Every movement [of Judaism] sends out materials to their rabbis” with suggestions and background on High Holy Days sermonizing. “We bombard rabbis with all sorts of issues,” Rabbi Potasnik said. “It’s a very receptive audience.“I see rabbis today, the younger seminarians, who are much more involved in addressing contemporary problems,” he said.

Such groups as Rabbi Potasnik’s Board of Rabbis, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the Rabbinic Cabinet of United Jewish Communities, Mazon, Hazon and a wide variety of political groups in this country and Israel provide rabbis with both sermon suggestions and educational materials that relate to them.“ Any major national [Jewish] organization seeks to position their cause” by trying to shape rabbis’ sermons, says Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who became senior spiritual leader at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan this month. “They know they have a captive audience in the midsummer, if not earlier,” of rabbis working on several sermons.

Rabbi Cosgrove said he will concentrate this year on introducing himself and his “vision of congregational life” to members of his synagogue, and will mostly stay clear of current topics like Hekhsher Tzedek.“I integrate [suggestions] which are useful,” Rabbi Cosgrove said. “I don’t think it’s the responsibility of a congregational rabbi to be a spokesman for any [other] organization.”

No one needs a reminder to talk about this year’s highly contested presidential election. Since members of the clergy usually avoid direct political endorsements, rabbis will probably address Obama vs. McCain by discussing the importance of voting, or the challenge of maintaining one’s Jewish identity in a society where there is little overt anti-Semitism, Rabbi Potasnik said. “The election brings out, ‘What does it mean to be a Jew in America?’”

“I’m speaking a lot this year about change, because that’s on the mind of Americans” as a theme of both major party candidates for the presidency, said Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, spiritual leader of Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Baltimore and author of the newly published “Pulpit Power: Meaningful Sermons on Religion & Politics ... and Life” (EMEK Publishing) “We Jews speak about change every year” on the High Holy Days.Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum of Temple Israel in Lawrence, L.I., and Secretary General of the North American Board of Rabbis, said he too will speak about change during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. He says he notices “a profound focus on spirituality” among congregants this year. “Discussing your relationship with God seems more prevalent than in the past.”

The Conservative movement’s High Holy Days appeal is part of a wider effort to heighten the visibility of Hekhsher Tzedek in American Jewry in coming months. The Hekhsher Tzedek seal will appear on items made by companies that “reflect production benchmarks consistent with Jewish ethical standards,” paying fair wages, ensuring workplace safety, following government environmental rules and treating animals humanely, among other criteria.

Rabbi Allen calls Hekhsher Tzedek “a response to who we are as Jews. The image of kashrut has been tarnished” by reports of religious Jews mistreating animals and abusing employees, many of them undocumented and underage. “Hekhsher Tzedek is in many ways the remedy.”

The Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis endorsed Hekhsher Tzedek last month, and, Rabbi Allen says, many Reform rabbis will probably discuss the initiative over yom tov.“The endorsement of the CCAR is a very important statement,” Rabbi Allen said, adding that the Hekhsher Tzedek seal may lead members of the Reform community who ordinarily who do not observe kashrut to start buying more kosher products. The seal “will not be on food that is not kosher. This issue puts the responsibility on the congregants themselves.”

Do rabbis resent outsiders pushing them to speak about current issues on the High Holy Days? “No one has ever expressed to me resentment,” Rabbi Savenor said. “If they resent being asked to speak about something, they don’t speak about it.” “I don’t resent it. It’s very helpful,” Rabbi Sebert said. As a rabbi, he said, listening to others’ opinions, including those offered on the Internet, comes naturally. “I find that exchanging ideas, even over e-mail, stimulates my own thinking. That’s my job.”

E-mail: steve@jewishweek.org

Support for Hekhsher Tzedek

2008-09-18T23:22:00.000-05:00

The Union’s Executive Committee unanimously approved a resolution, “Worker Rights, Ethical Consumerism and the Kosher Food Industry,” which follows closely on the heels of the CCAR’s resolution on the subject. It urges Reform congregations and their members, whether or not they have elected to observe kashrut, to consider the guidelines to be established by the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission when purchasing food products and, in general, to become more ethically aware consumers. The full text of the resolution is available online.

Conservative Movement Finds Unity In Promoting New Hekhsher Guidelines

2008-09-11T17:42:00.002-05:00

By Anthony Weiss
Thu. Sep 11, 2008

The Forward

Two years after a bruising debate on sexuality that left some wondering if the Conservative movement was irreparably divided, an initiative to link kosher food regulations with labor and environmental standards seems to have reunited the movement’s rabbinate.

A number of rabbis have agreed to devote at least part of their High Holy Day sermons to the initiative, which is known as Hekhsher Tzedek, Hebrew for “justice certification.” In late July, the committee spearheading the initiative released the guidelines that will be used to judge food producers, but the High Holy Day push ensures that the move will be widely discussed when synagogue attendance is at its highest.

Rabbis and leaders of the Conservative movement who spoke with the Forward were universally positive about Hekhsher Tzedek, a display of unity that would have been astonishing only two years ago.

“It’s something that is obviously one people can get behind, because who is opposed to tzedek?” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, referring to the Hebrew word for “justice.” “Among rabbis, I think it’s a great relief to be able to talk about tzedek.”

In 2006 Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota started the kosher food initiative in response to reporting by the Forward about labor conditions at the giant Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.

The moves by Allen and his commission came at the height of the movement’s earlier problems. In December 2006, the movement’s committee on Jewish law passed a legal opinion paving the way for same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian ordination. In response, four rabbis promptly resigned from the committee in protest. Earlier this year, four synagogues in Toronto, where opposition to the sexuality rulings had been particularly high, voted to leave the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella group for Conservative synagogues.

As the same-sex marriage debate unfolded, the Conservative movement’s numbers were dwindling and some observers warned that the movement might be coming apart at the seams.

The new certification program has drawn anger from many leaders of Orthodox Judaism, but the blend of ritual, ethics and food seems to have formed a powerful combination that has spoken to the various strands within the Conservative movement.

“There’s no divisiveness on this,” said Ray Goldstein, international president of the USCJ. “Everywhere I go, people are speaking about it. Rabbis have gotten passionate about it, and also laypeople.”

The most striking element of the support has been that it has come from both sides of the earlier debate about sexuality. Rabbi Loel Weiss of Temple Beth Am in Randolph, Mass., had opposed the liberalization of the movement’s strictures on homosexuality, but he has spoken out in favor of the new movement.

“This is one of the very few examples where the movement has come out to modify Halacha in a more vigorous, dynamic way,” Weiss said. “This is one of the most exciting developments that the Conservative movement has produced over the last two decades.”

Likewise, rabbis who pressed for the new rulings on sexuality have been supportive.

“I think this is a real moment of definition for the Conservative movement,” said Menachem Creditor, rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, Calif. “If this translates into something that’s visible, the Conservative movement will have achieved something it hasn’t done in a long time, which is translating a profound idea into personal action.”

Observers suggest that one thing making Hekhsher Tzedek so unifying is its combination of Jewish law and a socially liberal mission. Where these impulses parted ways on issues of sexuality, they have been fused together in Hekhsher Tzedek.

“Gay ordination became a symbol of the fault lines between the halachists and the post-halachists” in the Conservative movement, said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department. With Hekhsher Tzedek, Bayme added, “suddenly, you have an issue that bridges that gap.”

Within Orthodox Jewish streams it has been exactly this fusing that has caused concern. A number of Orthodox rabbis have said that Jewish law about the proper treatment of employees should be kept separate from Jewish law about the preparation of kosher food. These rabbis have argued that kosher supervision should focus on ritual food preparation while issues like labor rights and environmental regulation should be left to the government.

“[L]aws, halachic and otherwise, are already in place to ensure proper treatment of animals, workers, consumers and the environment; and ignoring any of them renders a company subject to punitive action by federal and state agencies,” wrote Avi Shafran, a spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel, in the September 8 issue of the Jewish Observer. “To the extent that an envisioned new ‘badge of approval’ simply reiterates those requirements, it is superfluous. And where it aims to go further, beyond halachic and/or governmental strictures, it overreaches, and can serve only to make mischief.”

Shafran went on in the article to accuse the Conservative movement of using Hekhsher Tzedek as “a bald attempt to portray itself as something other than dwindling and desperate,” citing the recent divisions over sexuality issues.

Even within the Conservative movement, there are still questions about whether the excitement about the initiative among the clergy will translate into greater participation by ordinary members. A number of rabbis also warned that consumers must see concrete examples of the Hekhsher Tzedek on the shelves of their supermarkets if the initiative is to hold people’s attention. The rabbis who lead the commission have said that they hope to provide the first evaluation of kosher companies within the next year.

Reform rabbis embrace ethical kashrut

2008-09-04T13:25:00.000-05:00

JTA Breaking News
Published: 09/02/2008

The Reform movement's rabbinical group endorsed the Conservative movement's ethical kosher initiative.

The Board of Trustees of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform movement's rabbinical association, resolved last month to explore ways to cooperate with the initiative, known as Hekhsher Tzedek. (click here to read)

The conference urged producers of kosher meat to adhere to the highest ethical standards, applauded the Conservative movement for integrating ethical concerns into kashrut and encouraged Reform Jews to consider the initiative's guidelines in making dietary choices.

"Those who keep kosher, including the growing number of Reform Jews who are embracing the observance of kashrut, should not be forced to choose between their ritual observance and their ethical values," the Reform conference said.

Spurred in large measure by the continuing controversy over Agriprocessors, the Iowa meat producer that was the target of a massive immigration raid in May, Conservative Rabbi Morris Allen has pushed Hekhsher Tzedek as a supplementary certification attesting that kosher food products are produced in an ethical manner.

In recent days, Allen has reached out to Conservative rabbis to seek their endorsement of the initiative, which is a joint project of the movement's rabbinical and congregational arms. Among the Orthodox, the initiative has provoked unease from those who believe it modifies the notion of kashrut.

Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group of fervently Orthodox Jews, is expected to release a statement shortly criticizing the initiative.

Exploring the ethical meaning of kosher food

2008-08-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

By Sumathi Reddy, Sun reporter
August 23, 2008
Baltimore Sun

Kosher food just isn't kosher anymore for some members of the Jewish faith.

Concerns about worker abuse at kosher slaughterhouses have led Conservative Jews to develop standards to ensure that producers pay fair wages and benefits and are sensitive to animals and the environment.

A proposed certificate of righteousness, called hekhsher tzedek (pronounced HECK-shur ZED-ick) and an identifying seal, are likened to fair trade coffee. The idea is producing a rift between Conservative and Orthodox Jews.

Some Orthodox rabbis say they have no place getting into the business of labor practices, which are best left to the federal government. Furthermore, they question why producers of kosher food should be held to a different standard from other businesses.

"On humanitarian grounds, I support it," said Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger, a leader in Baltimore's Orthodox Jewish community. "But I don't think it's a rabbinic issue. ... Are they going to also choose which sneaker company to endorse?"

But other Jews say that ethics surrounding the production of kosher meat are as important as the ritual.

"I'm not obligated to buy Nike shoes; I am obligated to buy kosher food," said Rabbi Morris Allen, a Minneapolis rabbi who has led the Conservative movement to implement the seal.

"I can't fix business practices throughout the world ... but I do have a responsibility to be involved in trying to address an industry that I am dependent upon in order to fulfill my Jewish life."

In May, federal authorities raided Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville, Iowa, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant. Immigration officials arrested about 400 allegedly illegal workers, and authorities are investigating possible violations of child labor law, among other things. Yesterday the plant was accused of more than 31 safety violations, according to Iowa state labor officials.

Allen and the rabbinical and congregational arms of the national Conservative movement have been in the process of developing a hekhsher tzedek for more than a year, since concerns first surfaced over work conditions at Agriprocessors.

Draft regulations were approved last month for standards that address five areas: health, safety and training; wages and benefits; environmental impact; corporate transparency; and product development.

The program would be strictly voluntary. Companies that seek the symbol would be evaluated by a commission to ascertain whether they meet the five standards and would then be periodically re-evaluated.

"We affirm the role of those who have spent their lives defining kashrut products through ritual means," said Allen. "This would be a secondary seal demonstrating that Jews are not only concerned about the ritual aspects of our tradition but the ethical aspects of our tradition. This is another level of commitment of what it means to be Jewish in the marketplace."

The process will cost companies, he said, acknowledging that that cost will likely be passed on to consumers, but it's a price he believes they'll be willing to pay.

A campaign is under way with rabbis supportive of the concept taking up the issue.

Allen has spoken at Chizuk Amuno, a Conservative synagogue in Pikesville, said Rabbi Ron Shulman. Shulman took up the issue in June when the congregation decided to stop buying kosher meats that come from Agriprocessors. They are sold under several labels, including the popular Rubashkin brand.

"In our congregation people are very aware of it, and they have adapted their consumption choices to not be buying their meats from the Postville plant until their practices are modified," he said. "There are plenty of other brands. Fortunately, nobody's going hungry."

Miriam Foss is one such congregant. The Mount Washington resident said she recently asked her butcher, Wasserman & Lemberger Kosher Meats in Pikesville, if any of the meat came from Agriprocessors and was pleased to find out that it did not.

To Foss, a hekhsher tzedek symbol is similar to the fair trade coffee that she buys and is willing to pay more for.

"The process is really important, not just the product of kosher meat," she said. "I feel like it's really supported in Judaism, that it's important how workers are treated in the production of kosher food. Of course the laws of kashrut have to do with the animals ... but it's the whole picture that's important."

Some say that with food prices soaring, any increase that could result from a hekhsher tzedek process will turn consumers off. "I think now things have gotten so expensive, it's going to be very, very hard," said Chaim Fishman, manager of Seven Mile Market in Pikesville, a kosher grocery store.

Fishman said of the hundreds of customers he sees, only two or three have inquired about the brands associated with Agriprocessors. "I think people are just happy trusting the rabbis for the certification and trusting the U.S. government," he said.

Fishman, who is an Orthodox Jew, said he would not be swayed by a hekhsher tzedek symbol. "If it happens to be there, OK," he said. "But I think a lot of Orthodox probably won't be all that interested in seeing that certification."

The Rabbinical Council of America, the national Orthodox Rabbinic organization, does not support the hekhsher tzedek concept.

"Kosher is kosher, and kosher reflects the requirements of what renders an animal ... acceptable for a Jew to properly eat," said Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the council. "Of course there are always ethical concerns whether it's regarding food or clothing or furniture ... but it is inappropriate to mix the two realms together."

Furthermore, Herring said labor law is the government's domain: "For a kosher agency or a rabbinic group to take upon itself those responsibilities ... would be enormously complex, inefficient and, frankly, very, very expensive."

But some in the Orthodox community called it an "excellent idea." One is Rabbi Chaim Landau, who leads the Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue in Baltimore.

"We are now driven to raise the level of understanding of what kosher is and to be able to relate to it on more than just a technical level," said Landau.

He said he hopes it would be a positive education "not just for those who are concerned within the Jewish community ... but those within the broader community."

sumathi.reddy@baltsun.com

Rabbis Debate Kosher Ethics at Meat Plant

2008-08-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: August 22, 2008
New York Times

An immigration raid at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant has opened a wide rift among Jewish leaders over the company’s ethical conduct and led to new interest in a campaign to create wage and safety standards for workers producing kosher food.

Illegal immigrants caught in a raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, told of lax safety rules and under-age workers.

The Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville, Iowa, lost about half its work force when 389 illegal immigrants were detained there in May, causing shortages of kosher meat and poultry in butcher shops and supermarkets across the country.

Immigrants caught in the raid told labor investigators of unpaid overtime, lax safety measures and under-age workers at the plant. Their stories have troubled many kosher consumers and given impetus to a campaign known as Hekhsher Tzedek (which means “justice certification” in Hebrew) to create an additional seal of approval for kosher-certified products, indicating that the producers met certain standards for the treatment of workers.

“People want kosher food that is produced in an appropriate manner according to both ritual law and ethical law,” said Rabbi Morris J. Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., who is leading the effort backed by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, representing the synagogues of the Conservative movement, and the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis.

But while Rabbi Allen and others have criticized Agriprocessors, some Orthodox Jewish leaders rallied to the company’s defense. After touring the Postville plant on July 31, a delegation of 20 Orthodox rabbis, including leaders of kosher certification organizations from the United States and Canada, concluded Agriprocessors was “an A-1 place,” said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, an Orthodox group.

“An old medieval plant we didn’t see,” said Rabbi Lerner, who organized the trip. “We saw a Cadillac with top-of-the-line machinery and a heavy emphasis on safety, security and health.”

A spokesman for the company, Menachem Lubinsky, said it had been unfairly singled out for labor violations that were unproven accusations. Mr. Lubinsky told The Jewish Week newspaper that Agriprocessors was facing a “Dreyfus trial in the media,” referring to the case of a Jewish military officer in France who was unfairly tried for treason in the late 19th century.

Agriprocessors managers, at first stunned by the immigration raid, have since gone on the offensive, revising management practices and hiring lawyers and public relations advisers in an effort to rebuild the company’s reputation, especially among Jewish consumers.

The Postville plant has been owned since 1987 by Aaron Rubashkin and his family, Lubavitch Hasidic Jews who built the company from a Brooklyn butcher shop into a kosher meat giant controlling more than 60 percent of the market, with annual kosher sales of more than $80 million, according to analysts’ estimates.

Agriprocessors specializes in glatt kosher beef, the highest kosher certification that is reserved for meat from animals with smooth lungs bearing no lesions. The shortages after the raid highlighted the company’s dominance in the kosher meat market, with brands like Aaron’s Best, Shor Harbor and David’s.

Kosher experts said that Mr. Rubashkin and his son Sholom, until recently the chief executive in Postville, had vastly extended the distribution of kosher products across the United States by selling them to major supermarkets along with nonkosher beef.

But workers at the Postville plant had long complained of forced overtime, frequent accidents and extortion by floor supervisors who sold jobs for cash. Their complaints were amplified after the raid, when nearly 300 illegal immigrant workers, most from Guatemala, were criminally prosecuted, with most sentenced to five months in prison followed by deportation.

On Aug. 5, Iowa labor authorities said they had found 57 cases of under-age workers employed at the plant, and they called on the state attorney general to bring criminal charges against Agriprocessors for “egregious violations” of the state’s child labor laws.

On Friday, the Iowa labor department announced 31 citations against Agriprocessors for safety violations and proposed $101,000 in fines. Kerry Koonce, the department’s spokeswoman, said 21 violations were serious and 6 were repeat offenses cited earlier this year by authorities, which the company had agreed to correct.

The violations, found in inspections that began on July 8, included inadequately shielded meat-cutting saws and improper storage of compressed gas cylinders — “a very high number for one inspection,” Ms. Koonce said. One repeat violation was a hole large enough for a worker to fall through in the plant floor, she said.

Mr. Lubinsky, the spokesman, said Agriprocessors was not aware of under-age workers in its plant and had moved swiftly to fire four workers under 18 who were discovered by managers. In a statement on Friday, the company said all of the safety issues identified by Iowa inspectors in July were remedied within days. The company denied that it had failed to correct any earlier violations.

A low-level Agriprocessors floor supervisor pleaded guilty this week to criminal immigration charges, the only manager convicted to date. Higher managers remain under criminal investigation.

The Agriprocessors raid in May fueled a fundamental debate between the Orthodox and Conservative movements of Judaism. The Orthodox, who include the majority of Jews who keep kosher, adhere to a strict interpretation of Jewish law, while the Conservative movement has a more liberal interpretation emphasizing social justice. Among Conservative Jews, a minority observe kosher laws strictly.

Rabbi Allen said the Hekhsher Tzedek campaign grew out of his efforts to promote kosher practice in his synagogue, and his participation in a Jewish commission of inquiry that went to Postville after an article in 2006 in The Forward, the weekly Jewish newspaper, about conditions there. The commission’s report found “significant issues of concern, including health and safety.”

Since then a rift has grown between Rabbi Allen’s group and Agriprocessors and its supporters. Several rabbis supporting the Hekhsher Tzedek campaign joined a protest at the Postville plant in July.

Last month, a New York public relations firm representing Agriprocessors, 5W Public Relations, posted fake blog comments under Rabbi Allen’s name on FailedMessiah.com, a Web site that is fiercely critical of the Rubashkins, and on the Web site of JTA, the Jewish news agency. Shmarya Rosenberg, who runs FailedMessiah.com, traced the fraudulent comments on his site to a 5W address. JTA reported that one false posting in Rabbi Allen’s name came from an address belonging to a 5W executive, Juda Engelmayer.

The postings seemed intended to discredit Rabbi Allen by making him appear to use crude, arrogant language. In a statement, 5W confirmed that the postings came from its offices but said that they had been made by an intern without approval.

The Hekhsher Tzedek campaign has broadened its ambitions beyond Agriprocessors, hoping to see its “God Housekeeping Seal” adopted by kosher food producers nationwide. On Aug. 1, the campaign unveiled proposed “social justice criteria” for the seal, including standards for wages and benefits, worker safety, animal welfare and environmental protection.

In coming days, the two Conservative Jewish organizations behind the campaign will send out a mailing calling on rabbis to preach about it during Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

Rabbi Allen said the campaign was not seeking to change ancient kosher dietary laws, which are traditionally administered by Orthodox Jews. “We are not revising, we are enhancing,” he said.

But some Orthodox leaders predicted that the campaign would be spurned by Orthodox Jews. Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel, a national Orthodox group, warned that the Hekhsher Tzedek was likely to backfire by raising the price of kosher food.

