I’ve heard of niche publishing, but a kosher Japanese cookbook aimed at people who don’t keep Shabbos?

Kinue Imai Weinstein, the author of Japanese Kosher Cooking – With Ingredients From Your Refrigerator - will talk how easy it is to cook Japanese food kosher at Kinokuniya Bookstore located at 1073 Avenue of the Americas (between 40th and 41st St.) New York, NY (Tel: 212-869-1700) at 3 pm on Saturday, July 19. She will also talk about Jews in Japan with slide presentation followed by a book signing session until 4 pm.

The first Jewish merchant arrived in Japan in 1861, two years after Japan opened the country. Despite Japan allied to Germany during WWII and many anti-Semitic works were translated into Japanese from German, the Japanese did not adopt the anti-Semitic attitude of the Nazis. Today, there are about 1,000 Jews living in Japan .

The cookbook, the first of its kind, was published in English by KTAV Publishing House last November. “Making Japanese food kosher is easier than you think. All you need is kosher soy sauce, which is readily available,” says Kinue. Among the 107 kosher Japanese recipes, 46 of them can be easily modified for vegetarians.

Another week of stunning revelations out of Postville. Let’s recap:

• The PR firm Agri hired to help revive its image, 5WPR, ran into some image problems of its own when evidence emerged connecting the publicity company to comments to various Web sites in the name of Rabbi Morris Allen, an advocate for ethical kashrut standards who has been one of Agri’s fiercest critics. So far Agri has been mum on the issue, but a blogger at PRBlogNews says the company is making publicists look bad and the executive responsible should be fired.
• The Des Moines Register ran a lengthy piece reviewing worker injury claims at Agriprocessors going back several years and found that state inspectors were routinely denied access to the plant to investigate complaints. Three amputations at the plant within five weeks of each other in 2005 resulted in state fines of $7,500. The Register followed with a scathing editorial calling such incidents “unconscionable.”
• The New York Times also had a good original story followed by an editorial. The story was about a Spanish language translator who worked on the judicial proceedings against the detained Postville workers who wrote an essay criticizing the process. In the editorial, the Times argues that Agri’s workers charged with identity theft weren’t looking to steal, only to get jobs, and shouldn’t be treated like criminals.
• Also in the Times, journalist Sam Freedman traveled to Postville to write about Father Paul Ouderkirk, a Catholic priest who came out of retirement to help parishioners coping with the aftermath of the federal raid.

Here’s the fake quote attributed to Rabbi Morris Allen that was posted to the JTA site:

There is a war going on here, the war between the kashrut standards of Orthodoxy and Conservatives. For so long, Orthodoxy has controlled the “industry” and we see what has happened.

Tzedek will set a standard set by a committee and it will be certain to protect workers from abuse. An added benefit it that it will protect the IRS from being defrauded, because Tzedek will entail honesty on taxes as well.

We will give a pass to small stores where illegals work, but not large companies - that is to much leeway. If an owner has a housekeeper or nanny, he or she better be legal.

Then again, if these illegals are paid well and treated well, maybe it won’t matter that they are illegal. This hasn’t been worked out yet.

Meanwhile, the Agriprocessors matter should continue until we get what we deserve. Tzedek on out terms, Tzedek for our beliefs, and a Tzedek that we can regulate.

5WPR’s founder and president, Ronn Torossian, just issued this statement about the controversy engulfing his company [UPDATE: This is the revised version that the company sent out a few minutes after the first one]:

While traveling earlier this week with my family out of the country, my IT department investigated accusations which we have now learned to be true. A senior staff member failed to be transparent in dealing with client matters. He has taken full responsibility.

We have been in business since January 2003 – and according to Odwyer’s 2007 rankings our revenues exceeded $11.5M, and we are the 21st largest independent PR firm in the United States.

Growing companies often have problems in their expansion, and we continue to strive for the highest performance. We have instituted internal measures to ensure this cannot happen again. We continue to strive for the highest ethical standards.

This battle is not about blogging, it is however about protecting the highest levels of Kashrut in the Jewish community. We as a firm feel personally and professionally passionate about these, and related issues.

Critics of traditional Judaism have chosen to smear the largest provider of the highest level kashrut meat in the world. We stand with protecting kashrut.

And treif meat, too.

