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Aaron and Me

By Ben Harris · June 4, 2008

After my frustrating experience with Sholom Rubashkin in Postville, I thought it unlikely that I’d have much more luck with his father Aaron. The elder Rubashkin still runs the original family butcher shop on 14th Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood Borough Park. Rubashkin opened the shop in 1953, the same year he emigrated from Russia, and the shop looks not to have changed much since. In the space above the door where the sign should be there are only reddish panels, one of which is missing. In the upper right corner of the front window is a square yellow sign: Rubashkin’s.

Sholom had been friendly in our meeting and only disappointed me later, when he reneged on an offer to take me on a tour of the plant. With Aaron the situation was entirely reversed. His underlings in the shop initially ran interference for their boss, saying he was unavailable when I first inquired about speaking to him. About 20 minutes later, Aaron himself wandered in and promptly turned on his heel and disappeared when I identified myself as a reporter. When I approached him again 20 minutes later, he told me he was too busy – “It’s erev Shabbos!” – and to come back Monday, to which I agreed.

But as I interviewed a gaggle of his customers in front of the store last Friday, Aaron appeared and spoke on the record for about 10 minutes. He wandered off, but then returned about 20 minutes later and went on for close to an hour. And when I returned Tuesday to snap a photo, he seemed positively thrilled to see me, greeting me warmly and happily posing for several shots.

Even physically, the elder Rubashkin is the mirror image of his son – his white beard flecked with black, instead of the reverse. His face is deeply lined and he wore a pale blue shirt over his ample belly. He gently swayed back and forth, prayer-style, as he talked, his watery blue eyes boring into me. And he spoke with the kind of Yiddish/Brooklyn zing it’s almost reassuring to know still exists. (When he told me 30 rabbis supervise the plant, it came out “toity.")

To hear Aaron tell it, he is the victim of all this – not the Mexican workers who claim they were abused by Jewish supervisors; not the town of Postville, whose economic in future is very much in peril since the federal government arrested 20 percent of its population; not the kosher consumers who may face very real shortages and price increases if Agriprocessors can’t get back on its feet, and soon (more on this later in the week).

No, as Rubashkin sees it, he is the victim of workers who make baseless allegations and a news media that gobbles them up, more interested in selling newspapers than the truth. Several times he compared the press to the Soviet, state-run media ("a lynching press, a one-sided press") and seemed resigned to being at a fundamental disadvantage in making his case to the public.

“I am the one who’s at fault?” he asked. “I will never accept that.”

Rubashkin seemed particularly offended by the notion, implied by the criticism from Jewish social activists, that he is somehow opposed to justice. He carried on at length about “tzedek,” using the Hebrew word for justice, as if to say that destroying a man’s livelihood based on hearsay couldn’t possibly be just. “If there is a group about tzedek,” he said to me, “I want to be part of it.”

One of the most interesting facets of this story is how divergent are the reactions between the ultra-Orthodox communities who are Rubashkin’s major customers and the liberal religious communities who are his foremost critics. On Friday, a steady stream of Orthodox customers filed in and out of the store, and none seemed particularly bothered by the allegations against their local butcher. Invariably, they said they didn’t believe the charges, and even if they were true, it wouldn’t make much difference. “The meat’s nice, the meats good,” said one. I’m going to continue to buy it.”

My full story on the interview is here.

Selected audio from the Rubashkin interview is here:

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And here are three interviews with Rubashkin’s customers, none of whom was fazed by the allegations against him.

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10 Comments | Share This | Agriprocessors, Kashrut, Podcast

HaAm Im HaGolan

By Daniel Sieradski · June 2, 2008

In the following podcast, JTA staff writer Dina Kraft speaks with Ramona Bar-Lev, director of outreach for the Golan Resident’s Commitee, who moved to the Golan Heights as a teenager in 1969 and has never looked back. Responding to the announcement this month that Syria and Israel were engaged in indirect talks, Bar-Lev is once again helping lead the battle for public opinion against the possibility that the Golan Heights could be returned to Syria as part of a peace deal.

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0 Comments | Share This | Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel, Podcast

The Time 100’s Eco-Israeli

By Daniel Sieradski · June 2, 2008

In the following podcast, JTA staff writer Dina Kraft speaks with Isaac Berzin, the Israeli founder of an algae fuel company called GreenFuel, which, for its work in advancing alternative energy resources, earned Berzin the honor of being listed among Time magazine’s top 100 people of 2008.  Though his company is based in Boston, Berzin recently moved back to Israel to start an institute on alternative energy policy at the IDC-Herzilya, a private Israeli college.

[audio:/images/archive/060208_kraft_berzin.mp3]
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0 Comments | Share This | Environment, Israel, Podcast, Science

Scalia addresses Agudah

By Ben Harris · June 2, 2008

More photos via Yeshiva World News

In a keynote address to members of Agudath Israel of America, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Constitution allows for more religion in the public square. He was introduced by Orthodox litigator and Harvard Law classmate Nat Lewin, speaking by video from Morocco.

