Magen Tzedek

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.

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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.”