The campaign’s leaders appear “not so much interested in ensuring fair treatment of employees and the like as they are in redefining the very concept of kashrut” (the Hebrew word referring to kosher laws and practice), Rabbi Shafran said. “That, in our view, is deeply troubling.”

Meanwhile, the negative news from Agriprocessors spurred Orthodox leaders to action. David Eliezrie, a California rabbi who joined the trip to Postville, called the delegation “the New York Yankees of rabbis.” Aaron Troodler, another delegation member, said Agriprocessors had paid for the rabbis’ travel.

They saw changes that Agriprocessors had made since the raid, according to the report of their trip. They met with James Martin, a former federal prosecutor recently hired as a compliance officer, and were told of a toll-free hot line he set up for confidential worker complaints.

Workers interviewed on video by Yair Hoffman, a delegation member, said Agriprocessors now pays a starting wage of $10 an hour, up from $7.25 before the raid. Jacobson Staffing, an outside company that has taken charge of hiring, has enrolled the company in E-Verify, a federal program devised to block illegal immigrants from getting jobs.

After the three-hour tour, the rabbis issued an unqualified endorsement. They said they did not intend to delve into conditions before the raid or address the plight of the immigrant workers caught in the raid.

“I have no firsthand knowledge of what went on before,” Rabbi Lerner said. “But if you take away preraid, you’ve got to say it’s a wonderful situation now.”

Support Grows To Change Kosher Rules

2008-08-21T12:22:00.008-05:00

by Tovia Smith
August 20, 2008

Click here to go to Minnesota Public Radio: All Things Considered

Support is growing in the Jewish community to change the standards for kosher certification — to include an ethical component. A group of Conservative rabbis has drafted guidelines. The Orthodox movement has resisted the idea, but may be open to independent certification on ethical issues.

Slaughterhouse case fuels kosher justice movement

2008-08-11T15:32:00.000-05:00

By RACHEL ZOLL

NEW YORK (AP) — Very little goes unexamined in the kosher world.

From meat and poultry to the coating on vegetables and the ingredients in mouthwash, rabbis who determine whether a product meets Jewish dietary laws scrutinize the most minute details about all things consumed.

For religiously observant Jews, that concern has rarely extended beyond the product itself.

But now, allegations of worker abuse at the nation's biggest kosher slaughterhouse have some Jews demanding that food companies be judged not just by the purity of their products but by the way their treat their employees.

"How can you sit at your table and eat a product packaged by a pregnant woman has been standing on her feet all day?" asked Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota. He is developing a certification program that aims to protect workers and the environment in the kosher industry.

Interest in Allen's "hekhsher tzedek," or "certificate of righteousness," has ballooned since a May 12 immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.

Nearly 400 illegal immigrants were arrested at the plant in the biggest such raid on a single work site in U.S. history. State officials say dozens of underage workers were employed there in violation of child labor laws. Agriprocessors has denied any wrongdoing.

Many Jews are embarrassed and angered by the allegations and, along with some religious leaders, are rethinking what it means to be certified kosher.

The "hekhsher tzedek" would be awarded to companies that pay fair wages, ensure workplace safety, follow government environmental rules and treat animals humanely, among other criteria.

The program, which could begin as soon as next year, would be separate from the traditional certification process that measures compliance with Jewish dietary law. A company that fails to obtain a "hekhsher tzedek" could still get its food certified as kosher.

Allen, of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, is developing the program through the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and its Rabbinical Assembly, to which he belongs. Conservative Judaism holds a middle ground between the liberal Reform and strict Orthodox traditions, allowing some innovation in Jewish law to adapt to modern times.

But it's unclear how much of an effect the certificate would have.

The majority of kosher consumers and certifiers are Orthodox, and they drive the multibillion-dollar U.S. market. Kosher meat is more expensive than standard food, and since large families are the norm among the Orthodox, some fear any changes could increase the cost.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, chief kosher executive of the Orthodox Union, the largest kosher certifier in the U.S., called Allen's idea unreasonable and unenforceable. He said the Orthodox Union relies on federal and state agencies — "who have both the expertise and authority" — to monitor plant conditions.

Yet, pressure for change is coming from more than just Conservative Jewish leaders.

Within the Orthodox community, there are signs that Jews in their 20s and 30s are gaining interest in what the Torah says about social justice.

Last year, young Orthodox Jews in New York formed Uri L'Tzedek, an advocacy group on issues such as immigration and labor rights. Leaders of the group, whose name means Awaken to Justice, collected about 2,000 signatures in support of a boycott of Agriprocessors.

They suspended the action when the owners hired a former federal prosecutor as a compliance officer, but are still going ahead with a fact-finding tour of the plant this week, where they will also meet with immigrant workers.

"The younger generations of modern Orthodox Jews are seeking new meaning to their religious expression, going beyond survival and anti-assimilation and just text study," said Shmuly Yanklowitz, a rabbinical student and co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek. "There have been countless individuals who have felt estranged from the Orthodox community who have been in touch with us. We're getting hundreds of e-mails saying that this has filled a gap."

Despite sharing the ideals of the "hekhsher tzedek," Yanklowitz said his group does not support the proposal. He said any systemwide change in kosher production will have to come from within the Orthodox world because of its "overwhelming commitment" to following Jewish dietary law and the buying power that brings.

Still, Conservative Jewish advocates for the justice certification believe they can bring moral pressure for change.

Rabbi Avram Reisner of Baltimore, a member of the panel of religious law scholars that guides Conservative Judaism, has written a 20-page analysis of Jewish law on wages, working conditions and other business issues in support of the "hekhsher tzedek."

"The Conservative movement has hauled the Orthodox establishment out in a way they hadn't anticipated," Reisner said. "We're not looking to horn in on the business. We're looking to expand the envelope so the kosher consumer can buy things that they feel good about."

USCJ releases guidelines for ethical kosher certification

2008-08-07T13:16:00.005-05:00

by Lorne Bell
The Jewish Advocate
August 7, 2008

Heksher tzedek addresses social and environmental issues

Three months after federal agents arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers at Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher food producer, concerns about the kosher food industry remain. Last week, the Conservative movement responded by issuing guidelines for a new kosher certification, heksher tzedek.

“Current kosher standards have to do with a certain ritual technique for slaughter,” said Richard Lederman, project manager for the Heksher Tzedek Commission, a joint initiative of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly. “What we’re trying to do is take Jewish thought and laws on ethics and apply that to the production of kosher food.”

Heksher tzedek, Hebrew for “certified ethical,” was first conceived in 2006 by Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Minnesota. He argued that the corporatization of kosher food production has led to a range of ethical issues – labor exploitation, animal abuse and environmental contamination from the salting process – that the Jewish community must address.

“We cannot be more concerned about a cow’s lung than we are about people’s hands; we have to at least be equally concerned about both,” Allen said. “Heksher tzedek demonstrates that Judaism is not about ritual and ethics, but about the relationship between the two.”

Allen now serves as project director for the Heksher Tzedek Commission, which was formally endorsed by the USCJ and its rabbinical counterpart, the RA, in 2007. The commission’s guidelines focus on five categories of food production: employee wages and benefits; health, safety and training; environmental impact; product development, including animal welfare and product safety; and corporate transparency.

Allen said the new heksher will complement, not replace, existing certifications. Plans for a pilot program are currently underway in the Midwest.

For local kosher retailers and customers, the heksher tzedek would be a welcome sight on kosher products, according to Walter Gellerman, president of The Butcherie, a kosher grocer in Brookline.

“To me it sounds like giving the customer some additional information, which is always a good thing,” said Gellerman. “But if you went through our shelves you’d find dozens of certifications. Some will satisfy almost everyone and some will only satisfy a fraction of the community. We let our customers decide.”

But for those customers who have sworn off Agriprocessors’ products, the prospect of a heksher tzedek is a promising development. The Jewish Labor Committee and its supporters have been boycotting the Iowa plant since it was raided in May. Marya Axner, regional director of JLC New England, said the new guidelines could go a long way toward ensuring workers’ rights throughout the industry.

“It’s such a hopeful sign that the Conservative movement is taking leadership on this issue and giving new meaning to what it takes and what it means to keep kosher,” she said. “The JLC and many parts of the Jewish community will be happy and relieved to have this kind of leadership and to get behind it.”

Still, not everyone is eager to sign on to a proposal for ethical oversights of kosher food production. Menachem Lubinsky, marketing consultant for Agriprocessors, said the company will not seek the heksher tzedek and will continue to abide by the Orthodox Union’s established standards of kashrut.

“Agriprocessors is going to have to take its cue from its rabbinical authority, and as far as I know, the OU and its rabbis have opposed heksher tzedek,” he said.
Lubinsky noted that the Iowa plant has gone to great lengths to resolve food safety violations and allegations of animal and worker mistreatment by working directly with the USDA and OSHA.

The OU, one of the Jewish community’s most recognized authorities on kosher food certification, has adopted a similar stance.

“We believe, together with the Heksher Tzedek Commission, that issues of social justice, workers’ rights and the environment are important and many have a Biblical basis,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator of the OU’s kashrut division. “But in terms of actually implementing [guidelines], those are things that should be handled, and are, by federal agencies that have the authority and means to do so.”

Genack said the heksher tzedek’s guidelines are “amorphous” and would be difficult to apply across the industry, although he did not rule out the possibility of including the new mark alongside the OU’s own heksher.

“The OU has a policy that we don’t generally permit two different supervisions on the same label, but in this context we might,” he said.

Allen is hopeful that the OU, as well as other kosher authorities and facilities will soon embrace the heksher tzedek as a reflection of the Jewish community’s values.

“We’ve come a long way in two years and I’m amazed at how we have been able to elevate the discourse on kashrut,” said Allen. “My belief is that by Rosh Hashanah next year we will be sitting down at the table celebrating the New Year with food that represents the best of Judaism, having been produced in both ritually and ethically appropriate ways.”

Keeping Kosher

2008-08-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

by Gary Rosenblatt
New York Jewish Week
8/6/2008

What lessons can we take away from all the embarrassing reports about Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in America, accused of abuse of both animals and workers in its Postville, Iowa plant?

The plus side is that the controversy has sparked a long-overdue discussion about the larger meaning of the mitzvah of kashrut, a conversation that includes values as well as ritual and could result in some substantive improvements. But there are those who contend that such talk is likely to have little impact on the multi-billion dollar kosher food industry.

The case, you may recall, focused first on alleged violations in the treatment of animals, and then spread to charges of the mistreatment of immigrants and underage employees, failure to pay minimum wage, and of perverting Jewish ethical values and standards in regards to kashrut.

The giant plant has become the scene of protests in recent days, following the high-profile arrest in May of close to 400 illegal immigrant workers and reports in the media of charges that Agriprocessors is the worst violator of its kind. In response, members of the Rubashkin family of Brooklyn and some of their defenders assert the media is guilty of a modern-day witch-hunt when no charges have been filed against the owners.

Some Jews wonder why it is that only a kosher establishment has endured the full brunt of a government investigation and national media attention. What’s more, a group of more than 20 leading Orthodox rabbis, including Agudath Israel Executive Vice President Rabbi Shmuel Bloom, visited the plant last week and came away impressed, saying the Rubashkins are exceeding the requirements of the law and, according to a joint statement, “working diligently to adhere to the highest workplace standards possible.”

One positive outcome from all this attention is that some elements of the Jewish community are gaining awareness of the notion that kosher qualifications should go beyond the preparation of food and must include Torah values about treating employees, and customers, with dignity and respect.

A movement that began in Israel in 2004, through a nonprofit agency there called Bema’aglei Tzedek (Circles of Justice), has certified about 400 restaurants that comply with fair employment practices and access for the disabled. It began with concern, especially among younger people, about the treatment of foreign workers in Israel. It has caught on in Jerusalem, and elsewhere, as consumers check establishments not only for the traditional te’udah, or certificate, that the food served is kosher, but for the new tav chevrati, or social seal, gained after satisfactory responses to queries about whether wages are fair, working conditions are acceptable and access is provided for the handicapped, etc.

Such concerns have found expression in the U.S. through a new Modern Orthodox group, Uri L’Tzedek (Awaken to Justice), which seeks to emphasize social action, and Hekhsher Tzedek (Seal of Justice), a recent effort by Conservative rabbis to tie ethical standards to those of rituals in approving food as kosher. Mirroring the societal factors in Israel, this initiative was sparked by reports of mistreatment of foreign workers and an attempt to infuse moral and business concerns into kashrut certification.

In a policy statement released the other day by Hekhsher Tzedek, five primary areas were cited for evaluation before a product will be approved: employees’ wages and benefits, employee health and safety, product development, corporate transparency and environmental impact.

(This is just the kind of moral issue that could inspire and reinvigorate Conservative Jewry, which has lost members and been divided internally for the last few years over whether or not to accept gay clergy.)

Traditionally, it is the Orthodox community that has been most interested in and involved with kashrut. And while there is great satisfaction among the kosher clientele in the growing numbers of products certified kosher, there has long been grumbling that prices are too high, with suspicions of monopolies and even corruption. Kashrut is considered such a murky business, especially as it has grown, that few are fully knowledgeable about the economics of it all. And the numbers are staggering.

Kosher food is now an $11.5 billion industry, double what it was a decade ago, with more than 100,000 certified products on the market, according to Menachem Lubinsky, an expert in the field who has also served as a spokesman for Agriprocessors.
The Orthodox Union, the largest kosher certifying agency, now oversees some 7,000 factories in 80 countries, with major growth in China.

Leaders of the Orthodox establishment “are not enthusiastic” about Hekhsher Tzedek, says Lubinsky, who adds that the new certification “will not have any impact” on kosher consumers.

He says “the major certifying agencies don’t want to re-define kosher,” and feel they should deal with kashrut standards per se and let the government handle issues of business standards and compliance.

However, this notion of separating kashrut itself from other activities seems counter to the practice of some leading Orthodox kashrut certifying agencies that withdraw supervision of establishments based on social behavior. A notable case was that of the Glatt Yacht boat rides around Manhattan two decades ago; the proprietors were faced with losing certification by the Kof-K agency if they continued to permit mixed dancing on board.

The Orthodox establishment tends to believe that the laws regarding kashrut and ethical behavior “should not be intertwined,” according to Lubinsky, because it “confuses the marketplace.”

But the head of the Orthodox Union’s kashrut division doesn’t see it that way. Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator and CEO, says he is impressed with the goals and motivation of Hekhsher Tzedek and its founder, Rabbi Morris Allen, a Conservative rabbi in Minnesota.

Rabbi Genack’s concerns are practical, namely the implementation of ethical practices. He raises questions such as who is to determine a fair wage for workers (“is minimum wage sufficient?”) or whether or not a company is polluting the environment. “Those should be determined by the government and its agencies,” he says.

Rabbi Allen has spent more than two decades of his rabbinate promoting kashrut observance among his congregants, including a project he called Chew By Choice. Hekhsher Tzedek is the culmination of that work, and he sees it as “a win-win” for everyone involved with kashrut, predicting that sales will increase, reaching an additional market of people who would support “products made in an ethical way.”

He said he has been heartened by receiving calls from five kosher certifying agencies in the last few days expressing interest in discussions. His goal would be for products to display both a kashrut and Hekhsher Tzedek label.

For now, though, denominational rivalries are still a factor in the current debate, if under the surface. While some believe the Agriprocessors scandal marks an implicit criticism of the Orthodox leadership for not paying more attention to workers’ conditions, others argue that the Conservative movement has no kashrut certification of its own and is lax about kosher standards.

Surely both sides would agree that the Torah calls for observing laws of kashrut (though definitions vary) as well as showing compassion to workers and treating animals with care and consideration.

For example, the Torah forbids an employer from holding back a worker’s wages overnight (Lev. 19:13) and muzzling an ox working in the field (Deut. 25:4).

However you look at it, there is room for communal pride in the tremendous growth of the kosher food industry — and shame that the word “kosher,” meant to stand for purity, has also come to be associated with carelessness, greed and other traits that surely are “treif.”

Gary@jewishweek.org

Conservatives issue guidelines

2008-08-02T21:34:00.003-05:00

By Ben Harris Published: 07/31/2008

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The Conservative movement released a policy statement and guidelines for its much-anticipated ethical kashrut certification, outlining the social justice standards companies are expected to meet if their foodstuffs are to qualify for the designation.

According to the document released Thursday, products will be evaluated in five main areas -- employees' wages and benefits, employee health and safety, product development, corporate transparency and environmental impact -- and assessed in part on the basis of information from third-party sources.

Essential to acquiring the Hekhsher Tzedek certification is a company's willingness to engage with the movement's leadership. Hekhsher Tzedek is a joint initiative of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly.

“Transparency and a willingness to enter into dialogue with the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, the Rabbinical Assembly and their partners will therefore be essential for a company's products to qualify for the Hekhsher Tzedek,” the statement says.

The new guidelines are seen as an important step forward for the initiative, which represents the first effort to brand items as kosher on the basis of ethical criteria separate from the ritual aspects of food production.

It also marks the most significant attempt by Conservative rabbis to influence the national kosher food market, an area traditionally dominated by the Orthodox.

“We believe that we have now demonstrated that it is indeed possible to have verifiable standards in these areas that will allow us to demonstrate that as an enhancement to ritual certification of kosher food, you can ensure that kosher observance is mindful and sensitive to God's creation,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, the founder and director of Hekhsher Tzedek.

Rabbi Michael Siegel, who co-chairs the nine-member commission overseeing the project, told JTA he expects to see the Hekhsher Tzedek label on food products by Jan. 1, 2009.

Though he wouldn't name names, Siegel said the commission already is in talks with several companies who have been receptive to the idea, including a bakery, a ready-made salad producer and a kosher meat purveyor, all of whom would be required to pay a fee for the certification. Two of the companies are nationally known, Siegel said.

In the coming weeks, Heksher Tzedek plans to release a marketing plan and a rabbinic paper on ethical concerns within kashrut by Rabbi Avram Reisner, a commission member.

Some in the kosher world have met the initiative with skepticism, even hostility. These skeptics question what they see as the expansion of the concept of kosher, which traditionally has focused more narrowly on ritual and dietary concerns.

Rabbi Avrom Pollak, the president of Star-K, a kosher certifier that works with more than 1,500 manufacturers, told JTA he is all in favor of treating workers ethically, but expressed doubt that companies would find it in their financial interest to pay for Hekhsher Tzedek.

“What does somehow trouble me a little is the fact that they are devoting all their efforts to kosher food companies,” Pollak said. “I think it should be a much broader effort. All the services that we use and buy should also be subject to the same scrutiny.”

Allen conceived of the idea of Hekhsher Tzedek in 2006, the same year that an expose in the Forward detailed allegations of worker mistreatment at Agriprocessors, which runs the nation's largest kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa.

The initiative received a boost in May when federal agents raided the Postville plant, arresting nearly 400 illegal workers and prompting another round of allegations against the company. Agriprocessors has denied any wrongdoing.

The Postville raid thrust issues of worker treatment in the production of kosher food to the forefront of a national debate over the parameters of kosher certification. Allen said he envisions a day when consumers will look at the Hekhsher Tzedek label before purchasing food the same way some now look for a kosher label.

“I see the kinds of responses that we're getting now from people across the country, letters that come in, e-mails that come in,” Allen said.

“I do believe that people are eager because I think that we have always believed that in the observance of kashrut, our actions are such that is at the core an act of sanctification. And we want to make sure as Jews that act of sanctification is not just a ritual act.”

Jews debate the ethics of kosher food supply

2008-07-30T07:48:00.002-05:00

By Irene Sege
The Boston Globe Staff
July 30, 2008

The friend who told Susan Cetlin earlier this summer that she loves Aaron's brand kosher chicken didn't get the nod of agreement she might have expected.

Instead, Cetlin, a psychologist whose Sharon home is kosher, listed allegations of unsafe working conditions and underpayment against Aaron's parent company, Agriprocessors, the nation's largest producer of kosher meat and the object of a large immigration raid in May. Cetlin is boycotting Agriprocessors, and soon her friend was, too.

The raid on Agriprocessors' Iowa plant has sparked debate in the Jewish community about the role of ethical considerations in the production of kosher food and sets the backdrop against which the moderate Conservative movement will issue guidelines Thursday for an ambitious new "hekhsher tzedek," Hebrew for "certificate of righteousness." The additional stamp would identify producers of kosher foods that meet its standards regarding working conditions, treatment of animals, and the environment.

In rolling out the new certification, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, two national umbrella organizations, join a wave of socially conscious buying that has led many consumers to seek fair-trade coffee and sneakers not made by children.

To Conservative Jewish leaders, the new certification symbolizes the embrace of tradition and modern social concerns that defines the denomination.

"Hekhsher tzedek reminds us that kosher is not just about rituals," said Rabbi Barry Starr of Temple Israel in Sharon, where Cetlin is a member. "That's a very powerful niche for the Conservative movement."

For Cetlin, who was raised in a nonobservant Jewish home and considers keeping kosher part of her spiritual journey, the allegations against Agriprocessors have violated her trust in a way that concerns about other products have not. Federal and state authorities are now investigating complaints of illegal working conditions at Agriprocessors, including allegations, detailed in The New York Times, that underage immigrants worked shifts as long as 17 hours.

"Kosher gives me the sense that it's a respectful process," said Cetlin, 52. "It's respecting the life of the animal, as well as the worker. When this situation came up, it felt very uncomfortable. My daughter, who is a vegetarian, thinks the way to avoid all of this is to become a vegetarian. It is so hard to make decisions about what is moral or ethical."