The full audio of his speech follows.

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0 Comments | Share This | Podcast, Politics, Religion

Exclusive: Y-Love and Kosha Dillz, “Just Knowledge”

By Daniel Sieradski · May 29, 2008

Courtesy of Modular Moods Records, The Telegraph is pleased to present the new collaboration between Jewish hip-hop artists Y-Love and Kosha Dillz.

Y-Love, who is currently touring internationally, jumping from Jewish conferences to secular hip-hop events, released his debut album This is Babylon earlier this year to rave reviews from mainstream hip-hop publications like XXL, XLR8R and URB, several of which described his music as “revolutionary.”

Kosha Dillz, the latest addition to the Modular family, is an Israeli-American emcee who has been cited by URB as “a universal voice” and “a rarely seen culture clash in music.” Dillz has performed with the likes of Matisyahu, Pharcyde and Jurassic 5, and will see his first Modular recording, a collaboration with rapper C Rayz Walz, released later this summer.

You can listen to Y-Love and Kosha Dillz’s collaboration below.

[audio:/images/archive/y-love__koshadillz-justknowledge.mp3]
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4 Comments | Share This | music, Podcast

Prospects for Israeli-Syrian peace? 

By Uriel Heilman · May 21, 2008

After Israel and Syria announced this week they were renewing peace talks, the question on the minds of many was: Why now? Iran and Hezbollah’s rising power, new Israeli willingness to cede the Golan, the fading influence of the Bush White House and Ehud Olmert’s domestic troubles all are being cited as possible factors. JTA managing editor Uriel Heilman talks with diplomatic correspondent Leslie Susser in Jerusalem about the prospects of and motivations behind Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

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0 Comments | Share This | Arab-Israeli Conflict, Podcast

Some Jewish Dems feeling nervous about the presidential race

By Ami Eden · May 21, 2008

I have an article up about the National Jewish Democratic Council event Sunday night, during which several speakers and attendees expressed concerns about Barack Obama’s ability to hold on to Jewish voters. Even NJDC’s executive director, Iran Forman, who generally can be counted on to dismiss GOP predictions of a Jewish shift, was voicing concern about the presidential race.

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0 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Podcast

Adam Mansbach: Appreciation or appropriation?

By Sue Fishkoff · May 20, 2008

Kind of weird last Tuesday night listening to Adam Mansbach, a nice Jewish boy from Newton, MA, tell a bunch of white Jews at the San Francisco JCC he was a dope emcee who grew up listening to hip hop.

Sure, Jewish kids are fascinated by black culture, said the 32-year-old Berkeley author of “The End of the Jews,” his third novel about race, hip-hop, and alienated young Jews trying to find their place in the world. His second book, “Angry Black White Boy,” is taught in more than three dozen universities, and is in development as a feature film.

Mansbach talks fast, in a rhythmic, jazzy kind of patter that prompted one audience member to ask why he “talked black,” a suggestion Mansbach dismissed. “What does that even mean?” he asked.

“This book is about margins,” he told the crowd. “If we look at the Jewish community of the past, those artists we value most highly occupied those margins. That’s where creativity happens.”

Mansbach spoke about his own early attraction to black culture, when he’d ride the bus that brought black kids to his heavily Jewish suburban school back to their African American neighborhoods to hang out and listen to the music that meant more to him than the Hebrew school he was thrown out of. In a world where chain stores use hip-hop to sell everything from computers to running shoes, he wondered, where does one draw the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation?

Oh yeah, that scary title. Once he was at a bar mitzvah with his grandfather, a retired law professor and judge from the Bronx whom Mansbach calls “brilliant, a heavy dude.” The gentleman surveyed the scene, with the Mexican hats and the over-sized sunglasses and the cheesy games and the extravagant buffet, turned to his grandson and muttered, “it’s the end of the Jews.”

It’s not, of course. But it makes good cover copy.

An audio segment of the author in conversation with Dan Schifrin, writer-in-residence at the soon-to-open Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, follows:

[audio:/images/archive/052008_wolf_mansbach.mp3]
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0 Comments | Share This | Literature, Podcast

How the raid in Postville unfolded

By Ami Eden · May 20, 2008

Nigel Duara has been reporting for the Des Moines Register on the situation in Postville, Iowa in the aftermath of last week’s arrests at Agriprocessors. Here he talks with JTA’s Ben Harris about how the raid went down.

[audio:/images/archive/052008_harris_nigel.mp3]
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3 Comments | Share This | Agriprocessors, Podcast

Deportations in Iowa

By Ami Eden · May 19, 2008

Ben Harris is on the on the ground in Iowa, reporting on the aftermath of last week’s federal raid of the country’s largest meatpacking plant. Listen to his report on the first batch of undocumented workers to be deported, with hundreds more still in custody.

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16 Comments | Share This | Agriprocessors, Podcast