Seriously, though, one of the most intriguing aspects of this entire story is that 5WPR has managed to carve out two seemingly contradictory niches, representing both traditionalist Jewish groups and celebrities associated with the raunchier side of American pop culture (for example, Girls Gone Wild — that’s Torossian on the left at the 28-second mark — and Lil’ Kim). The media equivalent would be Fox, which has an entertainment division that has arguably done more than any other company to create the debased standards of decency on television that the traditionalist/conservative folks over at the news division love to rail against.

UPDATE: The Forward’s Nathaniel Popper hit on this irony back a few years ago with this profile on Torossian.

FailedMessiah reports today that two comments attributed to Rabbi Morris Allen, the Minnesota rabbi behind the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek project, originated in the office of 5WPR, the public relations firm hired to help kosher meat producer Agriprocessors cope with the fallout from the May 12 raid. We’re still seeking comment from 5W.

Shira Dicker, a publicist working with Allen, sends us this email:

Dear Reporters,

In a bizarre effort to discredit the efforts of Rabbi Morris Allen, the founder and spiritual force behind Hekhsher Tzedek — the new ethical certification of the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism — staffers from 5W Public Relations wrote phony comments in his name on the website www.failedmessiah.com.

Hekhsher Tzedek is pursuing legal action in this matter.

B’nai Brith Youth Organization will abstain from Agriprocessors meat this summer. Here’s their statement:

Camp Food is No Joking Matter
BBYO Teens Demand Agriprocessor-Free Camp Programs

As a result of the allegations of intolerable injustices at Agriprocessors, the largest producer of kosher meat and poultry in the U.S., BBYO takes major stand by asking its various camp partners to avoid serving Agriprocessor products, to which they comply.

Nine hundred teens participating in BBYO’s summer leadership experiences at Perlman Camp, PA; Beber Camp, WI; and American Hebrew Academy, CA, over the course of this summer, will eat meals free of Agriprocessor products, showing a unified commitment to social justice and Jewish values.

Teens make concerted effort to expand summer program curricula to address the Agriprocessor issue from variety of angles, including the ritual and ethical implications of kashrut, worker’s rights, immigration reform and Jewish values.

The first program will take place on Thursday, June 26, 11:45 am – 1:15 pm, when nearly 100 Jewish teens will gather at Beber Camp in Mukwonago, Wisconson (suburban Milwaukee) to make their voices heard against the intolerable injustices at Agriprocessors. Confirmed speakers include Rabbi Morris Allen, a Minneapolis-based leader of the Heksher Tzedek campaign for kosher foods to be produced ethically, who has been to Postville multiple times and will share first-hand accounts from factory workers. Lauren Shenfeld, BBYO’s International Teen Co-President, will also address the group, to raise awareness among her peers and encourage action when teens return home to their local communities.

“If anyone is going to make their opinion on this problem matter to the Jewish community and communities at large, and ultimately stand up against an issue in which human rights and Jewish values are demeaned, it’s BBYO teens.” – Lauren Shenfeld, BBYO International Teen Co-President

“The reason this issue has struck such a deep chord with BBYO teens is because it’s the story of their grandparents and great grandparents – the story of immigrating to find a better life, fighting oppression and standing up for social justice.” – Marilyn Sneiderman, BBYO Deputy Director and former Director of Field Mobilization for the National AFL-CIO

In an op-ed yesterday in the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Avi Shafran offers the first public statement on the Agriprocessors situation from Agudath Israel of America, the haredi umbrella group whose constituents are probably the company’s most reliable consumers.

Shafran writes:

Neither I nor Agudath Israel of America has any connection to Agriprocessors. And for all we know, it may yet be shown that the firm indeed knowingly hired illegal aliens. Or that it mistreated them, or that it was a front for a drug operation, a neo-Nazi group or a baby-cannibalizing cult. All under the eyes of the federal inspectors present at the plant at all times.

But unless and until some wrongdoing is actually proven, not merely suspected or charged, no human being - certainly no Jew, bound as we are by the Torah’s clear admonition in such matters - has any right to assume guilt, much less voice condemnation or seek to levy punishment.

It’s a fair point.

It was announced last week that Agriprocessors is to hold an “urgent public meeting” on Tuesday in New York City. The meeting will be held at 4:45 at Bnai Zion on East 39th Street and will feature presentations by Orthodox superlawyer Nat Lewin, company spokesperson Menachem Lubinsky, and Rabbi Menachem Weissmandel, the Postville plant’s chief kosher supervisor. Also on the bill are unnamed Postville community activists and kosher industry leaders. According to the invitation, the event will be a chance to “learn the TRUTH about Agriprocessors” (emphasis in the original) and to learn “what can be done to stop the slander and vilifications against Agriprocessors.” Those wishing to attend are instructed to RSVP to Lubinsky’s firm, Lubicom. 