With hekhsher tzedek, the Conservative movement also jockeys for a foothold in a kosher industry dominated by Orthodox Jews, the most traditional branch of Judaism.

To succeed, Conservative officials must persuade an industry that already invites supervisors of the religious aspect of food production into its facilities to accept additional inspectors who focus on ethical issues. At issue are religious dietary laws that specify how animals are slaughtered, prohibit consumption of pork and shellfish, and dictate that meat and dairy not be eaten together. Other portions of Jewish law mandate ethical behavior.

Most Orthodox Jews have kosher homes - 86 percent, according to the National Jewish Population Survey - compared with one-quarter of Conservative Jews. Yet because Conservative Jews outnumber Orthodox Jews, they account for one-third of American Jews with kosher homes. Only 5 percent of Reform Jews, the most liberal denomination, keep kosher.

Dr. Steven Ugent - who lives in Sharon, where he is a member of Temple Israel - sees keeping kosher as more than simply following a biblical commandment. "It's a way to be conscious of who you are and that there's a God every time you eat, and to make a separation between the profane and the holy," the 43-year-old dermatologist said. "When you eat, it's not just a mundane act."

Dr. Ugent is curious about what standards hekhsher tzedek will use. "Clearly ethics are important," he said. "I would pay attention to that kind of thing."

Before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid, in which almost 400 workers who were in the country illegally were arrested, Agriprocessors supplied 60 percent of the nation's kosher beef and 40 percent of the kosher poultry. The company, which has been fighting unionization, has hired replacement staff and is now returning to full capacity, said spokesman Menachem Lubinsky.

The production squeeze has been felt here, with purveyors from supermarkets to the Butcherie in Brookline and Larry Levine's Kosher Meat Market in Peabody, two of the area's main kosher grocers, filling their gaps with aternative suppliers. The pipeline is slower, and, with pressures on supply, prices have risen. Todd Levine, co-owner of Levine's, estimates that a quarter of his customers are boycotting Agriprocessors, and Butcherie co-owner Walter Gelerman has fielded a few questions on the subject.

Shortly after the raid, United Synagogue suggested that its members seek alternatives to Agriprocessors, and a number of Conservative rabbis preached on the topic and e-mailed members. The Orthodox social justice group Uri L'Tzedek ended its boycott July 8 after Agriprocessors hired a former US attorney to oversee its compliance efforts. The Conservative advisory remains in effect.

Michael Holloway, a 52-year-old biologist from Sharon, feels that he must finally decide whether to join the boycott, now that he has seen Agriprocessors meat in the supermarket for the first time since the raid.

He is troubled by accounts of Agriprocessor's treatment of workers and concerned about the health of the kosher meat market.

"There are few enough kosher meat producers as it is," he said. "We need that company. I hope I am eventually going to be able to buy their product without feeling remorse. I'll probably be buying less and watching closely."

This month Agriprocessors pledged cooperation with investigators and defended itself in full-page advertisements in a dozen Jewish newspapers around the country, including Boston's Jewish Advocate. "These issues, if they were a problem at some point, are all being addressed," said spokesman Lubinsky.

It is in this climate that United Synagogue has readied its hekhsher tzedek guidelines, culminating a two-year process spurred by stories about Agriprocessors in the Jewish Forward and developed with the help of the Boston consulting firm KLD Research & Analytics.

"This is an example of the Conservative movement at its best," said Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz of Temple Emanuel in Newton, the region's largest Conservative congregation. "It's adhering to an ancient tradition and at the same time living with ethics and sensitivity to other people."

The Minnesota rabbi spearheading the effort has long made encouraging kosher observance a mainstay of his pulpit. "My belief is more people will buy kosher products with hekhsher tzedek because it speaks to their value system on multiple levels," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in suburban St. Paul.

The initiative draws mixed response from the Orthodox.

Rabbi Chaim Wolosow of the Chabad Center of Sharon, an outreach arm of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch movement, is skeptical. "It's an insult to all the religious people and the Orthodox people and all the people who have the highest standards," he said. "It's saying they don't care about the workers and the animals. This assumes the Orthodox people who give hekhshers have not been doing that."

The Orthodox Union, the umbrella organization that is the country's major certifier of kosher food, is critical, too.

A company indicted or convicted of ethical wrongdoing would lose its approval, said Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the union's kosher division. "We think it's best left to the government."

Among Orthodox leaders expressing cautious support is Rabbi Gershon Gewirtz of Young Israel of Brookline, the largest Orthodox congregation in New England. Although Gewirtz opposes boycotting Agriprocessors before allegations of what he terms "absolutely intolerable" behavior are substantiated, he sees a place for a thoughtfully executed hekhsher tzedek.

"Their intent is valid," he said. "Companies that deal in religiously sanctioned food items should also follow an outline that is reflective of Jewish law in relationship with their employees. That has to be carefully structured."

In Sharon, meanwhile, Cetlin continues her boycott.

"I'm a more liberal Jew," she said. "To me, having an ethical endorsement would matter as much as the more traditional kosher certification."

Agriprocessors' PR company accused of identity theft

2008-07-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

Jul 12, 2008 22:52
By MICHAL LANDO, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT IN NEW YORK

The PR firm hired to represent kosher meat plant Agriprocessors is being accused of posting comments on the Internet under fraudulent names to promote its client. Such tactics bear a striking resemblance to those Agriprocessors itself has been accused of, following the recent immigration raid.

The New York firm, 5W Public Relations - whose clients include McDonald's, pornographer Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild, Pastor John Hagee and a slew of right-wing Jewish organizations - was accused last Wednesday of posting comments on several Jewish Web sites using a false identity. The first to be discovered were posted on FailedMessiah.com, a blog that has written extensively about the Orthodox world.

The man behind the site, Minnesota-based blogger Shmarya Rosenberg, has been closely following the recent raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa that has stirred the kosher-consuming public in the last few months. In recent weeks, a number of comments that seemed to advocate on behalf of the Brooklyn-based owners of the plant caught Rosenberg's attention.

"It's rare to have so many taking the same basic point of view," said Rosenberg. "The comments that were favorable to Agri read like talking points from a PR firm."

Posted under names of critics of the slaughter company, the comments came from 5WPR. Rosenberg said he had chosen not to pursue it at first.

"I let it ride for a while in the hopes they [had] stopped," said Rosenberg.

But two days ago, Rosenberg was moved to speak out when he noticed two comments under the name of Rabbi Morris Allen, founder of the Conservative Movement's Heksher Tzedek initiative, which is attempting to create an ethical standards-based certification for kosher food. Rosenberg checked the IP address and saw the comments had come from the same 5WPR address.

Both comments were in response to a blog post about the Orthodox social justice group Uri L'Tzedek's decision to end its boycott of the company this week. At the time the comments were made, Allen was attending the funeral of a family member in Omaha, Nebraska.

Allen said he had first been notified of the comments on Wednesday morning by a concerned friend.

"I told them I hadn't been on-line for three days, and it couldn't have been me," said Allen, who has since spoken to a lawyer and the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement to discuss how to pursue the issue.

"Agriprocessors is being investigated for encouraging identity theft, and for their PR company to now feel it's appropriate to steal my identity seems too eerily similar to the company's behavior," said Allen.

The discovery of the fraudulent comments came just days after the arrest of two plant supervisors on charges of aiding and abetting the use of fraudulent identification. Juan Carlos Guerrero Espinoza and Martin De la Rosa Loera are the first supervisory workers to be charged.

A third warrant was issued for another supervisor, Hosam Amara, a 43-year-old said to be of Palestinian origin who was rumored to have fled Postville the week after the raid.

5WPR CEO Ronn Torossian, who is on vacation in Mexico, said an "internal investigation is taking place to assess the authenticity of the claims."

Meanwhile, other employees at the firm have acknowledged that an intern was responsible for the comments on the FailedMessiah blog.

Since the comments were discovered on FailedMessiah, others have emerged on a scattering of Jewish Web sites. A comment posted on a JTA story Wednesday, also under Allen's name, has since been removed.

The Orthodox blog "Vos Iz Neias" confirmed that five comments posted on their site starting June 18 had come from a 5WPR address. The last appeared July 8.

All comments portray Allen as using allegations against Agriprocessors to promote Heksher Tzedek.

"Clearly, for whatever reason, people at Agri have decided that we are a major threat to them," said Allen, who has not received an apology from the PR firm.

"This is part of a larger pattern, not something new. What is new is [that] now they think they can steal my name and use it for their purposes. The rabbis are very clear - unlike coins, humans all are different. For better or worse, there is one Morris Allen, and I will rise or fall on my own record, not someone else's fantasy of who I am."

Meat Company’s P.R. Firm Acknowledges Responsibility of ‘Senior Staff Member’ in Online Deception

2008-07-11T09:28:00.000-05:00

Admission Comes on Heels of Effort To Put Blame on ‘Intern’
By Nathaniel Popper
The Forward
Fri. Jul 11, 2008

This article is a follow-up to this report that appears in this week’s print edition of the Forward.

The CEO of a major New York public relations firm publicly admitted that his company posted fraudulent comments on the Internet about a client, a major kosher slaughterhouse.

Over the course of the past week, evidence has mounted that someone at the firm, 5WPR, had posted comments on a number of Web sites under false names. The comments in question were about Agriprocessors, a kosher meat company that was recently the target of a massive federal immigration raid. 5WPR began representing Agriprocessors in June, and many of the comments praised Agriprocessors, while others impersonated prominent critics of the company.

The employee in charge of the Agriprocessors account, Juda Engelmayer, initially said that an intern at the company had posted the comments and had been fired.

Today, the CEO of 5WPR, Ronn Torossian, released a statement that said, “A senior staff member failed to be transparent in dealing with client matters. He has taken full responsibility.”

In an e-mail to the Forward, Torossian wrote that Engelmayer had not been fired. But Torossian would not answer questions about how Engelmayer, or anyone else in the company, had taken “full responsibility.” He also would not answer questions about the status of the intern that Engelmayer had mentioned.

A number of the comments in question were posted under the name of Rabbi Morris Allen, a prominent critic of Agriprocessors and the founder of the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative, which is attempting to create ethical standards for the production of kosher food.

Allen’s organization, Hekhsher Tzedek, has said it is looking into taking legal action against 5WPR.

The fraudulent comments were first uncovered by the blogger Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah.com. At the time, Torossian told the Forward, “I have complete confidence in knowing that my account team who runs these accounts did not make these posts.”

On Thursday, the JTA wrote a story indicating that similar comments posted on the JTA Web site had come from what appeared to be Engelmayer’s home in Manhattan.

After JTA made this discovery, a person claiming to be an intern at 5WPR called JTA to explain that he had posted the comment from Engelmayer’s apartment without Engelmayer’s knowledge. The intern declined to give his name, according to JTA.

Soon thereafter, Rosenberg published yet another blog post indicating that many earlier comments on his FailedMessiah blog appeared to also come from Engelmayer’s apartment. This was followed quickly by Torossian’s statement. In it, he said, “This battle is not about blogging, it is however about protecting the highest levels of Kashrut in the Jewish community.”

Raid Unsettles Kosher Beliefs

2008-07-02T08:17:00.002-05:00

By Miriam Jordan
Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2008

An immigration raid on the country's largest kosher meatpacking plant has fueled a nationwide debate in the Jewish community about what it really means to be kosher.

The debate flared after May 12 when federal immigration agents raided the country's largest kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors Inc., and ultimately arrested 389 illegal immigrants.

The Postville, Iowa, plant specializes in kosher slaughter, a process that is overseen by rabbis and involves a quick, deep stroke across the throat designed to kill an animal within seconds. The closely monitored process, deemed humane by Jewish law, is designed to spare suffering. But the people doing the work were allegedly treated inhumanely. The raid, an example of the Bush administration's crackdown on industries employing illegal immigrants, exposed allegations that workers were being underpaid, physically abused, sexually harassed and extorted.

A federal investigation of the plant is under way and immigration officials declined to comment. No officials at Agriprocessors have been charged with wrongdoing, and management declined to be interviewed for this article.

The incident involving alleged mistreatment of immigrants has dismayed some Jewish leaders who say that Jews should be particularly sensitive to human suffering.

"The Jewish narrative for 2,000 years has predominantly been about our powerlessness as unprotected immigrants," says Shmuly Yanklowitz, co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek, a progressive Orthodox group. The allegations are "particularly embarrassing because of how deeply connected our religious and historical identity and universal moral mandate are to the plight of these workers."

One such worker, Joel Rucal, is a Guatemalan immigrant who worked on the chicken line before the raid. He says his mother, who also worked at the plant, was arrested and wears a monitoring device around her ankle. Mr. Rucal also listed alleged abuses in the plant including extra shifts without pay and sexual advances by supervisors.

"Sometimes we needed to use the bathroom and they didn't allow us," says Mr. Rucal. "We were afraid to say anything because it was the only job we could get."

Agriprocessors, started by Aaron Rubashkin, a Hassidic Jew from Brooklyn, is best known for its kosher brands such as Aaron's Best and bills itself the world's largest processor of what's called glatt kosher beef, which adheres to the strictest kosher standard. A statement issued by vice president Chaim Abrahams said the company had hired immigration and safety-compliance experts after the raid. An employee hotline was activated last Friday.

Rabbi Weiss Mandl, top supervisory rabbi for kosher certification at the plant, says: "We were not aware of any mistreatment of workers." However, he added, "we are not involved with cutting and packing...That's not the kosher part."

But for Rabbi Morris Allen, kosher is about more than a process. The revelations at Agriprocessors have prompted the conservative rabbi from Mendota Heights, Minn., to call on consumers to avoid the company's products. The 53-year-old is founder of a movement that advocates for animal and worker welfare in kashrut, food prepared in accordance with Jewish law.

"We shouldn't accept a standard of kashrut that is more concerned about the lung of a cow than the hand of a worker," he says. "Isn't it important for us as Jews to care that our food isn't just ritually kosher but ethically kosher, too?"

Rabbi Allen's critics say that until wrongdoing is proven, no Jewish organization should condemn Agriprocessors or seek punishment for the company. Some Orthodox rabbis, who control the supervision of kosher plants, have charged the Conservative movement with hatching a plot to take over kosher certification. Some detractors also say that most Conservative Jews, who constitute the largest Jewish denomination, don't even keep kosher.

Rabbi Allen first became concerned in March 2006 when he read an article in the Jewish press about poor conditions for Latino laborers at the Agriprocessors plant. With the blessing of the Conservative movement's leadership, he formed a commission of inquiry and won Agriprocessors' permission to visit the plant.

Rabbi Allen led a five-man team that included a Spanish-speaking rabbi, labor and immigration activists and an official from the United Conservative Synagogue, representing Conservative congregations.

"We discovered things that were unbelievably painful," Rabbi Allen says. Among other allegations, he says pregnant women working on their feet all day were denied bathroom breaks; injured workers lacked proper medical care; and accounting machinations deprived workers of payment for all clocked hours.

To avoid creating controversy within the Jewish community, he says the team decided to quietly make recommendations to the Rubashkin family. While the company didn't respond, he says the situation "gives us an opportunity to link social responsibility with religious ritual" by introducing ethical standards into kosher certification.

Rabbi Allen went public with his gripe against Agriprocessors after agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, raided the 60-acre plant during the morning shift in May. A 56-page affidavit filed by an ICE agent to obtain a search warrant cites informants who allege that plant supervisors hired minors, forced workers to buy cars from them "or they would be fired or given poor work shifts" and abused them physically and mentally.

The document refers to one rabbi "calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees," and a supervisor blindfolding a Guatemalan worker and hitting him with a "meat hook."

After the raid, Rabbi Allen returned to Postville to meet community leaders, clergy and workers awaiting deportation. On May 22, the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, issued a statement calling on consumers to avoid Agriprocessors' products. It quoted Deuteronomy: "You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer."

Reaction has been swift. Synagogues and blogs are rallying in support of the ban. Uri L'Tzedek, the Orthodox group, joined in with a boycott petition so far signed by 2,000 Jewish religious and political leaders. And this week, the Conservative movement is set to release guidelines for an initiative called Hekhsher Tzedek, Hebrew for "justice certification." Meant to supplement traditional kosher certification, it will attest that kosher food was produced at a facility that meets ethical standards in areas like wages and benefits, health and safety and animal welfare.

Rabbi Allen's BlackBerry is stuffed with angry emails accusing him of sowing discord among Jews. "It's not a matter of hurting Jews or non-Jews," says the rabbi. "It's a matter of finding the truth and what is acceptable according to whom we are as a people."

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com

Consortium of Jewish Groups Respond to Plight of Immigrant Workers in Postville

2008-06-27T17:19:00.003-05:00

Very Important and Newsworthy Press Release

Endorses:

Assistance for workers in Postville
Comprehensive Immigration Reform
The Need for Hekhsher Tzedek

Click to read the entire consortium statement.

Kosher Ethics

2008-06-16T18:08:00.005-05:00

WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio
The Kojo Nnamdi Show
June 16, 2008

A recent immigration raid at the country's largest kosher slaughterhouse has fueled a long-simmering debate: If food meets the strict rules elaborated in religious texts, does it matter how food arrives at our plates? And where do workers' rights and other ethical considerations factor into kosher food production? We'll explore efforts on the local and national level to produce kosher food that meets both religious and ethical standards.

Guests:
Devora Kimelman-Block, Founder of KOL Foods

Rabbi Morris Allen, Director, Hekhsher Tzedek

Click to Listen (Real Player)

Click to Listen (Windows Media)

Kosher Meat Plant's Immigration Woes

2008-06-11T12:35:00.002-05:00

American Public Media: Weekend America
Kyle Gassiott
Michael May
June 7, 2008

Across America today, Jews will sit down for a Sabbath meal, and it's likely that they paid a significant premium for their kosher meat. It's not just that food is getting more expensive for everyone -- last month, the largest kosher meat processing plant in America was raided by immigration agents.

The feds arrested around 300 workers -- about one-third of the plant's workforce -- and this has significantly slowed the production of kosher meat. Reporter Kyle Gassiott visited the site of the plant, Postville, Iowa. He tells us what happened:

Postville is not like any other Iowa town. Sure, the streets have German names and corn fields stretch out in direction. But on a recent Sunday, the park was full of Orthodox Jewish boys playing baseball and Latino families picnicking -- not exactly a Grant Wood painting.

Postville is home to Agriprocessors, which provides 60 percent of the country's kosher beef. It's also the biggest employer in the region, with a largely Latino workforce. Last month, the plant was raided by immigration officials and a third were arrested.

Leah -- who wouldn't give her last name -- is one of the Orthodox Jews that lives in the town. She believes the plant was singled out. "I'm a little cynical about the fact that there've been two big raids in the country and it seems to be ironic that this is the biggest raid in the history of the United States," she says. "And it happens to be a the largest Jewish kosher plant in the country."
The raid has of course hurt the plant's operations, but it's also been a blow to the local businesses that cater to the workers. The empty aisles in the town's Latino grocery store give you a good idea about how things have changed. Owner Juan Figueroa moved to Postville five years ago because the business was so good.

"I was doing very, very good until this raid happened," he says. Now he estimates his business is less than half of what it once was.
It can be easy to get the impression that the town has been a victim of federal agents. But for years, Agriprocessors has been at the center of a debate over working conditions, wages and the ethics of kosher meat. The story begins in 1973, when the former owners of the meat-packing plant closed shop. The slaughter business was changing quickly and they couldn't afford to pay union wages anymore.
Fourteen years later, an Orthodox businessman from Brooklyn, Aaron Rubashkin, saw an opportunity: He could re-open as a kosher plant, produce meat cheaply and sell it for top dollar.
University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom, who wrote a book about Postville, he says the starkest difference is in wages. "In Iowa in 1980, a journeyman butcher who worked in a slaughterhouse who was union made $21 an hour," he says. "The minimum wage is paid to workers at Agriprocessors -- and that's $7.25 an hour. You don't need anything other than a strong stomach or strong back to work at a slaughterhouse."
And so jobs at the plant were quickly filled by unskilled, undocumented laborers. They wield sharp knives, slaughtering and then carving the animals as they roll by on a belt. It's repetitive and dangerous work. When he toured the plant, Bloom saw what workers endured in the kill room. "Knee-high in blood, wearing waders, sloshing around in blood that was pulsating out of a steer's neck -- shooting out in a geyser," he says.

In a five-year period, OSHA reported that workers suffered lost limbs, broken bones, eye injuries and hearing loss while working at the plant.
There are kosher slaughterhouses across the country, but Postville has been subjected to particular criticism -- mostly by Jews themselves. A reporter for the Jewish Daily Forward, Nathaniel Popper, exposed conditions in the plant in 2006.
Rabbi Morris Allen of St. Paul, Minn., read the series of articles and wondered if this meat could actually be considered kosher. "We became more concerned about the lung of a cow than we were in the dignity of the worker processing that cow."
The Postville plant follows the accepted Jewish law to the letter -- they have rabbis in the plant making sure they animal is healthy enough to be considered kosher and that it's slaughtered properly. But Rabbi Allen believes the plant practices violate other laws found in the Old Testament or the Torah: "Also found in the Torah is the verse that says you should not abuse a needy and desperate laborer," he says.
Rabbi Allen wanted to fix the situation, so he approached the owners of the plant with the following three proposals: bring in the Iowa Department of Labor, provide training manuals in Spanish and have a delegate from his group meet with the workers.

