JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

This week in Postville

By Ben Harris · June 12, 2008

We're a little overdue for an Agriprocessors update, and as always, there's some choice nuggets to report.

• Bruce Braley, the Iowa Democrat whose district includes part of Postville, made a pointed statement on the Agriprocessors situation, saying the company shouldn't get any more second chances. Braley was responding to an inquiry concerning Iowa's decision to reduce by three-fourths the $182,000 fine levied against the company for safety violations. The Iowa Workforce Development's labor division said leniency was warranted because the company plans to improve. "You have to keep pressuring [Agriprocessors] to engage in the right behavior," Braley said.
• Folks in Postville have told me that more subpoenas have been issued at the Agriprocessors plant, though details are sketchy about who is being summoned. This news follows a report late last month that a close associate of the Rubashkins had been summoned to appear before a grand jury. All this is sure to fuel even more speculation that the government is planning to bring company officials (or former officials, as the case may be) up on criminal charges. The U.S. Attorney's Office refused to comment.
• The Associated Press ran a story this week on continuing fears of price hikes for kosher meat. I'm proud to say we were ahead on this, but the AP did add an interesting wrinkle: Even if Agri can get itself back up to speed, it will almost certainly have to pay documented workers more than the undocumented, or falsely documented, ones it had previously employed, which would likely undermine the company's major competitive advantage: cost.
• Eight kosher summer camps in the midwest have found a non-Agri supplier of kosher meat after the company filled an order for meat with a shipment that was two years past its date.
• Leah Koenig has an interesting interview with a former Agri kosher supervisor on her food blog, The Jew & the Carrot. His take: "It seems very typical considering that the way they managed the company is kind of unprofessional ...I don't think [the Rubashkins are] monsters or deliberately trying to hurt anyone. It's their lack of professionalism."
• In a sign of how hopelessly far apart the ultra-Orthodox are from the rest of the Jewish community on this, a religious blog published this frontal assault on Conservative and Reform Jews, accusing their leaders of cynically exploiting the Agri situation under the guise of genuinely caring about kashrut.
• And finally, the folks who claim responsibility for getting the Agri ball rolling sent us this heartwarming story this week: A PETA investigator sent thousands of dollars worth of vegetarian food to the Postville church that has been helping families affected by the raid. PETA, by the way, might not have a taste for meat, but they certainly do for irony.

2 Comments | Share This | Agriprocessors, Kashrut |

The News Shticker: Celebrity status

By Daniel Sieradski · June 12, 2008

• Borat director Larry Charles and comedian Bill Maher have teamed up on a new film, Religulous, which ridicules the most ridiculous behavior of individuals and communities of faith. To promote the film, the team has launched Disbeliefnet, a spoof on News Corp's religious community site Beliefnet. Among their targets are the kosher phone and haredi anti-Zionist sect Neturei Karta.
• E! remarks on mock-mekubal Ashton Kutcher's Omer beard.
• Ex-mock-mekubal Britney Spears is on a Costa Rican vacation with anti-Semitic conspiracy buff Mel Gibson.
• Valleywag shares exclusive photos from the wedding of Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who had a lavish Jewish ceremony in Jamaica last week.
• Semites on Bikes, a Jewish motorcycle club, is raising money for the Humane Society with a kitty porn calendar.
• The BBC has footage of masked Israeli settlers physically attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.

0 Comments | Share This | Shticker |

Secular leader to perform gay marriages

By Ben Harris · June 12, 2008

At least one Jewish organization is psyched by the California Supreme Court ruling to allow same-sex marriages. The secular Sholem Community and its vegvayzer (that's Yiddish for leader, apparently), Hershl Hartman, is planning to officiate for same-sex couples. The full release follows:

Los Angeles – With the California ban now lifted on gay marriages, The Sholem Community, a progressive, secular Jewish organization, is set to provide support to both Jewish and intercultural gay and lesbian couples who wish to marry.

The Sholem Community's education director Hershl Hartman, a Secular Jewish Leader (madrikh in Hebrew, vegvayzer in Yiddish) who is certified to perform marriages, welcomed the Court's ruling. "I am thrilled that the California Supreme Court acted in the interest of equality, justice, and humanity by extending a fundamental civil right," said Hartman. "Now that same-gender couples have the same marriage rights enjoyed by all adult couples, I look forward to the opportunity to officiate at gay and lesbian weddings with the full protection that the law provides," he added.

