The Jewish culture folks over at Nextbook are putting on the latest installment of their Festivals of Ideas series Sunday in New York. Among the literati lined up to talk about Jews and Power: Cynthia Ozick, Shalom Auslander, Ruth Wisse, and Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.

Nowhere on the Web page, however, is it noted the irony of the festival venue — The Times Center, the event space on the ground floor of the gleaming new headquarters of the New York Times. Whether you see the Times as the citadel of American Jewish power or as the symbol of Diaspora Jewish weakness, it’s an interesting choice.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight who is in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel. I spoke to Mr. Voight about his relationship to the Jewish community, his involvement with Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl campaign, and his affinity for the state of Israel.

Agriprocessors’ PR folks just sent us a statement. The company says it’s trying to upgrade its immigration compliance procedures, but the first priority is getting the plant up and running again. No mention made of steps to address charges of illicit drug production on the premises, however, as reported in the government’s affidavit on the company.

Agriprocessors Addressing Challenges Following Worksite Enforcement Action

POSTVILLE, IA (May 15, 2008) – Agriprocessors, Inc., continues to make meaningful progress in addressing the challenges presented by the worksite enforcement action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies on May 12, 2008.

According to Chaim Abrahams, a company representative, Agriprocessors is concentrating its efforts on production.

“We were able to bring the plant back into operation the next day, and even though we’re not running at full capacity, we are able to resume production,” Abrahams said. “We are in the process of replacing workers so we can avoid any interruption of meeting customer needs for high quality products.”

Abrahams also noted that the company was in the process of enhancing its immigration compliance procedures.

“We are working with experts in immigration compliance to help us bolster our compliance efforts to employ only properly documented employees,” he said. “We have signed up for a government electronic verification program, and are working with our consultants on additional compliance measures that will enhance our hiring process.”

Agriprocessors also has launched an independent investigation into the circumstances which led to the worksite enforcement action, and is cooperating fully with the government.

“We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the families whose lives were disrupted and wish them the best,” Abrahams said.

Rabbi Moses Weissmandel, the supervising rabbi at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, called this morning to categorically refute every allegation made this week by government investigators — except the illegal worker business. “That’s not my department,” Weissmandel said.

What is his department is the rabbinical staff, some 40 rabbis responsible for the actual slaughter of meat and for supervising the plant to make sure everything’s kosher. He claimed his rabbis provide round-the-clock supervision, and that none of the allegations – among them that workers were producing drugs on site, and that rabbis abused the workers with meat hooks – are true.

“I categorically say it’s false, it’s not true, it’s a lie,” Weissmandel said. “I have my rabbis supervising 24/7. We supervise every inch of that place in order to be sure that the place is totally kosher.”

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Earlier this week we linked to Gershom Gorenberg’s article on the efforts of a hawkish pro-Israel group to warp articles in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to reflect the group’s views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Well, it seems there may be more to the story. HonestReporting, another pro-Israel media watchdog, says it’s really Palestinian groups that are messing around on Wikipedia. Here’s their report on the matter.

Last night, the President’s Conference reached its climax with an event celebrating the historic relationship between Israel and the United States. In their successive addresses, which were interspersed with musical and (more questionable) dance performances, President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the event’s chair, American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, celebrated the uniqueness of the U.S.-Israel relationship, expressed gratitude for America’s commitment to Israeli security, and lavished praise upon U.S. President George W. Bush, the evening’s guest of honor, whom they characterized as the most supportive U.S. President Israel has ever known. Their remarks, which were met with thunderous applause, preceded a brief address by President Bush, who linked the destinies of the U.S. and Israel through their shared commitment to bringing peace to the Middle East. The full audio of each speech follows.

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This morning I got the president of Gal Investments, Gabay Menhel, on the phone. The Israeli-born Menhel heads a real-estate company in Postville, Iowa, where federal agents Monday hauled off 390 employees of the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse on suspected immigration violations.

Many of those workers were tenants of Menhel, who says his properties now resemble a ghost town. “One guy here, one guy there, most of them are gone,” he said. “It’s very scary.”

Menhel said he doesn’t know how many of his (former?) tenants were employed at Agriprocessors, the kosher slaughterhouse with a checkered history of food and safety violations in addition to its habit of hiring undocumented workers.

Unsurprisingly, Menhel didn’t want to guess how many of his tenants might be in the country illegally. He did speculate that 80 percent of them were foreign-born and that when the Feds showed up Monday with their helicopters and their search warrants, many of them bolted.

“They are very scared of authorities,” Menhel said.

Because of that fear, Menhel said his company tries “to take little information” from prospective tenants. He dismissed a suggestion that might indicate they have something to hide. Menhel said even his “top worker,” a man he insisted was in the country legally, had fled with his family after the raid. To where? He didn’t know. “This is too much, too scary,” the man told him.

For now, Menhel says the prevailing feeling in Postville is fear. All the restaurants are closed and news agencies are reporting that students aren’t showing up for school. “People are scared, scared what’s going to be with their town,” he said. “It’s a big uncertainty.”

Asked about his company’s website — which features a picture of the headquarters of Chabad at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, where the late Lubavitcher rebbe once held court, even though his business is done entirely in Postville — Menhel had this to say: “That’s the picture of our rebbe. Everything in Jewish faith is God, you know. Everything should reflect God. Even my home page should reflect godliness.”

And besides, Menhel added, none of his customers go to the home page anyway.

Since news broke of Monday’s federal raid at the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, the Des Moines Register has literally owned the story. Their site is overflowing with useful stuff, like:

The Associated Press has a video report on raid.

Several recent stories shine a light on the challenges and opportunities of the new YouTube-era environment that Israel and its advocates are operating in.

Ha’aretz has a report today on the Israeli Consulate in New York arranging to have videos played on the jumbo screens in Times Square of celebrities sending Independence Day greetings.

“We’re aware of the influence that [the celebrities] filmed in the clip have on so many people around the world,” said Asi Shariv, Israel’s Consul General in New York. “Their connection with Israel is an important part of our efforts to tell the Israeli story to a young, Western audience that does not take an interest in the [Mideast] conflict.”

Of course, all sides have access to video and the means to distribute it on the Internet. For example, Ha’aretz also is reporting that on Tuesday the human rights group B’Tselem unveiled video footage showing an Israeli soldier “firing a rubber-coated bullet at an Israeli protester at close range, during a protest against the separation fence in Bil’in two months ago.”

“The shooting,” according to Ha’aretz, “appears to violate IDF regulations, which state that rubber bullets may be fired from no closer than 40 meters.”

And, of course, plenty of video of the incident in question is up on YouTube.

This video has a quick shot at the end of the wounded Israeli protester on a stretcher…

And then there are user-generated Web sites like Wikipedia, where a well-coordinated stealth campaign can tilt seemingly unbiased information one way or the other. The problem is that Internet-based campaigns coordinated via e-mail leave a paper trail — a point hammered home by Gershom Gorenberg’s recent column in the American Prospect about pro-Palestinian activists exposing an alleged attempt by CAMERA to train supporters to infiltrate and influence the Wikipedia editing process.

JTA’s Israel correspondent Dina Kraft speaks with American Jewish World Service director Ruth Messinger, who is attending the President’s Conference in Israel, about China’s support for Sudan, Israel’s handling of Sudanese refugees, and the call for Jews to boycott the Beijing Olympics.