"And I believe had they been accepted, and had we entered into a process quietly from one part of the Jewish community working with another part of the Jewish community, we wouldn't be in this particular situation in the way it has," he says.
Even after the raid, officials with Agriprocessors insist they check immigration status and treats workers fairly. But the negative publicity is causing Jews to think twice at the butcher shop. Just this year, a major kosher certification board severed its relationship with the plant. And last month, conservative Jewish leaders effectively called for a boycott of the plant's meat.
For his part, Rabbi Allen has given up on negotiations. He's created his own kosher seal, called "hekhsher tzedek." When Jews see it on a slab of beef, they can be assured that the treatment of the slaughterhouse workers was, well, kosher.

A Rabbi's World: You Are What You Eat

2008-06-06T15:51:00.006-05:00

Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
The New York Jewish Week Blog
June 6, 2008

The recent federal raid at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, and the accompanying allegations brought against the Rubashkin family and brand, represent a particularly sorry and damaging episode in the cause of religious Judaism in this country.

The Agriprocessors story, at least for me, is not about the hundreds of illegal aliens who were arrested. That is a separate issue, and a very sad statement on the inability of our government to enact any kind of sane immigration policy. That they were allegedly mistreated is nothing short of tragic, and a black stain on those who employed them.

Nor is it about kosher meat or food. One particular family business is at the center of this story, not kosher food. That there is Chillul Hashem involved in the story- embarrassment to the cause of religious Judaism in general, and kashrut more specifically- is the collateral damage, if you will, of a particular business' lamentable labor practices.

The truth is that the Agriprocessors story is but an egregious example of a much bigger issue for us in the traditional Jewish community, namely: what is the connection between the food that we eat, and the values that we espouse as Jews?

To be sure, this is not a new issue. Vegetarians have been preaching this lesson forever, and many people within the kosher community long ago gave up eating veal, and some all red meat, because of ethical concerns.

But the Agriprocessors incident has brought into sharper focus a different dimension of the same issue, having to deal not with the animals themselves, but with the workers involved in the plants where the food is produced.

The fundamental question is not whether the food is kosher; that is actually not the question. No one is questioning the kashrut of the product. The issue now before us is whether the means by which the food is produced need to meet ethical standards, and whether or not those standards are also part and parcel of Judaism's understanding of what kashrut is all about.

It is exactly this issue that, in the Conservative movement of which I am a part, gave rise to the creation of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, a joint project of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

The raison d'etre of Hekhsher Tzedek is to state clearly and unambivalently that issues like wages and benefits, employee health and safety, environmental impact and the like must also be a part of the kosher equation.

Our natural instinct when we think "kosher" is to associate the term with whether or not we may put the food in our mouths. But kashrut is about holiness- it's all about holiness.

And it stands to reason that if the goal of kashrut is to sanctify ourselves and our lives, then closing our eyes to the abuse of those who are asked to produce the food is simply not acceptable. The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission's goal is to create a new symbol to be placed on those kosher products whose producers are found to be corporately responsible, and adhering to proper treatment of workers and related employment issues.

Some have alleged that we in the Conservative movement are trying to "muscle in" on the Kashrut industry. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Others have said that rabbinic supervisors are ill equipped to do what they see as human resources work, and that we are naïve. Further, they argue, the kinds of standards that we are asking for in the industry will drive the price of kosher meat up.

Well, that just might be. But if a lower price for kosher meat and poultry (such that there is such a thing) is possible only by exploiting the most vulnerable sectors of our society, not to mention violating the kinds of laws that virtually every food provision corporation in America is legally obliged to adhere to, then perhaps the time has come to either tighten our belts and pay more, or find other ways to satisfy our appetites.

Yes, I remember Nike, and I deplore sweatshops and unfair labor practices in whatever contexts or countries they rear their ugly heads. But Nike and its ilk do not pretend to wrap themselves in a proverbial tallit and be about the quest for holiness. For them, it's all about the money. And when the kosher food industry becomes all about the money, and loses track of the other values that are inherently a part of the kosher equation, then we are all in trouble, and so is religious Judaism. Yes, businesspeople are in business to make money. But how?

Hekhsher Tzedek is an idea whose time has come, and Agriprocessors is the proof text.

Rubashkin and the Cost of a Kosher Chicken

2008-06-06T12:31:00.001-05:00

Bmidbar - in the wilderness - no-one can hear you scream.

It might the tag line for some new Hollywood movie.

In the wilderness, maybe the Children of Israel thought they could get away with their behaviour, because who cares what goes on in a wilderness?

As a Rabbinical student I led a bus tour of America. We drove from New York, on the East Coast to San Diego on the West Coast, then north up the coast to Portland Oregon, and then back again.

It turns out that, despite what you may have thought, there is a middle to America. New Yorkers, San Franciscans and the like call is fly-over. A wilderness.

One of my earliest literary forays into this wilderness, and I remember it well, came in a book, Boychicks in the Hood by Robert Eisenberg. In this touching collection of essays a secular Jewish guy, who learnt Yiddish from his grandmother, finds out he has a cousin who is a Satmar Hasid. So he goes off to meet and before he knows it he has found himself on a world-wide tour of the Ultra-Orthodox world.

It is a lovely book and it was the first insight I had into a world of Bratlav Chasidim heading to Uman, the Yeshiva in Gateshead and more.

But one chapter stuck more than any other in my mind. It was when Eisenberg headed to a town called Postville, North-East Iowa. Fly-over territory.

There, far far from any kind of Jewish centre Robert Eisenberg visited a slaughterhouse. Not a normal kind of slaughterhouse, you understand,

The largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world.

Agriprocessors, or Rubashkins as it is known.

It's hard to get a sense of how powerful an organisation Rubshkins are - or at least were.

60% of all kosher beef in America.

40% of all kosher poultry comes from this one slaughter house.

When Aaron Rubashkin founded his slaughterhouse he re-wrote the book on how to provide Kosher meat, taking all the labour out to where the animals were.

The plant was a huge employer in a very depressed part of the United States, around 1,000 employees, that is sustaining 1,000 families. When the Rubashkins opened a new processing plant in 2006 the Governor or Iowa gave the company a cheque for half a million dollars, part of an incentive package to bring the work to the town.

Reading Eisenberg's book I was left with the quaint picture of he painted of 200 frum yids, sitting around, shechting chickens and cows by day, studying by night and generally feeling very bored.

It amused me, and stuck in my mind when I heard something far far more serious.

Two weeks ago Federal agents raided the Rubashkin plant. Of the 1000 staff they made 68o arrests, that is 68o arrests.

The investigating officers were looking to find illegal immigrants and they found at Rubashkins plenty.

In the last week 260 of illegal Guatemalan workers plant have been sentenced to five months in prison. The New York Times has called the raid the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

It turns out that when the Federal Government wanted to send out a message that illegal workers would no longer simply be deported they picked on this oh so Jewish employer.

And it gets worse

My colleague Harold Kravitz, a Rabbi in Minnetonka, went to visit Postville this week. He was able to meet with some of the women who worked in the plant. The men have all been jailed, but the women, if they have kids, are having their sentences delayed so they can care for their charges.

Harold wrote the following

`We spent hours hearing about appalling working conditions and the abuses that have taken place at Agriprocessors. We heard allegations of all kinds of abuses: underage workers; the poorest pay of any slaughterhouse in Iowa; supervisors who demanded payments and sexual favors in exchange for jobs or particular assignments. Workers consistently described being cursed at and screamed at to work faster and harder. We heard of people working in demanding and dangerous jobs with no training. We heard two stories of workers being struck. We repeatedly heard workers describe how a lead supervisor would demand that they buy a used car from him for more than its value in order to get a job at the plant, even though they were not eligible for a driver's license. The people we talked to are in the process of being deported. They had nothing to gain or lose from what they now say about their experiences. They are simple folk who answered questions directly without apparent embellishment'

Rubashkin have been paying their new employees $5 an hour, that's £2.50 to you or me, substantially below the mandated federal minimum wage. The Federal application to make the raid records information from an informant that a human resources manager laughed when the worker presented her with three social security cards being used by three different workers, but carrying the same social security number. The source also claims to have seen weapons being traded in the plant and, God help us, a methamphetamine lab on site. The source, a one-time employee recalls that he destroyed the lab, but was subsequently confronted by his supervisor and, the source believes, this led to the termination of his employment. The search warrant affidavit is a shander, a hillul hashem, a deep embarrassment.

In fact my colleagues, members of the Rabbinical Assembly, Masorti Rabbis, have had their eye on Rubashkins for some time. A commission of enquiry into working conditions at the plant reported some years ago and a number of American Conservative Synagogues have been boycotting Rubashkin meat. A group of Conservative Rabbis, led by Rabbi Morris Allen have been doing important work in setting up what he calls Hekhsher Tzedek

Hekhsher Tzedek is a supervision not of the details of slaughter and list of ingredients of food products, but a supervision of the human labour that went into their manufacture. It is a supervision of worker pay, provision of health benefits, vacation, sick pay, training, health and safety, corporate governance and transparency and environmental impact. It is one of the most important initiatives in the Movement.It may have been in part behind the raid. It may have been being the decision of KAJ, one of the major Orthodox certification organizations in America, to stop supervising at Rubashkins.I am proud of Hekhsher Tzedek.

But I am ashamed and angry about this;

I am angry and ashamed because I, as a Kosher-observant Jew, have been turned into an accomplice to oppression.

Kol Yisrael Aravin zeh le Zeh - all of Israel is responsible for one another.

The corrupt and illegal hiring practices of Rubashkin's have wound up a wrecking ball that has now been cut loose and left to blow apart families and individuals least able to care for themselves. The corrupt and illegal hiring practices at Rubashkin's have placed a stumbling block before the blind -- economic migrants fleeing their lives of poverty in Latin America looking for a chance in the developed world.

And you must not put a stumbling block before the blind.

Not even in the Wilderness, not even in Postville.

The verse

Lifnie Iver lo titein rnichshol -- you shall not put a stumbling block before the blind continues veyareita me-eloheicha ani Hl - and you shall fear your God, I am THE LORD

Why, ask the Rabbis ask is this extra bit of text included - you shall fear God.

Because the blind person who has just stumbled might not know if the noise of a stumbling block being placed before him was done ‘For his good or otherwise.’

And indeed no-one else might see the egregiousness done to this blind person. But God, God knows

The one who knows all thoughts. You shall fear that God,

even in fly-over territory where no-one really wants to look

Even in a slaughterhouse where we don’t look too closely because the whole business of producing kosher meat is, well, just a little too bloody for comfort.

But while we are digging around in Chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus let me share some another verse.

You shall not defraud your neighbor, nor rob him; the wages of he who is hired shall not remain with you all night until the morning

Or how about this one, from Deuteronomy

You shall not abuse a needy and destitute labourer.

Or this one from Malachi

I will act as a relentless accuser against those...

Who cheat labourers of their hire...said the Lord of Hosts.

(Malachi 3:5)

The Rubashkin scandal has barely featured in the Jewish Chronicle, but its been all over the blogosphere. Some have protested that these messy employment practices are an abuse of our requirement not to be a scoundrel in the face of the law

L fnin mishurat Kadin

But that misses the point entirely.

The problem is that employment regulations are halachah. It is prohibited to treat employees badly not from some cozy ethical standpoint. It is prohibited as a matter of din.

So where now?

I feel a sense of obligation to the families left in Postville, stripped of a source of labour that they should never have been offered, but now cannot do without. The local Churches are being overwhelmed by those in desperate need of support. I have pledged some of my own funds, anyone wishing to join me is invited to send a cheque to the shul marked for this purpose.

But there is also something else.

Something more important and far broader in its impact.

This grubby, far away, incident at Rubashkins threatens to draw the veil from all the things we don't want to see in these lives we live, driven by consumption.

Abraham Joshua Heschel put it most forcibly.

Why is it only required for butcher shops to be under religious supervision? Why not insist that banks, factories and those who deal in real estate require hekhshers and be operated according to religious laws? When a drop of blood is found in an egg, we abhor the idea of eating the egg, but often there is more than one drop of blood in a dollar or a lira and we fail to remind people constantly of the teachings of our tradition.

There is much in the papers and on the news about the horrors of price increases, fuel, food.

But the truth is that we pay too little for the resources we consume.

We cannot justify paying the paltry amounts we do for our food; even kosher meat, and we protest at the cost of kosher meat.

Rubashkin pay £5 an hour to their chicken pluckers.
How much would you want to be paid to sit day after day in Iowa plucking chickens?

We cannot justify paying as little as we do because of the true cost of plundering the resources of the world is far greater than the £4.99 we might splash out on a T-shirt.

We cannot justify it because the true cost of a litre of diesel is far greater than £1.20 or even the £1.30 that is around the corner.

There is as Heschel puts it blood in our dollars.

We are denuding our planet of natural resources and we are oppressing the poorest on our planet by forcing them-to turn these natural resources into consumables for our amusement and entertainment.

We assume our food, like the manna in the midbar, arrives miraculously and we drive down our prices because it makes us feel better.

We assume that clothes come ready made, without a sweatshop of Chinese tailors or Bangledeshi seamstresses having to pour over them.

We need, desperately, to being to take seriously the true cost of consumption.

We have become, since I have arrived here at New London, a Fair Trade Synagogue.

It's an embarrassment, frankly. We get a certificate. You can see it in the kitchen. It means that we promise to serve only fair-trade coffee and chocolate, as long as its not too difficult for us to get these items.

How hard is that?

We need something far deeper

We need to re-look at how much we really need to consume, compare it to how much food we throw away rotten, or clothes lying ever un-worn in our wardrobes. It's easy to point a finger at Rubashkin.

And Ido.

But we all need to take responsibility for the pressure put on suppliers of consumables to feed us, cloth us, tend our every whim.

We need to conduct personal consumption audits.

And we need to fear God.

veyareita me-eloheicha

For, in the final moments, our excesses of consumption and the oppression of the poor and the needy labourers we have all effectively imprisoned with our will to consume will stand before us, stacked up among the debits of our lives.

Kashrut and Ethics

2008-05-28T12:57:00.007-05:00

A new poll at The Jewish Press: Should a company's kashruth supervision be removed if it is found to have violated laws and ethical standards having nothing to do with kashruth?

Yes, kosher should be about more than just food. 77%

No, a kosher seal approval is only about food, nothing else. 23%

(Results as of 1:00 p.m. 28 May 2008)

Reconsidering AgriProcessors Products

2008-05-22T22:19:00.005-05:00

Published: 05/22/2008

The leadership of the U.S. Conservative movement is urging Jews to consider not patronizing AgriProcessors, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse.

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."

The advisory extends not only to products bought retail but also to meat and poultry bought at restaurants and for private functions such as weddings and bar mitzvahs. The statement falls short of the boycott hoped for by the more activist wing of the Conservative rabbinate, and leaves the decision in the hands of the individual consumer.

Still, Rabbi Morris Allen, head of the movement's hekhsher tzedek commission, said that "it is the first statement from the organized Jewish community that reminds people they need to evaluate the food they purchase and eat" from an ethical perspective.

No other Jewish movement has issued a statement on the issue.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union of Reform Judaism, said it was appropriate that the Conservative movement take the lead because unlike the Reform movement, the Conservative movement calls on its members to keep kosher. Noting his own "deep distress" at the news coming out of Postville, Iowa, where AgriProcessors is located, Yoffie said it is "absolutely" time for the Jewish community to demand similar investigations into all kosher slaughterhouses, because the case "has raised suspicions about all kosher food."

Rabbi Menachem Genack, head of the Orthodox Union's kosher department, the largest kosher certifier of AgriProcessors, said the O.U. is awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings against the company before coming to any decision. If AgriProcessors is found guilty of criminal charges, he said, the O.U. will withdraw its kosher certification. Meat and poultry produced by AgriProcessors is sold under the following kosher and non-kosher labels: Aaron's Best, Aaron's Choice, David's, European Glatt, Iowa Best Beef, Nevel, Rubashkin's, Shor Habor, and Supreme Kosher.

You Shall Not Abuse a Needy and Destitute Laborer (Deuteronomy 24:14)

2008-05-22T16:56:00.003-05:00

A Statement by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
And the Rabbinical Assembly
Regarding Rubashkin's Meat Products

New York, NY (May 22, 2008)

In light of continuing disturbing allegations of unacceptable worker conditions at the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly are united in calling for a thorough evaluation by kosher consumers of the appropriateness of purchasing and consuming meat products produced by the Rubashkin's label.

Rubashkin's produces kosher meat primarily under the Aaron and David label at the Agriprocessors facility. It is a major producer of kosher meat and poultry in the United States. The allegations about the terrible treatment of workers employed by Rubashkin's has shocked and appalled members of the Conservative Movement as well as all people of conscience. As Kashrut seeks to diminish animal suffering and offer a humane method of slaughter, it is bitterly ironic that a plant producing kosher meat be guilty of inflicting human suffering.

The Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism will immediately release an advisory to its members and constituents to evaluate the appropriateness of consuming Rubashkin products until the current situation is addressed. This advisory extends not only to products purchased on the retail level but to meat and poultry consumed in restaurants and at private functions, such as weddings and bar mitzvahs.

As the month of Sivan approaches, Jews throughout the world are mindful of the Torah's message of the power of Kedushah, holiness as it applies to all aspects of our lives including the ethics of worker treatment and food production. It is hoped that Conservative synagogues, schools and summer camps engage in a study of this important topic in honor of the festival of Shavuot which begins on the sixth day of Sivan -- commemorating the giving of the Torah.

A valuable source for such study is the paper written by Rabbi Avraham Reisner , entitled Hekshsher Tzedek Al Pi Din. This paper is a companion to the Hekhsher Tzedek Policy Statement and Working Guidelines. The paper is available on the websites of the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism [and here].

By releasing this advisory, the Conservative Movement endorses the vision and guidance of the Hekhsher Tzedek commission. Hekhsher Tzedek is an initiative of the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue that seeks to create an ethical certification process for kosher food. Through its work, Hekhsher Tzedek seeks to strengthen the bond between Halakha and Social Justice.

The reports of unacceptable worker conditions at the Agriprocessors plant demonstrate the pressing need for the sort of ethical oversight which might be provided by Hekhsher Tzedek.

For further information about the advisory being released by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, or to request an interview with any member of the Hekhsher Tzedek commission, the Rabbinical Assembly or United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism please call or email: Shira Dicker (212.663.4643) or Steve Rabinowitz (202.265.3000).

ABOUT THE UNITED SYNAGOGUE OF CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism represents and supports the synagogues of the Conservative movement in North America. We work with lay leaders and Jewish professionals on the national, regional, and grassroots levels to teach, inspire, and motivate Conservative Jews to live lives increasingly filled with Jewish learning, ethical behavior, spirituality, and mitzvot.

ABOUT THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY

Founded in 1901, the Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The Assembly actively promotes the cause of Conservative Judaism, publishes learned texts, prayer-books and works of Jewish interest, and administers the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for the Conservative movement.

Rabbis of the assembly serve throughout the world in congregations, on campus, as educators, hospital and military chaplains, teachers of Judaica and officers of communal service organizations. Its membership spans over 20 countries and numbers 1600 rabbis.

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Many Recent News Articles

2008-05-18T02:08:00.005-05:00

UFCW v. Agriprocessors business-as-usual - Union News, May 18, 2008

Experts: Kosher slaughter house owners may be indicted - Jerusalem Post, May 16, 2008

For Shame - New Jersey Jewish Standard, May 16, 2008

Ask the Rabbi: Not Sporting - Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2008

Raid on Kosher Slaughterhouse Sparks Fears of Meat Shortage - Forward, May 15, 2008

Business as usual after Rubashkin raid, New Jersey Jewish Standard, May 16, 2008

Nation File :: Feds Conduct Largest Raid Of Illegal Workers In US History At Kosher Plant, Also Cite Possible Drug Activity - dsjv: Deep South Jewish Voice, May 14, 2008

Widespread Worker Abuses Alleged At AgriProcessors

2008-05-14T22:39:00.004-05:00

Federal affadavit could open door to indictment against top kosher meat supplier.

by Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Staff Writer
The Jewish Week
May 14, 2008

Two legal experts suggested this week that the federal government could be laying the groundwork for possible indictments against the owners of the country’s largest kosher meat manufacturer.

The comments come in the wake of Monday’s raid on AgriProcessors’ slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, when federal authorities entered the plant and arrested 390 workers — more than a third of the company’s workforce — on illegal immigration charges. On Tuesday, 29 workers were charged with crimes including identity theft and using false social security numbers, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“It’s clear [from the affadavit’s allegations] that the government is thinking of an up-the-ladder chain of getting either the whole corporation or some senior managers,” said Marc Stern, general counsel to the American Jewish Congress, who reviewed the affadavit. “There are clearly some supervisors who are at great risk with being charged with harboring aliens in systematic fashion. There’s also a tantalizing thing in there about different-colored paychecks that suggests a slush fund for paying illegals.”

“Whoever from the corporation is involved with that is at great risk,” Stern continued. “They [the government] lay the groundwork for such a charge. But whether they can prove it beyond a supervisory level or will even attempt it is too early to say.”

The affidavit filed by a senior special agent of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department lists dozens of pages of allegations against the company’s owners and supervisors. The document portrays them as exploiters of a vulnerable illegal immigrant work force, and it could be seen as setting the owners and supervisors up for possible indictment.

Allegations include that company owners and supervisors physically abused and exploited workers; knowingly hired workers without legal documentation; altered work records; paid some off the books; and paid them below minimum wage (starting workers at $5 an hour).