But here’s the catch — late Friday we learned from Lubinsky that press will not be admitted. When asked, he declined to tell us why. The truth will apparently only be shared with invited guests. 

The Tuesday meeting comes, as the Forward noted last week, as the company appears to be gearing up for a big public relations push. They have retained the services of PR powerhouse 5WPR (after being turned down as a client by another prominent firm), and they have lately been uncharacteristically quick in responding to the media. Lubinsky e-mailed me a statement last week responding to allegations related to the company’s decision to hire homeless workers from Texas — before I even asked him for one. 

But the company and kosher supervision agencies also seem intent on closely controlling the message that they are putting out to the Jewish community. Last week, we blogged about Rabbi Seth Mandel, the OU’s head of kosher supervision. Mandel met in Hartford recently with a group of rabbis and insisted that the contents of the meeting remain private. He later sent a lengthy e-mail explaining his view of the situation, and when we asked him about it, he said the e-mail was private and should not be reported (you can read the e-mail here).

Who was it who said the truth will you set you free? Oh, right.  

Following up on my earlier post about Seth Mandel, the OU’s head of meat supervision, we obtained a May 26 e-mail in which Rabbi Mandel lays out in more detail his view of the Agriprocessors situation.

The e-mail is quite long, but a few items caught our attention.

The first is Mandel’s assertion that Agri doesn’t “cut corners” with kashrut, but it does push those corners as far as it can. Same is true with other facets of its business. But in both cases, Mandel says, that’s par for the course. “Agri,” he writes, “is no worse than other large meat packers.”

Mandel also wonders whether consumers would be willing to bear the costs of doing more than is minimally required by the law, and has some bracing words on immigration policy. But the real (sorry) meat of the e-mail is where Mandel discusses whether or not the allegations — of drug production, worker mistreatment, underage workers, etc. — are in fact true. He openly admits that he doesn’t know, but what he does know is that if such things were going on, the kosher workers wouldn’t know about it. They don’t associate much with the general workforce, he writes, and they don’t go into “isolated warehouses,” which he says are “the only possible places” that drugs could have been produced. In the meat production areas, Mandel gives the company a clean bill of health: “There are no beatings or sexual mistreatment of workers or drug facilities in the operating areas of the plant. There are also no workers that look underage.”

That last point is perhaps subjective, while offering Mandel some wiggle room (”The workers didn’t look underage”). I interviewed two teenagers in Postville who both claimed to work in production and both looked pretty young to me. I reported on it here.

Here’s the e-mail (Rabbi Mandel says we don’t have the full version, and the one that we have is misleading. He declined to be more specific or supply a complete version of the e-mail): (more…)

As always, couple items to note ….

• The Uri L’tzedek boycott of Agriprocessors has gone into effect. The self-described Orthodox social justice group (which doesn’t like the word boycott) said it would refrain from purchasing Agriprocessors’ products on June 15 if the company didn’t agree to establish a transparent mechanism to ensure compliance with Jewish and U.S. labor law. A meeting took place last week, but the group is still waiting for assurances that the company has turned a corner. There’s more on this here.
• Meanwhile, another Jewish group is jumping into the fray. In keeping with its historic roots, Ameinu, the American wing of the World Labor Zionist movement, has issued a statement urging Jewish groups not to patronize Agri. We’ve also heard that another summer camp, the Conservative Ramah Darom in Georgia, turned away a shipment from Agri. Our gut here is that this is likely to further convince the company’s defenders that Jewish outrage over this issue is simply an opportunistic pile-on for liberal groups.
• Meanwhile, some of the most damning evidence of an impending shortage emerged last week when we discovered that FreshDirect, the popular Internet retailer that gets all its kosher meat from Agri, has some 40 kosher meat products listed as currently unavailable. No worries if you’re planning to serve glatt kosher beef neck bones this Shabbos, the supply of which seems to be holding. (NOTE: If you follow that link, you need to type in a NYC zip code to see the page. If you’re outside the city, use mine: 11215). However, there does seem to be enough meat for the company to have donated 1,000 pounds to flood relief in Iowa, a Chabad website reported.
• Finally, an email was circulated this week by a Lubavitch rabbi in Connecticut describing a recent meeting local rabbis had with Rabbi Seth Mandel, the OU’s head of meat supervision. More on that, after the jump.

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