Postvile coming unglued
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 alone isn'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.
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Eugene M. Kravis
11/21/08 05:28 PM
There should be no shortage of Kosher meat. I am a former USDA veterinary meat inspector and a Jew. I worked alongside shochets who conducted kosher slaughter first on select days of the week. I witnessed the purple Hebrew inscriptions on the forequarters of beef and lamb. After the Kosher slaughter, non-kosher processing was done. This was all rabbinically approved. This could be done in every federally inspected meat processing plant in the country. When I was an inspector, there was no Agriprocessors.
Eugene M. Kravis, DVM.