In addition, the affadavit alleges that company owners and supervisors fraudulently and forcibly sold them used cars and trucks, threatening that they would be fired if they didn’t buy the vehicles.

“Our company takes the immigration laws seriously,” AgriProcessors said in a statement, adding that it cooperated with the government “in the enforcement action” and will continue to operate during the investigation. It also assured consumers that it is continuing to supply glatt kosher meats and poultry.

AgriProcessors produces about 60 percent of the kosher meat and 40 percent of the kosher poultry in the U.S market.

Washington attorney Nathan Lewin, who has represented AgriProcessors and its owners, the Rubashkin family, in the past, conveyed surprise this week at the breadth of the affadavit’s allegations.

The “fact is there was a lot of material in there that did not seem to be relevant [to the immigration charges]. It has all sorts of allegations [against the owners and supervisors], all sorts of information gleaned from all sorts of places,” he said.

“Whether or not charges are brought against the Rubashkins, that remains to be seen,” Lewin said. He said he does not yet know if he is representing AgriProcessors in this current matter.

He added that he did not believe the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Rubashkins were in talks at the present time.

The affidavit also alleges that an informant saw evidence of methamphetamines being manufactured at the plant.

In the wake of Monday’s raid, the country’s leading kosher supervising agency, the Orthodox Union, expressed concern about the situation.

“The different issues, like immigration, we don’t have expertise or authority in that area but will follow the authorities’ lead,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the OU’s kashrut administrator. The OU is one of the two current kosher certifiers of AgriProcessors products, and the most widely accepted.

“We’ll see where this leads in terms of determinations the government makes,” Rabbi Genack said. “If they find that the company is culpable we will respond. In terms of some of the claims, like drug use, they [the Rubashkins’] say that it’s not true, but I will wait to see what the determination is. If workers there make drugs, whatever it is, and without sanction of management, then it wouldn’t affect us. But if it was with the knowledge of the company then it would affect us,” he said.

If the government concludes that the company’s owners were culpable, “It certainly would be something we would be concerned about,” he said.

The federal investigation dates back to last November, and involved sending in undercover workers who recorded conversations about buying false employment documents.

Beyond the challenge of finding new (and legal) workers to replace those arrested this week, the incident and other related investigations could mean major problems for AgriProcessors’ owners, Brooklyn-based Aaron Rubashkin and his son, Rabbi Sholom Rubashkin, who runs the Iowa plant.

Officials at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department and the U.S. Attorney’s office said that they could make no comment as to whether the Rubashkins will be charged.

Sholom Rubashkin did not return a message left on his cell phone.

At the same time, the U.S Department of Labor and Iowa Department of Labor are investigating AgriProcessors practices. In March, the Iowa Division of Labor Services levied $182,000 in fines against AgriProcessors for 39 health and safety violations.

There are troubles for the company even beyond the realm of the government. One of the company’s three kosher supervising agencies recently terminated its relationship with the meat maker.

K’hal Adath Jeshurun, based in Washington Heights, ended its supervision of all AgriProcessor products effective April 15. Rabbi Moshe Edelstein, KAJ’s kashrut administrator, would not say why the step was taken. A letter KAJ officials sent to Aaron Rubashkin in December, however, made it clear that the AgriProcessor owner had appealed the supervising agency’s original decision to terminate the relationship, a conclusion it upheld.

These are far from the first problems AgriProcessors has faced over the past few years.

Aaron Rubashkin bought the Postville plant in 1987 and brought in people local Iowans had never before seen — Lubavitch chasidim, along with an influx of Hispanic workers.

There were tensions between the locals and their new neighbors. Then the vegetarian group PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals took aim at AgriProcessor’s practices.

PETA sent an undercover worker to the Postville plant in 2004 who videotaped what the organization describes as inhumane treatment of still-sentient cows during their slaughter.

PETA did the same at the Rubashkins’ Gordon, Neb., plant in May 2007. AgriProcessors eventually changed the way it slaughters cows in response to the criticism.

The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union has been trying to organize factory floor laborers at AgriProcessors as well, with an aggressive campaign that includes a Web site and an automated phone call campaign to people they identified as leaders in the Jewish community, warning them against AgriProcessors’ meats.

But despite the crises, AgriProcessors’ business has recently been on the upswing, said Menachem Lubinsky, editor of KosherToday.com, who also has a public relations firm and is representing the Rubashkins.

(Lubinsky said Agriprocessors is not the only slaughterhouse to have been recently raided by immigration authorities. “It’s not an aberration for I.C.E., they do this all over at meat plants.”)

AgriProcessors kosher meat brands are: Aaron’s Best, Aaron’s Choice, Rubashkin’s, European Glatt, Supreme Kosher, David’s, and Shor Habor. Two-thirds of their product is non-kosher (since kosher meat can come only from part of an animal), and is sold through retailers including Wal-Mart, Trader Joe’s and Pathmark.

While no one knows for sure what the privately held company earns, a Dunn & Bradstreet report pegs Rubashkin Industries’ annual income at $84.9 million. Family members’ business interests are diversified beyond meat, and into real estate and other ventures. Sales of kosher beef and poultry in America are about $300 million annually, according to industry sources.

What remains unknown is the impact of this week’s raids on AgriProcessors’ short-term business. The company released a statement this week stating, “there will be no shortage in the supply of glatt kosher meats and poultry.”

According to Lubinsky, “They have a lot of different resources at their disposal.”
In addition to the Iowa and Nebraska plants, the company also owns slaughterhouses in Uruguay and Argentina.

“As a company, they have more than the usual number of resources to tap into. It’s not as if even if this plant shuts down they’re out of business. The company thinks it will be able to maintain the level of production and supply. I don’t know how, but that’s what they say,” said Lubinsky.

But it is having an impact. While AgriProcessor was up and running, though at reduced production, on Tuesday, the Midwestern cattle markets were down “because AgriProcessor wasn’t buying,” said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The plant had halted operation on Monday after the federal raid.

Local distributors and retailers predicted that prices for kosher meat will rise even more as a result of the AgriProcessor problems.

AgriProcessors’ problems could be a boon for one new group, feeding demand for a “Heksher Tzedek,” or “Just Stamp of Approval.”

The nascent Heksher Tzedek Commission, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement, intends to ensure that companies to which it awards its approval meet a range of ethical, as well as ritual, standards.

“This underscores the need for it,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, a Conservative rabbi in Minnesota who is director of the Heksher Tzedek Commission. “The fact that the Jewish community has seemingly allowed kosher food to be produced in a way that potentially exploited laborers, this is the reason we need to be reassured that when we buy kosher food, it’s with the best values being employed, both in ritual and ethical aspects of Jewish law.”

His group issued a statement this week saying they “condemn the corrupt practices of AgriProcessors which resulted in a raid by government agents. The actions of this company have brought shame upon the entire Jewish community.”

About People

2008-05-01T18:39:00.001-05:00

(As reported in the American Jewish World newspaper, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 )

Rabbi Morris Allen, of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Mendota Heights, has been invited to join Israeli president and Nobel laureate Shimon Peres in next months' "The Israeli Presidential Conference 2008: Facing Tomorrow" event in Jerusalem. The three-day conference will take place May 13-15 and coincide with Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

Allen was invited to the conference because of his leadership with Hekhsher Tzedek, a national initiative to ensure that kosher food not only meets the ritual requirements of Jewish law, but also the ethical demands with which people live.

Along with Allen, the list of 1,000 leading politicians, scholars and scientists scheduled to attend the Presidential Conference convened by Peres includes Mikhail Gorbachev, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

According to a press release, the Presidential Conference agenda will be set by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank that brings together Jewish scholars and leaders to discuss the future of the Jewish people.

The conference has been described as a "Jewish Davos" (referencing the legendary annual gathering of world leaders in Switzerland) and "a synergistic gathering of major world leaders, Jews and non-Jews, thinkers and doers, poets and physicists, rabbis and entrepreneurs."

Most of the meetings and addresses at the event in Jerusalem will be simulcast on the Internet. Click for information.

Jews going beyond ‘kosher’

2008-04-22T13:47:00.007-05:00

Food producers would win seal for business ethics

by Ed Stannard
New Haven Register Metro Editor
Sat, Apr 19, 2008

As Jews worldwide prepared for this evening’s Passover Seder, they were careful to buy kosher meat and other foodstuffs, prepared according to ancient law and custom.

For a number of Jews, however, the rituals of kashrut do not go far enough. The working conditions at the kosher slaughterhouses and other food-processing plants are also important, they say.

Concerned about labor issues, corporate responsibility and environmentalism, Hekhsher Tzedek, a project born in Conservative Judaism, plans to certify companies that fulfill ethical standards. The name translates as “justice certification.”

“The Hekhsher Tzedek project is still relatively new and it’s not completely defined,” said Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen of Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel in New Haven, who plans to publicize it in his congregation.

Keeping kosher requires observant Jews to avoid “unclean” foods, such as pork and shellfish, to separate meat and dairy and to use only foods that have been prepared according to rituals of purity. Many Jews have separate dishware for meat and dairy meals, and two additional special sets for Passover.

The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission has been meeting with companies and labor organizations and plans to release a list of products that meet the ethical standards, though using the Hekhsher Tzedek seal will be voluntary. Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., director of the project, said the list will be released later this year.

Hekhsher Tzedek expands the ethics of eating beyond kosher rituals to include other Jewish laws dealing with treating people fairly and dealing honestly in the commercial sphere.

“Traditionally, people have looked at these Jewish texts as silos — one in this field, the other in that area,” said Allen.

The Hekhsher Tzedek seal will be given to foods produced according to standards of fair wages and benefits, worker training, ethical corporate behavior and environmental impact, according to a policy statement issued by the commission.

Some Jews believe certification should be limited to the kosher laws, that other issues are addressed by state and federal laws and regulations.

Tilsen disagrees. “The idea is that there are a number of laws, particularly labor laws and environmental law, that are part of Jewish law, just as much as the law of kashrut, kosher law,” he said.

While voluntary, “It’s kind of like a Good Housekeeping seal for labor practices and environmental practices,” Tilsen said.

It would help Jews, as well as non-Jews, who are concerned about how their food is prepared to know what products to buy. “It really is the law already, but we really have no way to know whether we’re complying with it,” Tilsen said. “This will give people a way to comply with this area of Jewish law.”

Tilsen said the connection to Passover is easy to see. “Part of the message of Passover has to do with the dignity of labor, the meaning of labor. There’s nothing wrong with working, but it’s a question of working traditions and who you’re working for.”

Another concern is, “At Passover time, many Jewish families invest a great deal of attention into the details of food — ‘kosher for Passover’ — and it’s easy to lose the greater picture.”

Allen said, “What Hekhsher Tzedek really represents is an attempt to demonstrate that Judaism at its core wants us to be concerned with ritual as well as ethics and vice versa. Both ritual and ethics need to be present at all times.”

Rabbi Lina Zerbarini of Yale University Hillel said she is not involved with Hekhsher Tzedek but sympathizes with the project’s intent. Even as a vegetarian, she must deal with the complexities of the supermarket, she said.

Zerbarini said she buys eggs from cage-free chickens rather than from commercially farmed chickens confined to small cages. “One of the downsides of cage-free eggs is (the hens) are running around with the roosters, which means half of them are fertilized, so they’re not kosher,” she said. It’s a difficult choice to toss out fertilized eggs versus buying the commercial brands, she said.

Admitting that “I’m not where I’d like to be in my personal observance of these issues,” Zerbarini said everyone should grapple with them, though many do not.

“I think some of it is how much we’re willing to know. It’s very easy not to think about where our food is coming from. It just shows up in the supermarket. But how we spend our money is important.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@nhregister.com or 789-5743.

Compassionate Conservatism

2008-03-27T22:12:00.002-05:00

by Jane Calem Rosen

Movement creates hekhsher based on ethics

When you buy food certified as kosher, how do you know that the manufacturer offers its workers a fair wage and benefits package; provides safe working conditions; doesn’t pollute the environment; engages in honest business practices; and, in the case of meat, treats the animals humanely before and during the slaughtering process?

And should you care?

The answer to the last question is an unequivocal "yes," according to a paper written by Rabbi Avram Reisner on behalf of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, an initiative of the Public Policy and Social Action Commission of the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

And if the Conservative movement has its way, consumers will someday be able to easily ascertain the answer to question No. 1. The commission is close to concluding work that will enable kosher food purveyors to submit to a review that will deem their products ethically fit for consumption. Such approval is intended to supplement, rather than substitute for, a label that indicates products have met ritual requirements for kashrut certification.

In his document, Reisner, a former religious leader of the New Milford Jewish Center who is also a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the movement’s legal body, details the halakhic — Jewish legal — underpinnings of five specific areas the commission has identified as appropriate for setting standards of ethical kashrut. The five are wages and benefits; health, safety, and training; corporate integrity, i.e., issues around working cooperatively, sharing information, honest reporting of data, and the like; product development, which includes aspects of animal welfare; and environmental impact. In each area, Reisner cites biblical and rabbinic sources, as well as medieval and later commentators.

For example, regarding the obligation of an employer to fairly compensate workers, including sick and vacation pay, Reisner builds an argument based on the law in Shulchan Arukh (Choshen Mishpat 331:1), which states, "One who hires employees should treat them in accordance with local custom," followed by Joseph Caro’s injunction from the same source, "When the custom was to provide their meals, he should provide their meals, to provide figs or dates or something similar, he should provide it — all in accordance with local custom."

(To read Reisner’s arguments in their entirety, log onto www.rabbimorrisallen2.blogspot.com.) [Al Pi Din]

"We believe that for a majority of Jewish people, regardless of their denomination, the gold standard is tzedek, righteousness. And [with hekhsher tzedek], we make a statement that is uniquely ours, as Jews, to make, since food is so central and tzedek so a critical part of our orientation to the world, that where ritual and ethics really meet is at our dining room tables," said Rabbi Morris Allen, religious leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn., project director of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, co-sponsored by the two organizations that represent Conservative rabbis and the Conservative laity. (The six-member commission is composed of rabbinical and lay representatives.)

In a recent telephone interview, Allen told The Jewish Standard that the Conservative movement is uniquely positioned to insist that both producers and consumers of kosher food heed Jewish ethical standards. "There is no bifurcation of ethics and ritual" in the Conservative approach to Jewish practice, Allen said. On an interdenominational panel on the topic in Chicago in January, Allen said that an Orthodox rabbi expressed embarrassment that "the Orthodox community has refused to address these issues [of social justice in kashrut] all these years," while Allen’s Reform colleague, said Allen, noted that ethics, rather than ritual, was of greater appeal to his constituency.

Allen first used the term hekhsher tzedek in a High Holy Day talk he gave in 2006 after spending that summer chairing a movement commission of inquiry into reported complaints by workers at one of the nation’s leading producers of kosher food, AgriProcessors of Postville, Iowa.

"I came to understand [from my summer experience]," said Allen, "that as someone who promoted kashrut observance, it is not possible to just focus on the ritual aspects, if the production of kosher products are inconsistent with Jewish values and norms from an ethical perspective.

"We need to get across to much of the kosher food industry," Allen continued, "that this [hekhsher tzedek] will be a reward for good work they are doing, an indication that observant Jews can feel really good about buying products produced ethically as well as ritually in a kosher way. So one important message to really reinforce is this is not a replacement for [an] already existing hekhsher, but a secondary statement about this food that is ritually kosher, that you can feel good about the way workers have been treated, the environmental impact of the company, and so forth."

"Unfortunately, we know there may be some companies where ethical shortcuts have been taken [that are] inconsistent with the values that Jewish people know to be correct," said Allen, noting that the absence of a hekhsher tzedek would alert the public to the potential for such abuses.

While the Conservative community is in full agreement on the ethical dimensions of kashrut, said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, chair of the law committee, a question yet to be settled is one of nomenclature. Some movement legal experts have expressed misgivings about applying the word "hekhsher," a term that conveys certification with the full force of halakha, Jewish law, behind it, in this context, said Dorff. These members of the law committee, Dorff explained, say they prefer the designation "siman," which means sign or symbol and therefore would be less authoritative and presumably carry less weight with consumers who observe strict standards of kashrut.

Reisner’s paper, while legal in nature, is "not a tshuvah [a Jewish legal responsum with the force of law]," agreed Allen. "All the areas addressed [in Reisner’s paper] have already been addressed halakhically. We’re not asking the movement or the Jewish people to do something beyond what is required [by Jewish law]. It’s not question of whether there are ethical underpinnings on labor relations or for keeping kosher, for example. These already exist. The movement is already on record against hoisting and shackling in upholding the ethical treatment of animals," another area addressed by Reisner’s legal arguments.

Whether the new label is ultimately called a hekhsher tzedek or a siman tzedek may turn on how broadly or narrowly kashrut is understood, an issue that has come before the law committee in the past, Dorff said, most recently in 2003 with the publication of a responsum co-authored by him and Rabbi Joel Roth against hoisting and shackling. Reflecting Roth’s narrower interpretation of kashrut in this instance, Dorff observed, "Joel was very careful to say that shackled and hoisted animals were still [ritually] kosher," adding, "I went along with his language [in order to] rule out the practice."

But however the name game eventually ends, with its latest foray into kashrut certification, the Conservative movement has made another important statement, Dorff suggested. "Until recently, not officially, but in fact, the Conservative movement ceded to Orthodoxy the control of kashrut." He added, "That no longer is the case."

Article Series
This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:

Compassionate Conservatism
A look at sources

Expanding the definition of kashrut

2008-03-27T22:00:00.001-05:00

By Josh Lipowsky

Union dispute fuels kashrut debate

When consumers see the OU, OK, or another label certifying that their food is kosher, they know that it was prepared according to halakha. They don’t, however, know if factory workers are treated fairly or if a production plant is run safely and with care for the environment. But efforts are under way to change that. The nation’s largest union representing food industry laborers has been campaigning to get the world’s largest producer of kosher meat to unionize, sparking the question as to whether there is room in the definition of kashrut for such factors as labor rights.

"My sense is that within the Orthodox communities people are increasingly aware of and concerned about how their products are being made," said Arieh Leibowitz, communications director of the Jewish Labor Committee.

A worker at the Empire Poultry plant in Mifflintown, Pa. The factory’s workers are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Thomas b. king

The JLC has been involved with the United Food and Commercial Workers union in monitoring Agriprocessors Inc., and, he said, a standard kashrut certification may no longer be enough for consumers.

"People are asking questions," Leibowitz said. He cited last year’s scandal in Monsey, N.Y. — where a kosher market sold nonkosher chickens with fraudulent kosher labels — for raising greater consumer interest in the preparation of kosher food.

"People want to know what’s behind the label," he said. "They want to know more about the process, the circumstances in which things are made. It isn’t just the kashering per se but it may be the basic rights of workers according to halakha. And we encourage that."

The Iowa Division of Labor Services issued 39 citations against Agriprocessors earlier this month for violations of state workplace safety and health standards in its Postville, Iowa, plant. Meanwhile, United Food and Commercial Workers has continued a more than two-year fight against the company in a bid to unionize the plant’s workers. Agriprocessors employees first approached the union in 2005, said UFCW spokesman Scott Frotman, but the company has refused calls to unionize its plant.

To that end, the union has created a public relations campaign focusing on health and safety violations at the plant in order to pressure the Rubashkin family, which owns Agriprocessors, to allow its workers to unionize.

"There is no other meatpacking company of comparable size — kosher or non-kosher — with such a sustained record of malfeasance as Agriprocessors," said Frotman earlier this week. "Agriprocessors is operating as a renegade in this industry and it is important that they are held accountable for their actions."

When the K’hal Adath Jeshuran, a small but respected organization based in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, announced in October that it would pull its certification from Agriprocessors’ products in April, the union saw the move as a small victory.

Earlier this year, UFCW bought ads in newspapers around the country highlighting KAJ’s exit. In addition to reprinting KAJ’s termination letter, the ad cited some of Agriprocessors’ USDA violations, as if to link the two. Responding to queries from The Jewish Standard, however, KAJ officials said the problem was related to the access of its rabbis in the plant and not because of any specific kashrut or employee rights issues. Eric Erlbach, president of KAJ, said that his organization had nothing to do with the ad and did not allege any violations of health or kashrut law.

This newspaper decided not to run the UFCW ad after it learned that KAJ had not authorized it.

KAJ’s termination was a result of "dissatisfaction in our inability to properly supervise and make sure what we want to have done is done and not because we feel that there’s something being done that is going to jeopardize the kashrus of the meat," Erlbach said.

Nevertheless, the advertising and public relations campaign called attention to kashrut concerns.

A letter to consumers on the company’s Website by vice president Sholom Rubashkin dismissed the charges by UFCW and accused the union of carrying out a vendetta against the company because it refused to unionize.

The letter reads: "Agriprocessors, Inc. is a viable company that is committed to maintaining the quality of its product both in full compliance with existing rules and regulations of the USDA and in full compliance with the rules of kashruth. Over the past couple of years the employees of Agriprocessors, Inc. in Iowa have resisted attempts by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) to become their collective bargaining agent."

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Rubashkin said, "The workers are quite happy and have not signed any papers to unionize. That’s the whole point."

He also maintained that OSHA was in the process of revising its list of violations against his company. But his call was received too late to get confirmation from that government agency.

Meanwhile, the union’s Frotman maintained that Agriprocessors has more health and safety violations than any other food production plant, kosher or not, in the United States. Unionizing, he said, would lead to a reduction in those violations and create a safer work environment. UFCW has no intention of halting its campaign, he added.

