Hekhsher Tzedek

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

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For Shame - New Jersey Jewish Standard, May 16, 2008

Ask the Rabbi: Not Sporting - Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2008

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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.