As an inclusive organization, The Sholem Community has long welcomed LGBT individuals and families and has educated their children in its Sunday School as part of the century-long tradition of secular Jews in furthering the struggle for labor and civil rights. It wholeheartedly endorses the California Supreme Court's decision holding that marriage is a "basic civil right of personal autonomy and liberty...to which all persons are entitled without regard to their sexual orientation."

Other Secular Jewish Leaders in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties, as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area, have been certified to perform all life-cycle ceremonies including weddings by the Leadership Conference of Secular and Humanistic Jews. They may be found at its website: www.lcshj.org

3 Comments | Share This | community, Religion |

Can Hebrew School Be Cool?

By Ami Eden · June 12, 2008

The Boston Globe reports on one local synagogue's controversial plan to revitalize its Hebrew school:

Temple Emanuel's reinvention begins this fall, when sixth- and seventh-graders will be transplanted to Prozdor, a well-regarded supplementary school for teens at Hebrew College in Newton.

"The idea is to take some of the pixie dust from the new Prozdor and sprinkle it on the middle-school kids," said Jonathan Sarna, a well-known author and lecturer on Jewish life and a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

The Emanuel middle-schoolers will attend Prozdor on Sundays, selecting a Judaic studies or Hebrew language track and a variety of upbeat electives - such as "Jews, Movies and the American Dream," and "Israeli Top 40." Under a collaborative program called Makor, the Hebrew word for "source," they will return to Temple Emanuel on Tuesdays. There, classes taught by clergy will connect students to the synagogue as they approach their bar or bat mitzvah, the Jewish ritual welcome to adulthood.

Marjorie Berkowitz, Prozdor's director, said the goal is for other interested synagogues to be folded into the Makor program within five years, and for Makor classes to be hosted at sites throughout the region.

News of the pending changes provoked intense anger among the teachers at Temple Emanuel's Hebrew school, since teaching jobs are being cut. From 20 teaching positions, only 12 will remain, and staffers were told they would have to apply for the jobs to be considered. Several Emanuel teachers declined to be quoted about the controversy, citing concern for their professional reputations.

0 Comments | Share This | Culture, Education |

Rice stands firm on Palestinian elections

By Ami Eden · June 12, 2008

Over at JTA Election Central, we posted on Liz Cheney's not so veiled swiped at the Bush-Rice policy of pressing for the Palestinian elections that culminated with a Hamas victory. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo linked to our post, under the headline "All in the Family," referring to Cheney's vice-presidential dad.

Well, later in the week at the AIPAC conference, a Cheney family cousin (Barack something or other) also took a swipe at the Bush administration over the issue:

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority warned us at the time against holding these elections. But this Administration pressed ahead, and the result is a Gaza controlled by Hamas, with rockets raining down on Israel.

Rice is sticking to her guns. Here's what she had to say about the topic in a recent essay that she wrote for Foreign Affairs:

When Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories, it was widely seen as a failure of policy. But although this victory most certainly complicated affairs in the broader Middle East, in another way it helped to clarify matters. Hamas had significant power before those elections – largely the power to destroy. After the elections, Hamas also had to face real accountability for its use of power for the first time. This has enabled the Palestinian people, and the international community, to hold Hamas to the same basic standards of responsibility to which all governments should be held. Through its continued unwillingness to behave like a responsible regime rather than a violent movement, Hamas has demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of governing.

Much attention has been focused on Gaza, which Hamas holds hostage to its incompetent and brutal policies. But in other places, the Palestinians have held Hamas accountable. In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, for instance, where Hamas was elected in 2004, frustrated and fed-up Palestinians voted it out of office in the next election. If there can be a legitimate, effective, and democratic alternative to Hamas (something that Fatah has not yet been), people will likely choose it. This would especially be true if the Palestinians could live a normal life within their own state.

The participation of armed groups in elections is problematic. But the lesson is not that there should not be elections. Rather, there should be standards, like the ones to which the international community has held Hamas after the fact: you can be a terrorist group or you can be a political party, but you cannot be both. As difficult as this problem is, it cannot be the case that people are denied the right to vote just because the outcome might be unpleasant to us. Although we cannot know whether politics will ultimately deradicalize violent groups, we do know that excluding them from the political process grants them power without responsibility. This is yet another challenge that the leaders and the peoples of the broader Middle East must resolve as the region turns to democratic processes and institutions to resolve differences peacefully and without repression.

0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Condi, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |

Colbert on Israel’s new national bird, plus kosher giraffes

By Daniel Sieradski · June 12, 2008

Nextbook's Jonathan Rosen has an op-ed in the NY Times on the hoopoe. Also, here's more on kosher giraffe milk.

0 Comments | Share This | Comedy, Israel, video |