"Consumers have a right to know about these issues so they can make informed decisions about how they use their shopping dollars," said Frotman. Those dollars, he said, can hold a lot of influence in forcing change. However, Agriprocessors has claimed, on its Website, that the campaign has not hurt business.

But the union’s efforts are having an effect in the Jewish world — although not yet at the intended target.

Partly in response to the troubles at Agriprocessors, the Conservative movement created its hekhsher tzedek to certify that food is ethically fit for consumption. (See related story.)

UFCW has welcomed the heksher tzedek, but the organization remains focused on Agriprocessors and the existing kosher certification companies already at work in the plant.

"We don’t have an official position on the hekhsher tzedek," Frotman said. "However, we are disappointed that kosher certifiers, like the Orthodox Union, have not taken more concrete steps to address serious, ongoing problems at Agriprocessors, ranging from worker safety to food safety issues."

The OU, the largest certifier of kosher products around the world, does not weigh in on issues like worker safety, the environment, and animal welfare in the plants it supervises. State and federal governments have set up various agencies to deal with all of these issues, said Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator and CEO of the OU’s kashrut division. He added that the OU defers to the expertise of those agencies in those areas. While there is a halakhic basis for fair treatment of workers, he said, the OU relies on the government to provide unbiased and educated enforcement of its guidelines, as rabbinical judgments would be too subjective.

"Our expertise is in kashrus," Genack said. "Fundamentally, all these different areas" — workers’ rights, animal treatment, and environmental concerns — "require attention. But it requires expertise, authority — all that is in place in terms of American law right now. There is not a more halakhic requirement beyond that area of law."

Asked if the OU might be interested in creating a certification similar to the hekhsher tzedek, Genack said that is unlikely because of its confidence in U.S. laws and enforcement agencies.

"There is a [halakhic] requirement to observe the laws of the country," Genack said. "To make sure those laws are properly preserved, we turn to the government."

That’s fine, said Frotman. Rather than asking the OU to take on additional responsibilities, he said, UFCW would rather that it pressure Agriprocessors to make changes in its plant.

"While we have great respect for the role that workers’ rights play in the Jewish tradition, we do not presume to say what individual rabbinical inspectors should or should not do," Frotman said. "We do, however, believe that the OU has an opportunity to use its considerable influence to protect the kosher industry from the dark cloud being cast upon it by Agriprocessors’ repeated violations and bad behavior."

Not everybody agrees with Genack’s assessment.

"The issue of general community standards, the role of local custom, whatever the custom is — labor rights environment, or other standards — that’s like a floor," Leibowitz said. "If there are any standards in Jewish religious law that are above that, those would also be taken into consideration."

While there may or may not be differences between halakha and existing labor laws, a rabbinical seal could provide added reassurance to consumers who may not be as familiar with international labor laws, he added.

Leibowitz likened the hekhsher tzedek to fair-trade labels increasingly found on myriad products. For example, Rug Mart has a label that none of its products were made using child labor, even though international laws exist against the practice. The additional label provides reassurance to consumers that workers are treated fairly beyond the minimum of international law, Leibowitz said.

"It may be that once the hekhsher tzedek catches on, Conservative Jews or other Jews or non-Jews would say, ‘Gee, this is another seal that’s telling me something about the quality of the product and the circumstances in which it’s been made,’" he said.

How 'Kosher' Is Kosher Food?

2008-03-04T14:07:00.002-06:00

Virtual Talmud: Rabbis Blog For The Sake of Heaven
Monday March 3, 2008
Rabbi Susan Grossman

If the term ‘kosher’ means fit, or done right, is the food we eat 'kosher" if it's produced using unethical practices? What if it meets all other technical requirements? Conservative Rabbi Morris Allen says, "no". For Rabbi Allen, it is not enough to be concerned about the ritual specifics of the kosher food we eat without also being concerned about the ethical issues raised by its production, processing, and marketing.

This realization grew out of Rabbi Allen’s "Chew by Choice" program, which he began to encourage kosher observance in his congregation. He soon realized that ritual observance divorced from ethical observance is inconsistent with Jewish values. Thus was born Heksher Tzedek, now a national program of the Conservative Movement.

For generations, kosher consumers have relied on kosher certifying agencies to be their eyes and ears at kosher food production plants, assuring that kosher standards are maintained. A heksher is a symbol that a particular processed food has received the approval of a certifying agency as to its kosher fitness.

Heksher Tzedek, a symbol sporting a "J" and the Hebrew letter tzadi--the first letter in the Hebrew word for justice, tzedek (but that is another kind of symbol all together). A Heksher Tzedek appears in addition to standard kosher supervision, which will still be done by the standard kosher organizations. To win a Heksher Tzedek, the company must pass five additional eco-kosher and fair trade qualifications: that the food is produced in a humane manner; that food producers provide fair wages and benefits for employees; that they provide workers a safe and healthy environment with sufficient training; that the environmental impact of food production is limited as much as possible; that corporations behind the food permit transparency to check accountability and integrity; and that humane kosher slaughtering is utilized.

There is reason for concern about all of these issues as awareness about fair trade issues and the environmental impact of agribusiness increases. In addition, a recent PETA investigation has uncovered inhumane kosher slaughtering methods in South American kosher slaughtering plants, according to a recent report in the Forward. South American kosher meat plants, which provide the majority of meat for Israel, still use what is largely seen as a barbaric method: shackling the back leg of the animal, hoisting it up by its back leg, then dropping it to the ground to be held down and then slaughtered. More humane methods for kosher slaughtering are currently available. According to the Forward, such procedures are being discussed by Israel’s chief rabbinate but no action seems imminent.

What’s the delay? The Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards unanimously deemed such shackling and hoisting as invalid over seven years ago.

With Heksher Tzedek, the Conservative Movement is providing a real service: a way for all of us concerned about the social and environmental impact of what we eat to know that the kosher food we eat is truly "kosher" in the full sense of the word. That is helpful even for those who are vegetarians.

Undercover Video Reveals Flagrant Abuse of Animals at South American Slaughterhouse

2008-02-13T22:53:00.003-06:00

Contact:
Lindsay Rajt 757-622-7382

Norfolk, Va. - Following a recent undercover investigation of a slaughterhouse in Uruguay, which is a leading exporter of kosher beef to the U.S., PETA and the Rabbinical Assembly (RA) are calling on kosher meat companies and the Orthodox Union (OU) to end a cruel slaughter method known as shackling and hoisting.

At a slaughterhouse outside Montevideo, undercover investigators documented that workers were tripping cows by tying a rope around one of the animals' legs and pulling on it, causing the cows to fall to the ground violently. Once the animals were down, one of the shackled back legs would be partially hoisted in the air. A worker would stand on one of the animals' legs while other workers--including one holding the animals' heads in place with a sharp metal pole--attempted to restrain the thrashing animals so that they could slit their throats. Some animals were forced to endure this trauma for several minutes. After the cows' throats were slit, the animals were immediately hoisted into the air by one leg to be bled out, but some cows were obviously still conscious and struggled for many minutes. Workers were caught on tape cutting into the animals' heads, necks, and joints while the animals were still conscious and able to feel pain.

After reviewing the video, Dr. Temple Grandin, the world's leading expert on farmed-animal welfare, said, "The methods used to restrain cattle in this plant were atrocious. Shackling, hoisting, and holding the fully conscious animal down with four people is a barbaric way to handle cattle in a modern slaughter plant. This is total animal cruelty."

Shackling and hoisting has also been condemned by the RA and Heksher Tzedek, a new ethical certification for kosher food. In a written statement, the RA reaffirmed and quoted from a previous statement by its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), saying, "[W]e find shackling and hoisting to be a violation of Jewish law forbidding cruelty to animals and requiring that we avoid unnecessary dangers to human life. As the CJLS, we rule that shackling and hoisting should be stopped."

The OU, which supervises the certification of kosher products at 3,000 businesses, has stated that it prefers a kosher slaughter method in which steers are killed standing up with their weight supported as opposed to being shackled by one leg and hung upside-down. However, the OU continues to certify meat from animals that have been killed by shackling and hoisting. PETA has written to Alle Processing, a major kosher beef company, urging it to stop selling meat that comes from plants that use shackling and hoisting and to buy only from plants that use the OU's preferred method.

"PETA has been inside many slaughterhouses, but this is among the worst abuse we've seen," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. "Kosher certifiers need to prohibit this cruel slaughter method both in the U.S. and in other countries that produce kosher meat for the U.S."

Broadcast-quality video footage showing the slaughter of animals in Montevideo is available. For more information and to view the video footage, please visit HumaneKosher.com.

In the Diaspora: 'Hechsher tzedek'

2007-12-01T17:52:00.000-06:00

Samuel Freedman , THE JERUSALEM POST
November 29, 2007

Midway through his now-famous letter from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defended the ongoing protest marches against segregation by quoting the prophet Amos: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." At another point in the letter, he referred to the passage in the Book of Daniel in which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, under threat of death, refuse to bow before the gods of their Babylonian conquerors.

King meant his letter primarily to chastise the moderate clergymen of Birmingham, most of them Christian, who considered the movement's direct action too radical. And in doing so, he cited many religious figures in the Christian sphere, from Jesus and St. Thomas to Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

Even so, then and now, King's words carried an unexpected, unintended rebuke for Jews committed to social justice. One of the whopping paradoxes of the civil rights movement was that the Jews who comprised a disproportionate share of white activists and volunteers were largely ignorant of the theological roots of their idealism. With some rare rabbinic exceptions like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Jack Rothschild, they had to learn their own Bible from the black Christians in the campaign.

The divide between religious knowledge and social action persists in American Jewish life. In the parts of the Jewish spectrum with the strongest involvement in tikkun olam, particularly among the secular and unaffiliated, there is the least awareness of the Judaic foundations of that concept. (In fact, there is often an antipathy to religion itself as mere superstition.) In the parts with the deepest knowledge of text and tradition, particularly the Orthodox sector, a formidable apparatus of charities exists almost entirely to serve internal needs.

ONE OF the reasons that American Jewish World Service under the leadership of Ruth Messinger has become such a phenomenon, I am convinced, is that it has overtly connected activism (in the form of Peace Corps-like projects in developing nations) to a disciplined, ongoing study of Jewish texts. It has taken its young volunteers past that inchoate, uninformed sense that there's something sort of Jewish about doing social justice.

Occupying the unstable center of American Jewish life, a place defined more by what it isn't than what it is, the Conservative movement has struggled over the years to reconcile contemporary Jewish political impulses with traditional Judaic religious injunctions. Now at least a partial reconciliation is at hand, and it is one with relevance and resonance far beyond the Conservative movement alone.

A rabbi in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul, Morris Allen, has led the movement to create a new form of kosher certification, which he calls a hechsher tzedek. As the name implies, this certification would reflect a commitment to justice on behalf of kosher food companies rather than solely their adherence to the laws of kashrut in food preparation.

Put another way, the hechsher tzedek puts the treatment of human beings at least on a par with the treatment of an animal. Many of the humans in question are Latino immigrants who have filled the labor vacuum in slaughterhouses across the United States and been the victims of both exploitative bosses and nativist bigots. The plant that first caught Rabbi Allen's attention several years ago is Agriprocessors in eastern Iowa. The facility, which is owned by a Lubavitcher family and produces the most kosher meat of any plant in the United States, has been controversial for nearly a decade. First the journalist and author Stephen Bloom, in his book Postville, depicted the Hassidic owners and managers not as the rescuers of a depleted local economy but as harsh, rigid outsiders. A series of articles by Nathaniel Popper in the Forward detailed the below-market wages and dangerous conditions in the plant.

While Agriprocessors inspired the hechsher tzedek, if "inspired" is the word, the certification plan would cover the entire $11.5-billion-a-year industry. To earn the hechsher tzedek, an employer, meaning in most cases a large corporation, would have to pay wages consistent with regional rates, provide employees with health care and vacation benefits, and offer safety training to workers in a language they understand, among other requirements. The hechsher tzedek would augment rather than replace existing certifications, most of them issued by Orthodox va'ads.

AT THIS point, the plan is moving gradually yet steadily closer to becoming reality. The Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, has formally endorsed it. The Nathan Cummings Foundation, a respected institution in Jewish philanthropy, has given a $50,000 grant. At its biennial meeting this week, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement's congregational arm, is taking up a detailed paper citing the textual bases for the hechsher tzedek in the Tanakh, the Talmud and Shulhan Aruch.

Those citations, at least as I read them as a lay person, make a sensible, unforced link between Judaism and this particular form of social justice. As a theological treatise for labor rights, it reminds me of the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, a cornerstone of trade unionism in the 20th-century West. It helps, too, that Rabbi Allen was a prominent advocate for increasing kosher observance in Conservative circles before taking up this cause. No one can accuse him of discovering kashrut just in time to change the rules.

I have a hard time imagining that more Jews would become kosher as a result of hechsher tzedek, but the size of the kosher food market suggests that many Jewish consumers, while indifferent to most of the dietary laws, still buy kosher meat for reasons of sentiment, solidarity or perceived quality. How many of them naively think that glatt - a concept, indeed a social construction, that barely existed in the United States before World War II - connotes some higher kosher status, when it's more like higher price?

So just as idealism and commerce have fruitfully commingled in the booming sales of hybrid cars and the campus protests against sweatshop labor, this kind of cross-pollination could find its Jewish expression in hechsher tzedek. It could provide a living object lesson in the relevance of tradition to modernity, and of the inextricable interplay of Judaism and what we like to think of as a Jewish set of values.

And, for once, we wouldn't need a Talmud Torah lesson from a Baptist preacher to get the point.

Eco-kashrut supporters turn their attention to kosher meat

2007-12-01T17:45:00.000-06:00

Sue Fishkoff / jta , THE JERUSALEM POST
December 2, 2007

This Thanksgiving, New Yorker Linda Lantos didn't have to compromise her Jewish or ecological values: She served free-range, organic, non-genetically engineered turkey that was also kosher.

"In the last few years it's become important to me to find meat that's organic and kosher, and that's hard," says the 27-year-old chef and nutrition teacher, who has kept kosher since childhood.

The two turkeys Lantos bought this month from Kosher Conscience, a year-old kosher meat cooperative that promotes sustainable agriculture and humane slaughter methods, weren't cheap. But that doesn't bother her.

"I'd rather eat meat less frequently and know where it comes from," she says. "Frankly, meat is too cheap. It's a living thing and should be valued more highly."

For 30 years the eco-kashrut movement has promoted back-to-the-land values of sustainable agriculture, organics and local, seasonal farming. Now a growing number of those Jewish foodies are trying to apply the same values to their meat, demanding that the animals be raised and slaughtered in an ethical manner.

"If I'm going to eat meat, I have to do everything possible to make sure the process is as humane as possible," says Kosher Conscience founder Simon Feil.

Caring for animals is deeply ingrained in Jewish law. The Torah provides for "tzar ba'alat hayim," the need to protect animals from unnecessary pain. That's why kosher slaughter must be done by an observant, trained shochet, or ritual slaughterer, who uses an extremely sharp knife to kill the animal as painlessly as possible, with one cut across the jugular vein.

Many Jews believe that because of this extra religious concern, the kosher meat industry is exempt from the more egregious practices of non-kosher slaughterhouses. But controversies last year at Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher slaugherhouse in Postville, Iowa, buried that myth amid media stories alleging sloppy, cruel killing methods and underpaid, badly trained workers.

The Agriprocessors case was a Jewish wake-up call.

It spurred the Conservative movement to start developing a hekhsher tzedek, a certificate given to food produced according to certain standards of workers' rights and environmental concerns. The certificate will be announced at the Conservative movement's biennial this week in Orlando, Fla.

It inspired Feil, a Brooklyn-based actor, to procure, slaughter and process 24 turkeys using humane practices this month. He found buyers among young New York Jews, and dropped off the turkeys two days before Thanksgiving at an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

It put meat on the agenda of last year's food conference sponsored by Hazon, a nonprofit dedicated to Jewish environmentalism and food sustainability.

Much of the impetus for the socially just kashrut movement comes from Conservative circles, but there's interest within Reform Judaism as well. A committee of Reform rabbis is working on standards for socially just food production along the same lines as the Conservative hekhsher tzedek initiative.

Gersh Lazerow, a fourth-year rabbinical student at the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, hopes to become a shochet to combine his liberal values with Jewish tradition.
"I think kashrut has value to modern progressive Jewish practice," he says.

"A lot of people are faced with the decision, ethics or kashrut," says Devora Kimelman-Block of Washington, a Hazon activist and longtime supporter of sustainable agriculture. "Or they just decide to be vegetarian."

Kimelman-Block eats meat, but had cut down in recent years.

"I don't feel it's ethically a problem to eat meat," she says, "but I have a problem with the unethical raising and processing of meat."

Last year she decided to enter the business herself. Kimelman-Block says she "knew nothing" about the kosher meat industry when she started.

Doing it all herself, from finding a local farmer with pasture-raised cows, to negotiating with a shochet, to lining up buyers from 14 area synagogues, was a daunting task. But she wanted to teach her daughters to respect the food they ate and understand the Jewish values underlying its production.

"The closer you are to your food, the more holy it is," Kimelman-Block says.

It's easy to be pious when you're talking about fruit, but most people would rather not think about where their steak comes from. That's true particularly in eco-kashrut circles, which are dominated by vegetarians.

In one session at last year's Hazon conference, the group's executive director, Nigel Savage, asked audience members to raise their hands if they ate meat but would not do so if they had to kill it themselves. A "good number" raised their hands, he recalls.

Then he asked those who were vegetarian to raise their hands if they would eat meat they killed themselves - and a different set of hands went up.

Savage found the second response more telling. He says those people were indicating that taking responsibility for killing the animal one eats, making sure it is done humanely and with respect, is the only way to eat meat with integrity.

That's why Hazon is performing ritual slaughter on three goats at this year's conference, which will be held Dec. 5-8 in upstate New York.

On one night of the conference, the goatherd and shochet will explain how a kosher animal is raised, killed and processed. On Friday the goats will be slaughtered, and on Saturday goat cholent will be served.

"For three years Hazon has enabled Jewish people to learn where their vegetables come from, to develop a relationship with the farmer," Savage says. "Now we're taking it a step further."

Not everyone in the eco-kashrut movement favors the plan, as evidenced by the heated discussion on www.Jcarrot.org, Hazon's "Jew and the Carrot" blog. Among the 60 responses to Savage's announcement of the plan were those who applauded it, those who were appalled by Hazon sponsoring a slaughter at all, and one Hazon board member who said he would not attend if the shechita went forward.

Feil, who is in charge of the goat project, insists it will not be "a lurid bread-and-circus" event.

"People should understand what it means when you eat meat," he says. "Seeing an animal killed and then eating it yourself is a very important educational experience."

So far, the eco-kashrut meat activists are a fairly rarefied bunch: It's pretty much just Feil and Kimelman-Block. But they say the market is growing for what they offer.

Kimelman-Block notes that in July she arranged for the slaughter of three cows, and the resultant 400 pounds of kosher meat sold in three weeks. But in October, she sold 1,200 pounds of meat from six cows -- $11,000 worth -- in less than a week.

"I could have sold as much as I had," she says. "People were knocking down the door."

Some people believe such a product will only serve a niche market. The process of raising and slaughtering the animals is difficult, and there is little interest from the Orthodox, who are the bulk of kosher meat consumers.

Joe Regenstein, a professor of food science at Cornell University, advises Jewish groups and the meat industry on issues of animal welfare. He is part of a two-person negotiating team that is working to develop guidelines for humane practices amenable to the two dozen or so fervently Orthodox rabbis who are responsible for the glatt kosher industry.

A year ago, he says, the two sides reached consensus.

"They agreed to put it in writing," he says. "I am still waiting for that document."

Even if few people buy the meat, activists believe that growing publicity for the issue will have an impact on the kosher meat industry in general.

That's what happened to Wise Organic Pastures, a kosher poultry and beef distributor in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rachel Wiesenfeld, who owns the company with her husband and son, says that as far as she's concerned, all kosher slaughter is humane. But when Whole Foods offered to carry their chickens if they were certified by Steritech, a company that verifies humane food production methods, the Wiesenfelds quickly agreed.

"Everyone was into this humane, humane, humane, so we went along with it as well," she says.

The Wiesenfelds are ready to go to the same lengths with their kosher beef in the hopes that Whole Foods will start carrying that, too.

It's clear to Wiensenfeld that the market is growing, and she says it's not just Jews. A customer called her recently complaining about feathers on a Wise Organic chicken -- a customer that clearly is new to kashrut and doesn't know that kosher slaughter is done in cold water, which does not remove all the bird's feathers.

"Just boil a pot of water, put in the chicken for a few minutes," she advises, "and those feathers come right out."

Nathan Cummings Foundation Supports Heksher Tzedek

2007-11-19T15:43:00.000-06:00

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is a major Jewish philanthropic foundation. Its mission is the following: "The Foundation is rooted in the Jewish tradition and committed to democratic values and social justice, including fairness, diversity, and community. We seek to build a socially and economically just society that values and protects the ecological balance for future generations; promotes humane health care; and fosters arts and culture that enriches communities."

Today, we have just been informed that the Nathan Cummings Foundation (nathancummings.org) has awarded Heksher Tzedek a major one-year grant, enabling us to further move this undertaking forward. This grant will be addressed at the USCJ biennial in Orlando at the end of the month. With the growing awareness of Heksher Tzedek, the opportunity for truly developing a modern kashrut ethic is increasingly possible. We are also very excited about the work which Rabbi Avi Reisner has done with his first draft of "Heksher Tzedek Al Pi Din" (HT according to Jewish law and norms). This too will be addressed at the USCJ biennial.

I will be working together with Vic Rosenthal of JCA, and Pete Magee from the Beth Jacob Social Justice committee, Scott Kaplan and Richard Lederman from USCJ in making this wonderful presentation to the biennial.

Holiness and Justice: A Fair Trade Approach to Keeping Kosher

2007-11-14T22:52:00.000-06:00

Fair Trade News
by Hilary Johnson, LFTN board member
Listen to Rabbi Allen's Interview

Rabbi Morris Allen, of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN, has been promoting kashrut, Jewish dietary laws, to his congregation for twenty years. He says that kashrut provides “a way in which we as Jews understand a daily opportunity to sanctify our lives, to create a sense of holiness and a sense of awareness of God in our lives.” This consciousness means that Allen takes his food and its production seriously.

More than a year ago, Allen learned of labor abuses at an Iowa kosher meat processing plant that supplied the Twin Cities Jewish community. He was faced with a contradiction: The worker may slaughter an animal according to the laws of kashrut, but he or she may be underpaid and mistreated. What if the ritual is observed, but the ethics are undermined?

Allen distinguishes between “ritual,” the letter of the law that describes specific procedures for kosher slaughter and food handling, and the ethics of how kosher food is actually produced. While he does not privilege one over the other, he thinks current certification practices do. According to Allen, “kashrut has become more and more concerned with whether or not the lung of a cow is smooth, but has forgotten that the hand of the worker is just as important. That’s what heksher tzedek is all about.”

Heksher tzedek, or justice certification, is Allen’s answer to the contradiction of the ritually correct but underpaid worker. Working with a myriad of groups, including local and national committees and nonprofits, as well as a Boston consulting firm, he began creating the heksher tzedek after his trip to Iowa. They are now in the process of defining standards and determining the method of certification. The standards cover six areas: Health & Safety, Wages & Benefits, Training, Environmental Impact, Corporate Transparency, and Product Development. Allen stresses that worker and manager participation has been essential to creating meaningful guidelines within these areas, and that transparency is key to a rigorous certification process. As an example, he describes a hypothetical company that claims to offer health benefits to workers, but upon auditing worker paystubs, certifiers might find no deductions for premiums, indicating that no one is actually signed up for the benefits. Allen gives as one possible reason for this the fact of large numbers of plant workers being migrant workers, many of whom speak or read little English.

Immigrant workers are at the center of the U.S. food system, from production to processing. The heksher tzedek standards, therefore, require that workers receive training in their native languages. As to the larger question of whether a company technically violating the law by employing undocumented workers should receive a heksher tzedek, Allen says that such workers are so prevalent that they virtually form the backbone of U.S. industry. He asserts that legislation like last spring’s Sensenbrenner immigration bill, which would have required deportation of millions of undocumented workers, would bring the kosher meat industry “to a screeching halt overnight.”

The heksher tzedek campaign is not uncontroversial in the Jewish community. Orthodox Jews have traditionally performed kosher certification, and Rabbi Allen's movement is made up in large part of Conservative Jews. Critics question the validity of certification by non-Orthodox Jews, but Allen insists that the heksher tzedek will not be replacing Orthodox kosher certification. He believes it could even bring Jews back to kashrut who have abandoned it because of the common focus on ritual over ethics. He says that the heksher tzedek “is a way to demonstrate our concern for the vertical relationship between ourselves and God and also the horizontal relationship between ourselves and other people.”

Allen believes the heksher tzedek will have appeal to non-Jews as well. He says non-Jews already look for the kosher label for reasons of their own, including concern for food safety. Allen, like many in the fair trade movement, firmly believes that people want to do the right thing, and that they will, when given the choice.

Like fair-trade certified products, items with the heksher tzedek are likely to cost more than those without. Because of the inspection and certification costs, kosher food in general, especially meat, usually costs more than non-kosher food. But Allen points out that being able to buy cheap food often comes with a hidden cost: Exploitation of workers. If the meat costs a little more because the workers who processed it got paid better and received benefits like health care and sick time, he says, “then I would say that’s what it takes in order to demonstrate that keeping kosher really has impact, not only on my own life, and my own relationship to God, but to the society in which I live.”

Making A Difference

2007-11-11T00:42:00.001-06:00

Heksher Tzedek: A concept whose time has come, a concept being recognized as significant throughout the Jewish world. From the Jewish Daily Forward "Forward 50":

Pessimists have been warning for decades that as younger generations of Jews continued their acculturation into the American mainstream, those at the leading edge of the drift would float away from Jewish identity, leaving a smaller but more committed core. Optimists, if that’s the right word, predicted that the younger, more acculturated Jews wouldn’t disappear from the scene; rather, their Jewish identities would evolve in new and unpredictable ways, leaving the Jewish community as many small communities, with less and less identifiably in common.

This year’s Forward 50 list shows what look to us, at least, like clear signs of continental drift. When we sat down to take a long look at the community, what we found was not a hardening core surrounded by an evanescent periphery, but numerous pockets of identity taking shape on the landscape, most showing clear signs of solidity, but most quite disconnected from ― even unaware of ― the others. The list that emerged from our efforts reflects that changing topography.

The Forward 50 is not based on a scientific study or survey. The list is compiled each year by the Forward’s staff, based on what we have reported over the past year, what we have heard from community members speaking about other community members and whatever objective signposts ― rising or falling budgets, book sales, published buzz, adoption of new laws or proposals ― can be deemed to indicate public influence.

Membership in the 50 doesn’t mean that the Forward endorses what these individuals do or say. We’ve chosen them because they are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves. Not all these people have put their energies into the traditional frameworks of Jewish community life, but they all have embodied the spirit of Jewish action as it is emerging in America, and all of them have left a mark…..

(listed under Religion)

Morris Allen
Until last year, Rabbi Morris Allen was known mostly as a local congregational rabbi and promoter of Jewish social justice efforts in the Minnesota Twin Cities area. That all changed when Allen decided to plunge headfirst into the billion-dollar kosher food industry. Prompted by a report in the Forward on working conditions at an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, Allen pushed the Conservative movement to form a committee to look into the ethical and environmental implications of kosher food. The committee began its work by visiting the Iowa plant, the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, where Allen and others interviewed immigrant workers. Soon after, Allen announced the creation of Conservative Judaism’s Tzedek Hechsher or Justice Certification, a bold new effort to certify kosher food that is produced with ethical considerations in mind. For years, kosher food certification has been dominated by Orthodox authorities, and Allen sees the Tzedek Hechsher as a way of re-engaging Conservative Jews and his own congregants with the spiritual implications of the food they eat. This, not surprisingly, has won Allen the ire of many in the Orthodox world. Questions remain as to just how the new certification would work ― and it is clear that in this case the devil will be in the details. But Allen’s energies show no sign of flagging.

Heksher Tzedek: Moving Forward

2007-11-04T11:25:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday, members of the National Heksher Tzedek Commission will convene for their first meeting at Beth Jacob Congregation. The six member commission is co-chaired by Rabbi Michael Siegel of Anshe Emet Congregation in Chicago and Mr. Scott Kaplan of Atlanta, Georgia.

At this meeting the commission will be reviewing the standards and working guidelines formulated for the Heksher Tzedek by KLD, review the work undertaken by Professor David Cobin and several Hamline Law School students relative to state and federal employment law statutes.

The commission will also study the Jewish source material developed by Rabbi Avi Reisner, learn about the magnificent work which Jewish Community Action and the Beth Jacob Social Justice committee have done in community organizing and education, and sign off on a soon to be launched website and informational brochure.

These are exciting days for Heksher Tzedek as we continue moving forward. In a little over a year, a concept first discussed at Beth Jacob Congregation has become a central project of the Conservative movement. Your support is vital in making this a central part of kashrut observance in the years to come.

International KOACH Shabbat

2007-11-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

Hechsher Tzedek: Kashrut for the Next Generation

November 2-3, 2007

College students at nearly 50 campuses across the continent will be gathering this weekend for the Fifth Annual KOACH Shabbat. For the past four years Conservative students throughout North America have marked International KOACH Shabbat with a weekend of study and celebration. In 2006 nearly 4000 students on 82 campuses joined together to participate in Shabbat services, schmooze with friends and learn together.

Hechsher Tzedek: The Sanctity of the Food We Eat At Koach Shabbat 5768/2007

Welcome to KOACH Shabbat!

Hechsher Tzedek is an exciting new initiative being undertaken by the Conservative Movement. The text materials we have prepared take a two-pronged approach.

Kashrut:

The sanctity of the food we eat starts not with Hechsher Tzedek, but with that which our tradition teaches regarding what foods are fit and unfit for consumption.

The following texts trace the laws of kashrut in their Biblical sources. In addition to learning about the origins of our dietary laws, this is an opportunity to explore how a framework for eating informs the holiness of our lives in a general way and elevates the meeting of a basic need to a sacred act. The ways in which kashrut serves both to elevate and unify the community are also part of the fabric of this discussion.

Genesis 1:29

God said, "See I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food.

Leviticus 11:2-3

These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals: any animal that has true hoofs, with clefts through the hoofs, and that chews the cud - such you may eat.

Deuteronomy 12:15-16

But whenever you desire, you may slaughter and eat meat in any of your settlements, according to the blessing that the Lord your God has given you....But you must not partake of the blood; you shall pour it out on the ground like water.

Exodus 23:19

You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

Harold Kushner: To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking

There is nothing intrinsically wicked about eating pork or lobster, and there is nothing intrinsically moral about eating cheese or chicken instead. But what the Jewish way of life does by imposing rules on our eating, sleeping, and working habits is to take the most common and mundane activities and invest them with deeper meaning, turning every one of them into an occasion for obeying (or disobeying) God.

If a gentile walks into a fast-food establishment and orders a cheeseburger, he is just having lunch. But if a Jew does the same thing, he is making a theological statement. He is declaring that he does not accept the rules of the Jewish dietary system as binding upon him. But heeded or violated, the rules lift the act of having lunch out of the ordinary and make it a religious matter. If you can do that to the process of eating, you have done something important.

Ethical Practice:

Having established what Jewish tradition says about which foods and combinations of foods are permitted to eat, we can now look at a further level of elevating the practice of eating. Grounded in the biblical texts regarding the treatment of workers, we take this discussion further into the rabbinic tradition to gain an understanding of what constitutes the proper work environment. It is critical to note that the absence of appropriate working conditions does not render food unkosher, but that ensuring that the work environment is suitable adds yet more sanctity to the otherwise mundane act of eating. These texts reinforce what qualifies as the Jewish notion of ethical practices in the workplace.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15

Do not oppress the hired laborer who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your people or one of the sojourners in your land within your gates. Give him his wages in the daytime, and do not let the sun set on them, for he is poor, and his life depends on them, lest he cry out to God about you, for this will be counted as a sin for you.

Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 12a:

"His life depends on them." (Deuteronomy 24:15). Why does he climb a ladder or hang from a tree or risk death? Is it not for his wages? Another interpretation--"'His life depends on them' indicates that anyone who denies a hired laborer his wages, it is as though he takes his life from him."

Mishnah, Bava Metzia 7:1

One who hires workers and instructs them to begin work early and to stay late - in a place in which it is not the custom to begin work early and to stay late, the employer may not force them to do so. In a place in which it is the custom to feed the workers, he must do so. In a place in which it is the custom to distribute sweets, he must do so. Everything goes according to the custom of the land.

There was an incident concerning Rabbi Yochanan ben Matya, who told his son, "Go, hire us workers." His son went and promised them food [without specifying what kind, or how much]. When he returned, his father said to him, "My son! Even if you gave them a feast like that of King Solomon, you would not have fulfilled your obligation toward them, for they are the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, as they have not yet begun to work, go back and say to them that their employment is conditional on their not demanding more than bread and vegetables." Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said, "It is not necessary to make such a stipulation. Everything goes according to the custom of the place."

Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 83a:

We need [this example in the Mishnah specifying that local custom undermines an employer's stipulation that workers begin early and stay late] for the case in which the employer raises the workers' wages. In the case in which he says to them, "I raised your wages in order that you would begin work early and stay late," they may reply, "You raised our wages in order that we would do better work."

Saul Berman: from Labor on the Bima, A Publication of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice

The rabbis are here teaching us a profound lesson. The most demeaning form of oppression of a laborer is to assign to him meaningless work. The most ruthless form of abuse of a laborer is to have him engage in an activity which serves no productive purpose and, therefore, prevents him from having any pride in his achievement.

The measure of proper treatment of labor is not simply the physical rigors to which the employee is exposed. The employer has a responsibility to preserve the dignity of the employee through assuring that he or she can achieve a sense of meaning in the labor which she performs.

Hechsher Tzedek:

Next is a statement from the Hechsher Tzedek Commission which sets forth the goals of the Commission and the ideals of the initiative. Note that no meat processing facility has yet to earn this endorsement. Work has begun with Empire Poultry and Agriprocessors; each of these companies has welcomed the Commission into their work environments and given them access to their employees.

The Hechscher Tzedek Campaign is an initiative of the Conservative Movement of Judaism to improve the working conditions, treatment of employees, environmental standards,and business practices in kosher food-producing businesses.

By definition, kosher food is in line with Jewish dietary ritual laws. This campaign will bring kosher food in line with Jewish ethical law and social justice values.

The Justice Seal

The Conservative Movement, in consultation with industry experts, will create a set of standards that will most likely focus on:
1) Health & Safety
2) Wages & Benefits
3) Training
4) Environmental Impact
5) Corporate Transparency
6) Product Development.

Businesses that adhere to these standards will receive some type of “seal”, indicating that the food was produced in just conditions.

The Hechsher Tzedek will not replace existing kosher certification – it will be used in addition to traditional kosher certification. Only food already certified as kosher will be eligible to receive a Hechsher Tzedek.

Pursuing Justice

As Jews, we are in a unique position to advocate for improved working conditions, environmental standards and business practices in kosher food-producing businesses.

We are the consumers of kosher foods. We are in a great position to help kosher food producers meet the desires of their customers, become more just in their practices, and have their products be more attractive. Also, when consumers come together and ask businesses to make change, oftentimes businesses listen.

Our tradition teaches us to pursue justice, and to repair the world.

Many Jews view keeping kosher as a means of sanctifying our world. Hechscher Tzedek is an extension of this value and a concrete way of practicing it.

Additional Resources:

On Kashrut

Abramson, Rabbi Robert, ed., Kosher: Sanctifying the Ordinary, USCJ Department of Education(CD-ROM).

Dresner, Rabbi Samuel, Keeping Kosher: A Diet for the Soul, Rabbinical Assembly and USCJ Commission on Education, 1982.

Klein, Rabbi Isaac, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, KTAV Publishing House, 1979.

Lebeau, Rabbi James, The Jewish Dietary Laws: Sanctify Life, USCJ Youth Department, 1983.

Stern, Lise, How to Keep Kosher: A Comprehensive Guide to the Jewish Dietary Laws, William Morrow, 2004.

My Jewish Learning
USCJ
Koach

On Hechsher Tzedek

Rabbi Morris Allen
Rabbis Move Ahead With New Certification Plan
New York Times
Report of Commission of Inquiry

--Rabbi Elyse Winick

Rethinking Kashrut: An Interview with Rabbi Morris Allen

2007-11-01T04:22:00.000-05:00

by Rachel Barenblat
Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture
November 2007

Rabbi Morris Allen is at the forefront of the hechsher tzedek movement, a grassroots effort to change the way Jews think about kashrut. The hechsher is a mark used to certify a food is kosher. Yet, Rabbi Allen found out that such a mark doesn’t guarantee the food’s making is fully in accord with Jewish laws and ethics. Born out of distress at the reported working conditions at Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meat packing plant, hechsher tzedek is intended to be a way to ensure that the foods Jews eat are kosher not only ritually but also ethically.

As he tells the story, Rabbi Allen came to this work almost by accident. A congregational rabbi for twenty-two years, he had concentrated his social justice agenda on prison and immigration reform. Now, he has involved the entire Conservative movement in the hechsher tzedek project. By Allen's admission, they've got a tough row to hoe. At one end of the spectrum are Jews who argue that kashrut is the purview of the Orthodox and ought to stay that way. At the other are Jews who are more concerned with eating sustainably and locally than with the nature or presence of a hechsher in the first place.

It remains to be seen whether the hechsher tzedek becomes part of normative Jewish practice, or whether it stays on the fringes with its cousin eco-kashrut, which, while praised by its proponents, hasn't become widely-accepted. Then again, these days there's unprecedented interest nationwide in eating sustainably and healthfully, so who knows: Rabbi Morris Allen may have picked the perfect moment to let this idea fly. – RB

RB: What's your relationship with kashrut?

MA: I grew up in a home that was kosher, in the way in which families in the Sixties often were -- some members of the family ate treif outside the house (although, for what it's worth, they don't anymore!) My community here in the Twin Cities has promoted kashrut all along. Twelve years ago I embarked on a campaign called Chew by Choice. I wanted to begin to elevate people's understandings that, once you enter into the discussion, you're on the path. Giving up pork or shellfish, for example, is already a way of recognizing the role kashrut plays in the Jewish people's lives.

My approach has always been that kashrut needs to be livable. For people who are neurotic, and Jews certainly qualify, this can really become a crazymaking enterprise! Kashrut needs to be an understanding that in fulfilling this act of eating, I'm bringing God fully into my life. In recent years we've seen kashrut essentially be hijacked by people who are much more concerned about infinitesimally small bugs living on broccoli than about the purpose of the rules in the first place, and that's not how it's supposed to be.

I've been a vegetarian since 1974. My vegetarianism is a result of my commitment to kashrut.

RB: So it's kind of funny that you've become so involved in matters of kosher meat.

AM: How it happened was, in January of 2006, after our kosher butcher in St. Paul had closed, the Lubavitch rabbi in town asked me to work with him to bring fresh kosher meat back to St. Paul. In March of 2006, I made my first visit to Agriprocessors to talk about bringing kosher meat to the Twin Cities. Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin was very lovely to me; I remember he said he didn't understand why the Conservative movement wasn't a bigger customer. I said 'sure, fine, we'll work on that!' We started bringing their kosher meat into the Twin Cities market.

And then in May of 2006 Nathaniel Popper did an investigative piece on worker treatment at Agri, and printed it in the Forward.

I was personally embarrassed. I had staked my local rabbinate on working effectively with Agriprocessors, and I was aghast to read this article! I went to the Chabad rabbi and said, “We have to do something!” That was Friday of Memorial Day weekend. On Sunday he went down to Agriprocessors, and he investigated, and he came back and wrote a report saying he had no idea what Nathaniel Popper was talking about, everything was beautiful, the people were happy, they were singing as they worked, and so forth. But I wanted to put together a group of Conservative leaders to go in and make our own determination.

Five of us, representatives from United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly, spent the summer of 2006 making numerous calls, interviewing people directly and indirectly related to Agriprocessors, including people in Senator Harkins' office, clergy, and so on. In August 2006, we went to Postville for a visit, and it was pretty fascinating. Initially we proposed three major undertakings which, if Agriprocessors would agree, would indicate a sincere desire to address our concerns. We promised them that we would keep our report out of the press in that event. We didn't want to be party to a world in which one Jew exposes another Jew, you know? It didn't seem necessary. We felt that if they would take these three steps, that would demonstrate good faith on their part to clean up their behavior.

RB: But they didn't.

MA: No. We did not hear back from them by the deadline we'd set. It was at that point we realized this was not an issue stemming from one producer of kosher food, but something much deeper.It's a matter of paying attention to all of the ethical demands upon labor laws that are present in Jewish law -- how employers are to treat employees, what kind of safety issues have to be addressed. We read in Torah, for instance, about building a parapet on a house so people don't fall off! In what we build, we have to make sure it's safe for people to be present. Ethics are woven into the fabric of Torah. So we batted around the idea of what we called a hechsher tzedek.

It would be great, we said, if we could be assured that food products that met the standards of kashrut also met the standards of the ethical mitzvot that are incumbent upon us. We need to think in terms of mitzvot bein adam l'chavero [between one human and another] as well as bein adam l'makom [between a person and the Creator]. We should not be eating food that has been produced in a way that has denied the dignity of the labor! We should not be more concerned about the smoothness of a cow's lung than we are about the safety of a worker's hand.

At the end of 2006, the RA and the United Synagogue national board gave us six months to see whether these standards were feasible, and lo and behold, they are. We're reviewing our first set of verifiable objective standards, produced for us by a company in Boston that does market evaluation for social justice mutual funds. That's the meat, as it were, of what we're doing now. Those standards address the six areas Jewish law is concerned about in production of kosher food over and above the laws of kashrut.

RB: And those are...?

MA: Wages/benefits, health/safety, training, corporate integrity, animal welfare where appropriate, and environmental impact.

So we're in the process of reviewing these standards, vetting them through classic Jewish law. The next stages are to talk with industry about this -- how do we move this forward in practical terms? There are some serious issues still to address, but the reality has been that the response in the Jewish community and in the non-Jewish community has been beautiful. The depth of who we are as a people is exposed by this issue.

RB: It sounds to me like there's some overlap between eco-kashrut and hechsher tzedek. I think many Jews today feel the need to choose between eating in a way that fits traditional Jewish dietary practice, and a way that fits their environmental and social values (organic/sustainable food, perhaps belonging to a community-supported farm, etc.) Do you think that binary distinction is valid, and does hechsher tzedek offer a way around the binary?

MA: I want to be working beyond the binary. That's exactly the issue. That's the reason hechsher tzedek has to exist.

I was teaching about this at Camp Ramah Wisconsin this summer -- they took their kids on a trip to Postville [where Agriprocessors is located], and I was there to prepare the kids for what they might see. Someone raised their hand and said, 'so rabbi, you're saying it would be just as good (because it's also Jewish law) to eat food prepared in an ethical way as it is to eat food with a kosher sticker!' And I said, that kind of bifurcation is the issue -- we shouldn't have to decide between one of these or the other.

We need to be in a world where we can say that keeping kosher is the way in which I demonstrate not only a concern for my relationship to God and Torah but the Jewish concern for our relationship to the world in which we live. That's what I really want to get across to people.

In 23 years of my rabbinate I've had a lot of crazy ideas! But this has really become a passion for me, it's central. I mean, here is such a classic opportunity -- this is so obvious that we've overlooked it until now. This is the melding of ritual and ethical law.

Think about the haftarah for Yom Kippur, for instance. Isaiah: 'Is this the fast that I have chosen?' It's not about the fast, it's aout unshackling the enslaved. But at the end, Isaiah says, 'and you've gotta observe Shabbos.' You can't just do one or the other.

For so long there have been wonderful Jews concerned about one or the other of these. This is the project where they meet. It's the classic opportunity to see that Judaism isn't either ritual or ethical, but the union of both. Ethical and ritual meet on our tables. The table for us as Jews has taken the place of --

RB: It's our mikdash me'at, our "little sanctuary."

MA: Right, it takes the place of the altar! Where we have this opportunity to demonstrate that at our core, the totality of Jewish life is understood. When the Temple fell we didn't put altars in our synagogues. The home table becomes the altar.

RB: Thank you.

Hekhsher Tzedek: A Kosher Certification for Justice

2007-10-19T16:22:00.000-05:00

by Rabbi Morris Allen and Dr. Richard Lederman

There is an apocryphal tale told about Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of Judaism’s Mussar [ethics] movement. Every year before Pesach, Rabbi Salanter would inspect matzah bakeries to check their kashrut. One confident owner couldn’t wait to show off how efficient his matzah production had become. When Rabbi Salanter finished the inspection, though, he declared that the bakery was in violation of the halakhic prohibition against blood in food. “Your sense of efficiency, together with the unacceptable demands placed upon your workers, shows that their blood is mixed into the food produced in this bakery,” he said. Even though the blood was purely metaphoric, Rabbi Salanter would not certify the kashrut of the matzah.

In his concern about how food is prepared and the impact of its production on its producers, Rabbi Salanter demonstrated how social justice should be an element in the process of kashrut certification. In some ways, the Conservative movement’s new hekhsher tzedek or “kosher certification for justice” can trace its origins to this story. Although we must be sure that the food we put into our mouths is conventionally kosher we must be equally interested in how it makes its way to our tables.

Observing commandments that connect us with God through ritual acts does not excuse us when we violate the commandments that connect us to humanity. Many of our congregants feel a certain sense of incongruity between kashrut and other Jewish values, such as the treatment of animals, environmental degradation, poverty, and hunger. The American Jewish community’s definition of kashrut often is more focused on the smoothness of a cow’s lung than on the dignity of the worker who dresses the carcass as it comes down the line.

In response to published allegations that working conditions were unsafe and workers were being mistreated at AgriProcessors, the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the United States, United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly sent a commission of inquiry to inspect both AgriProcessors and the Empire Kosher poultry plant in the summer and fall of 2006. A summary report of these two visits is at www.uscj.org (click on the Social Action tab at the top).

The commission found that workers’ safety and well-being were somewhat compromised at the AgriProcessors plant. As a result of its findings, the commission was asked to expand its efforts and establish the hekhsher tzedek, an ambitious and challenging project that would determine a product’s ethical kashrut. A hekhsher tzedek demonstrates how we can meld the ritual and the ethical to create a Judaism that is concerned with human dignity. It can ensure that our core observance of kashrut includes a conscious determination not to “abuse a needy and destitute worker” (Deuteronomy 24:14).

As a movement that accepts the authority of halakhah, the Conservative movement has a stake in encouraging the observance of kashrut. We also have a responsibility to ensure access to kosher meat and to enhance the community’s confidence in those products. At the same time, we cannot sit idly by while food industry workers are maimed and injured because of poor safety practices, receive substandard wages and benefits, or lose earnings because they must pay for their own essential safety equipment.

The commission is establishing standards that both address social values and have a strong foundation in halakhah. Indeed, it is the nexus between halakhah and social values that is at the heart of the hekhsher tzedek. As a vital expression of how halakhah is imbued with a sense of social justice, we hope that the hekhsher tzedek will encourage a newfound enthusiasm for the observance of kashrut. In a world in which people are thirsty for meaning and hungry for an ethical path, our tradition has the power to inspire a new generation.

We must establish mechanisms for applying the standards, and ongoing supervision will require on-site inspections. In the initial stages the commission has focused on worker rights but it will expand to focus on six broader areas: wages, safety and training, fringe benefits, treatment of animals, environmental impact, and corporate transparency, the need to receive honest information from companies and proper access to ensure its honesty. Each of these represents an important Jewish value.

In addition to educating Conservative Jews about the added value of the hekhsher tzedek, we will rely on grassroots support to encourage manufacturers to apply it and local distributors and retailers to stock products that carry it. United Synagogue has taken the first step by establishing the Hekhsher Tzedek Fund, which will provide staff, research and educational and promotional materials.

For more information or to support United Synagogue’s Hekhsher Tzedek Fund, call Dr. Richard Lederman at 301-230-0801, email him at lederman@uscj.org, or send donations to 121 Congressional Lane, Suite 210, Rockville, MD 20852.

Rabbi Morris Allen is co-chair of United Synagogue’s Commission on Public Affairs and Public Policy and rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Dr. Richard Lederman is the commission’s director and executive director of United Synagogue’s Seaboard region. Both are members of the commission of inquiry.

The United Synagogue and The Rabbinical Assembly Name Commission

2007-10-19T08:11:00.001-05:00

The Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism have recently appointed a six-member Heksher Tzedek Commission. This Commission will be co-chaired by Rabbi Michael Siegel of Chicago,Illinois and Mr Scott Kaplan of Atlanta, Georgia. Other members of the Commission are Rabbi Avram Reisner, Rabbi Jill Borodin, Mr Gerald Kobell and Dr Marilyn Wind. In addition, Rabbi Morris Allen has been appointed Director of the project and Dr Richard Lederman is the Professional Staff.

In early November the Commission will be meeting in the Twin Cities to hear a complete update concerning the work which has taken place during the course of the past year.

In a further posting, we will update you regarding the excellent work which Jewish Community Action (JCA); Prof David Cobin and the Hamline University Law students have undertaken; a new Heksher Tzedek website and brochure developed by Tunheim and Associates; and the standards which are being developed by a nationally recognized monitoring firm.

2007-09-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

L’shana Tovah Tikatevu
May you be inscribed for a good, healthy and righteous new year.

Join us in shul for services and celebration.

May this year truly be one in which both ritual and ethical commandments are celebrated and maintained.
Rabbi Morris J. Allen

Undercover Video Shows Abuses at Kosher Deer Slaughterhouse

2007-09-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

Letter from Bruce Friedrich
To: Rabbi Menachem Genack
Cc: Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

September 7, 2007

Rabbis Yisroel Belsky and Menachem Genack
Orthodox Union

Dear Rabbis Belsky and Genack:

After receiving a complaint, PETA dispatched people to view and document the kosher slaughter methods that are being used at the Musicon Deer Farm in Goshen, New York. Please view the footage that they took on August 26, 2007-while you were present, Rabbi Belsky-here: video.

What our investigators recorded was appalling. As you may know, deer are high-strung, nervous animals. The deer killed by Musicon panicked when they entered the building. They were then wrestled into position in the restraining pen. In the Ã¢â‚¬Å“drop floor crushÃ¢â‚¬ restraint box, an assistant climbed on the back of the deer and knelt on the struggling animals' shoulders to try to immobilize them. Another assistant then grabbed the deer by the ears or antlers and pulled their bodies forward to expose their necks.

Deer panic easily. Any handling-especially this type of cruel handling-causes them extreme fear and pain.

In a September 1, 2007, letter to PETA, Dr. Temple Grandin confirmed that deer should not be knelt on or pulled by their ears during handling. Dr. Grandin also noted that at Musicon, there is not enough room to make a proper cut.

Immediately after shechita, the assistant would slam the pen door shut to keep the deer from thrashing; some dying animals had their heads squeezed between the frame and the door. The deer were conscious for up to a minute and a half after shechita and one was dragged away while still conscious, as confirmed by Dr. Grandin.

As venison is not a staple of the kosher diet but rather a novelty meat, and because handling and slaughtering deer in these ways violates the fundamental principle of tsa'ar ba'alei chayim (and cannot be done humanely given the nervous, frightened nature of the animals), I hope that the Orthodox Union will not certify any deer slaughter operation. Please remove your hechsher from the Musicon Deer Farm.

Sincerely,

Bruce Friedrich
Vice President
PETA

Eco-Kosher Fulfills Law On All Levels

2007-09-06T08:26:00.000-05:00

ALAN COOPERMAN
The Washington Post
and CLAUDIA BAYLISS
Tribune Staff Writer

South Bend Tribune September 6, 2007

First she had to find an organic cattle farm near home. Then a "shochet," a person trained in kosher slaughtering, who was willing to do a freelance job. Then a kosher butcher to carve the beef into various cuts, and other families from her synagogue to share it.

All told, it took Devora Kimelman-Block of Silver Spring, Md., 10 months to obtain 450 pounds of meat that is local, grass-fed, organic and strictly kosher. It was a lot of work.

"Here I am, leading this meat thing, and we don't even eat meat in our house," she said.

As a part of a budding movement sometimes called "eco-kosher," which combines traditional Jewish dietary laws with new concerns about industrial agriculture, global warming and fair treatment of workers, Kimelman-Block's effort does make sense. Part of the greening of American religion, eco-kosher is an indication of how rapidly environmental issues are entering the mainstream of religious life.

For many people, the primary daily impact of rising environmental consciousness is on the food they eat, which they want to be produced locally, sustainably, organically and humanely. Increasingly, religious people view this as a religious obligation, not just a matter of good health or ethics. The trend is advancing particularly fast among Jews, who have a long tradition of investing food with religious meaning.

A new ethical standard

Rabbi Michael Friedland, of Sinai Synagogue in South Bend, sees the movement as a response to the realities of modern food production, which has become more and more complex. "Many of us were affected deeply by the book 'Fast Food Nation,' " he said during a recent phone conversation. He remembers feeling disgust on learning that "the meat is produced with no respect for the animal" and workers in meat plants are not treated well.

Nigel S. Savage, who keeps a kosher household and edits a Web site, The Jew and Carrot (www.jcarrot.org) shares Friedland's sense that such

practices do not meet the requirements of his faith. "I would no sooner bring eggs from caged, battery-farmed hens into my home than I would shrimp or pork," Savage says. His Web site is devoted to what he calls "the new Jewish food movement."

The most dramatic expansion of eco-kosher principles is likely to come in the next few years as Conservative rabbis and congregations, which occupy the middle ground between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, create a new ethical standard for food production.

Justice certification

The Conservative seal of approval will not be based on traditional kosher requirements, such as separating meat from dairy products, avoiding pork and shellfish, and slaughtering animals with a sharp knife across the throat.

Rather, the Conservative "hechsher tzedek," Hebrew for "justice certification," will attest that a particular food was produced at a plant that meets ethical norms in six areas: fair wages and benefits, health and safety, training, corporate transparency, animal welfare and environmental impact.

Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., head of the committee drafting the rules, said he hopes to have enforceable standards in place by Rosh Hashana (which begins at sundown on Wednesday this year). Within a year after that, he said, the justice certification should begin to appear on packaged foods.

The hechsher tzedek, Allen said, is meant to supplement, not replace, the traditional kosher certification, which is most often supervised by Orthodox agencies. But he does believe that if given the choice between a kosher item and a kosher item "produced by a company that respects its workers and the environment," most Jews will choose the latter.

The dark side

Friedland, a Conservative rabbi, pointed out that "with cow and veal, to keep the meat soft, the muscles soft, they don't let the animals move." Penned up, basically chained -- "It's not the way animals should live," he said.

"A person who takes 'kashrut' (kosher) seriously would say, 'You know, kashrut is not just what I'm sticking in my mouth, but "How did the animal get to be that way? How was the animal treated?" ' " Friedland said. And beyond that, he added, "Are the companies that produce this kosher food, do they follow decent labor practices?"

Kimelman-Block, who is married to a Conservative rabbi, recalls feeling ashamed after reading articles last year in the Jewish newspaper the Forward about the treatment of workers and cattle at a large kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa.

"I know that (the Iowa plant) is probably no worse than the other U.S. food processors, but they're doing it in the name of Judaism, in the name of holiness," she said. "That's the thing about kashrut -- it's supposed to be ethical, and it ... has this dark side that either people don't know about, or if they know about, they think it's irrelevant."

Broader definition of kosher

What it comes down to, Friedland said, is that "You understand kashrut in a very narrow way as just 'Food I'm putting into my mouth is following dietary laws.'

"Or, do you understand kashrut in a greater -- a broader way. That 'What I'm eating has been produced with respect for human beings, with respect for the animals, because eating is a way that I draw close to God.'

"It's one of the most mundane activities we do every day, and yet kashrut suggests that I can raise that mundane activity up to holiness and drawing close to God," Friedland said.

Visiting a slaughterhouse where immigrant workers were poorly trained changed the thinking of Allen. "Having promoted kashrut for 21 years and made it a central part of my rabbinate, all of a sudden it made sense to me: How could I be satisfied if the ritual aspects of kashrut were being followed but the way the workers were treated was degrading and contrary to Jewish ethical norms?" he said.

The whole process

It's much easier to buy food that follows the minimum kosher guidelines for putting food in your mouth, Friedland said. Milk and meat are kept separate. You know that not even a trace amount of a dairy product has been added to the bread of your meat sandwich to make the bread whiter or softer. The meat is kosher according to Jewish law.

But, Friedland added, "By limiting yourself to that narrow focus, you have to wonder if that is what God is really demanding of you. Or is there something more important?

"The prophets in the Bible used to rail against the people because they would offer sacrifices. We're coming up to Yom Kippur. In the biblical period, a key element of Jewish worship was offering an animal for various reasons.

"On the High Holy Days, we read a passage from Isaiah, where Isaiah basically says, 'I don't want your sacrifices.' " God didn't want the people's sacrifices, Friedland explained, and Isaiah railed against the people because they were "fraudulent toward one another. They would show disrespect to the poor and the needy in their community. Their society was corrupt." After bringing their animals to be sacrificed, Friedland said, they would say, "Now I'm clean."

Following the law in that strict or narrow sense is not enough, Friedland said. It does not fulfill its spirit.

"I think that's what the hechsher tzedek movement is trying to say. We really have to think, now that we know how complex the modern methods for food production are. We really can't pretend that it's just about limiting ourselves to the end production. We've got to be concerned with the whole process. Because how we eat connects us to God."

Affordability, keeping track of the labor practices of companies around the world, tracking down all the additives available and often used to enhance food, and discovering even the tiniest amounts of dairy products in foods, which the FDA doesn't regulate, are only some of the issues -- the pieces of the puzzle -- that kosher- observant Jews face.

Sinai Synagogue has created an environmental committee, Friedland said, to begin looking more closely at these issues. Whether they can afford to buy food with the hechsher tzedek label is "something we'll have to think about."

"I am grateful for what Rabbi Allen is doing," Friedland said. "The more transparency you have, the more you can control your own ethical choices. I think that's really important: that we should know what we're doing. And not knowing is convenient, but it's not right.

"And it's not what God expects of us."

Certifiably Ethical

2007-09-06T03:17:00.000-05:00

(09/06/2007)
The Jewish Week

Social action group offers seal of approval to hundreds of establishments with kosher business practices.

Michele Chabin - Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — When Anat Bibi, co-owner of the Anna Ticho House restaurant, recently remodeled her eatery’s spacious, serene garden, she made sure to include gently sloping ramps to accommodate strollers and patrons in wheelchairs.

“People are more aware of the need for accessibility and ask for it,” Bibi said, pointing to the garden’s multi-level deck, reachable by ramps. “Accommodating people’s needs is good business, but it’s also the right and ethical thing to do.

”Ethical kashrut, an idea that socially minded Jews in Israel and the U.S. have been advocating — with varying degrees of success — for decades, is finally catching on in Israel, largely thanks to a program run by the social-action organization Bema’aglei Tzedek (Circles of Justice).

Launched in late 2004, the “Social Seal” initiative encourages restaurants and wedding halls to adopt a conscience in two specific areas: accessibility to the disabled and workers’ rights. Those that meet the program’s criteria are awarded a certificate, which the owners display prominently next to their kashrut certification.

More than 300 establishments in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Maaleh Adumim, Kfar Saba and smaller locales have been awarded the seal, which minimally requires owners to deal fairly with their workers and to install wheelchair ramps and print menus in Braille.

“There’s a gigantic difference between the laws passed by the Knesset and what’s happening in reality,” says Gideon Rosenberg, director of the Social Seal Program, explaining why his organization exists. “There are only 19 people in the entire country enforcing labor law and 90 percent of public buildings aren’t accessible to the disabled.

”Bema’aglei Tzedek launched the seal program at the urging of Rabbi Avi Gisser, the spiritual leader of Ofra, an settlement in the West Bank.

“Rabbi Gisser was participating at a wedding,” Rosenberg recalls, “and one of the waiters told him he wasn’t being paid a legal wage. He felt that just as there is kashrut certification, there should also be certification based on values. So we convened a group of social activists, legal people and rabbis and worked out the criteria.”

To meet the criteria, participating restaurants must make every effort to treat both employees and disabled patrons with respect. Workers must receive the wages, number of breaks and vacation time mandated by law, and should not be forced to work past midnight, when public transportation is virtually non-existent. Physically and mentally challenged diners must be able to enter and navigate through a restaurant and have their needs met in a timely, respectful manner.

While Rosenberg says that many restaurants and halls have been eager to join the program, many others aren’t prepared to invest the time and money necessary to implement change.

That’s where social action comes into play.

“One well-known Jerusalem restaurant owner told us quite plainly he wasn’t prepared to pay his Arab workers the same wage he pays his Jewish workers,” Rosenberg relates. “A year later he changed his mind after several of his customers told him they were upset by the wage discrepancy, and he began to pay more.

”Patrons can learn whether their favorite establishment has received a “tav” (seal) from the organization’s Web site (www.mtzedek.org.il/en.asp). If it’s not on the list, they may feel compelled to quiz the restaurateur.

The group's efforts are similar to an initiative in the United States. Rabbi Morris Allen, of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn., who is spearheading the Hechsher Tzedek program of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, said, “We’re in the process of developing guidelines by which we will evaluate whether already heckshered food is deserving of a hechsher tzedek.”

Rabbi Allen said that his organization has been in touch with Bema’aglei Tzedek, mainly by e-mail, but that the two groups have not yet begun to collaborate on projects.

“We’re very much aware of their work,” he said. “I think it’s significant that in both America and Israel Jews are addressing the multifaceted nature of what it means to keep kosher in the 21st century. Increasingly for Jews it is not enough to be concerned about ritual aspects of keeping kosher; it is also an ethical demand incumbent upon us as Jews.”

Chana Zora, manager of Kav LaOved, a worker’s hotline that assists both Israeli and foreign workers to assert their rights, says that Bema’aglei Tzedek has done a great deal to raise awareness.

“The fact that they educate both workers and students, who will themselves one day become workers, is very important” Zora says, referring to the hundreds of workshops Bema’aglei Tzedek conducts annually with employees, high school students and members of youth groups.

While Kav LaOved appreciates the organization’s educational outreach, it is less enthralled with the Social Seal Program.

“I don’t think that someone who treats his workers well deserves a prize,” Zora says flatly. “They’re only doing what the law and morality require.”

A spokesman for Access Israel, an advocacy group for the disabled, questioned the Social Seal Program’s effectiveness.“There’s no doubt that Bema’aglei Tzedek is helping the community at large but it’s been less helpful for the disabled community,” the spokesman says. “They lack the legal knowledge and expertise needed to bring about the change we’re seeking. It’s not enough to ask that a ramp be built if the ramp doesn’t meet the proper specifications.”

In response, Rosenberg said, “Access Israel is concerned solely with the rights of disabled people and they’re right not to make compromises. However, as a social justice organization, we’re also involved in educating the public and we’ve realized that in order to precipitate change you have to make some compromises. To expect a restaurant that previously had no awareness of the disabled community’s needs suddenly spend NIS 30,000 [$7,000] isn’t realistic. If we limited the Social Seal only to restaurants that had wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, maybe five Jerusalem restaurants would be eligible.

”The Ticho House, whose garden and indoor dining room are accessible, earned a Social Seal despite the fact that diners must walk up four steps to the bathroom, whose main door and stalls are too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair.

“We’re housed in a 100-year-old protected-heritage building and aren’t allowed to make any changes,” Anat Bibi, the owner, said apologetically. “We’ve asked for a permit to install an accessible bathroom but so far, nothing.”

Bibi is nonetheless proud of her restaurant’s inclusion in the Social Seal Program.

“We cared about our workers and disabled people long before the Seal Program, but now the public knows it, too. We know that certain customers come here because they consider us socially conscious, and that pleases us.”