JustASC

Washington attorney Nathan Lewin responds to Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, the DC rabbi whose New York Times oped called on the Orthodox establishment to appoint an ”independent team that would make sure the [Agriprocessors kosher] plant upholds basic standards of kashrut and worker and animal treatment – and that it is in full compliance with the laws of the United States.”

Lewin is almost exclusively concerned that Herzfeld would challenge the kashrut of the plant under ethical grounds — and if Lewin has even a shmidgen of unease about the human toll of the mounting allegations against the plant, it is not to be found in his rebuttal.

Instead, a lawyer to the core, he tries to discredit the historicity of Herzfeld’s reference to Rabbi Israel Salanter, who according to Herzfeld “refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly.” Lewin can’t find a solid scholarly reference to the Salanter story — implying that if the principle of judging a factory’s kashrut by the treatment of its workers was not established by a 19th-century sage, it can’t possibly be an operable criterion.

“No Salantar — no justice.” Try that on a bumper sticker.

It’s an odd gambit on Lewin’s part, because if the plant has been “pilloried” by the press and if Herzfeld is one among many “vigilantes,” as he asserts, what difference would it make what Salanter did or didn’t say about ethics? If the allegations are untrue, and Agriprocessors is a legal and ethical paragon, why argue over what constitutes the “ritual acceptability” of kosher meat? It would have made more sense to have written, “Even if we accept R. Salanter’s opinion as genuine, it does not apply in a case in which a factory has not been proven to have abused its workers.” But then, Lewin would have lost his opportunity for a “gotcha.” 

The other two points in his rebuttal — emailed around by Lubicom, one of Agriprocessors’ pr firms – are similarly narrow and pilpulistic. Basically, he absolves Agriprocessors of any responsibility for those it employs.

Missing is any sense of a larger picture — like the one captured in a devastating editorial in the Forward that recounts the past two years of journalistic and government investigations, and the sordid history of the Rubashkin family that runs the plant.  What remains stunning is the degree to which the kashrut and legal authorities closest to Agriprocessors continue to deflect the ethical and legal implications of the allegations. When it comes to whether kashrut should have an ethical component that rises above what happens on the slaughterhouse floor, their stance is essentially, “we answer to a lower authority.”

Lewin’s rebuttal after the jump: (more…)

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, tells CBS why he likes Eric Cantor as a veep choice for McCain:

I’ll tell you another choice that I think would ring a lot of bells among evangelical and Catholic social conservatives, and I think could have some real electoral punch to it, is Eric Cantor, the congressman from Richmond. He’s the fourth highest person in the House leadership. He is a conservative, observant Jew, a one hundred percent pro-life voting record. And if he picked Cantor, that would probably help hold Virginia. And it would increase McCain’s percentage of the Jewish vote in Florida and Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Wall Street Journal has an a piece about the McCain campaign ad, above, saying it has

generated criticism from Democrats and religious scholars who see a hidden message linking Sen. Obama to the apocalyptic Biblical figure of the antichrist.

Hidden message? With its mock apocalyptic imagery and Moses clip from The Ten Commandments , the ad is unambiguously labelling Obama a false messiah (if it isn’t, there’s no joke). The McCain camp calls the ad “light-hearted,” but they have to know that the “Obama=false messiah” theme is all over the conservative Net.

You can argue that fundamentalist Protestants are more sophisticated than that, and know the difference between political satire and serious religious discourse. But then you read this quote from Tim LaHaye, the author of the phenomenally popular series of Left Behind novels:

“The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania…”

If this nutty prophetic specificity is mainstream echatology in LaHaye’s world, what won’t his fans believe?

And if you are ready to defend the ad, ask yourself this: How “light-hearted” would the imagery seem if Obama were a Jew?

Sunday is Tisha B’Av, the fast day marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a day of mourning consolidating many disasters in Jewish history. I remain struck how Springsteen’s “My City of Ruins” perfectly captures the themes of the day: violent loss, expulsion, grief, and the possibility of redemption and return — to place, to wholeness — through hope and faith in self and community:

My City of Ruins 

Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

There is a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door’s thrown open
I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Now the sweet bells of mercy
Drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
Like scattered leaves,
The boarded up windows,
The empty streets
While my brother’s down on his knees
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up! Come on, rise up!

Now’s there’s tears on the pillow
Darlin’ where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost, my friend
Tell me how do I begin again?
My city’s in ruins
My city’s in ruins

Now with these hands,
With these hands,
With these hands,
I pray Lord
With these hands,
With these hands,
I pray for the strength, Lord
With these hands,
With these hands,
I pray for the faith, Lord
We pray for your love, Lord
We pray for the lost, Lord
We pray for this world, Lord
We pray for the strength, Lord
We pray for the strength, Lord

Come on
Come on
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up
Come on, rise up

In a column likely to make me a pariah on Facebook, I ask what the big deal is anyway:

I look at most of my “friends,” and I suspect they are like me: workplace shut-ins trying desperately to connect via a technology about which they are basically clueless. We’re like the first high school teacher who showed up in class wearing “dungarees.” We’re the White House Deputy Chief of Staff who tried to win over the Correspondents Dinner by rapping.

Ynet reports from Israel that parents in famously “Anglo,” famously diverse Ra’anana are upset about a new dress code at the Roee Klein Religious High School. “What is this? Are we in Iran?” one parent is quoted as saying at an “emergency meeting” on the matter. Ynet illustrated the article with a picture of burka-clad Muslim women.

So what are the strict new standards that have parents up in (presumably bared) arms?

For boys:

“long, respectable trousers to school. Track suits, pajama-like pants, torn pants or any kind of loud pattern is forbidden.” All trousers, added the letter, must be fitted and belted.

All students:

are required to wear their school shirts at all times, with the exception of the girls, who would be allowed to wear them only in gym class. The boys are also required to wear their fringed garment at all times, “for it is God’s mark on man’s clothes.”

The students were also instructed to appear wearing “a real kippa, preferably one that at least looks homemade, not one that looks like it was given to them by the kosher inspector at some wedding.”

As for haircuts:

Boys “are required to wear their hair in a Jewish manner – cut short and above the ears. Ponytails for boys, spikes, stripes, hair gel or any other style which resembles those customary in foreign schools will be unacceptable.”

And shoes:

while sneakers are acceptable, flip-flops or Crocs were strictly forbidden.

This is Iran? It sounds like any Solomon Schechter Day School in the United States, and that’s the Conservative movement.

Gutsy op-ed in the Times today by Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld about the Agriprocessors scandal. He faults the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, both groups of which he is a member, for falling “far short of what is needed to be done” and having “done little to diminish the extent of the desecration of God’s name.” He calls on the OU to

appoint an independent commission whose members have not in the past been paid by either the Orthodox Union or Agriprocessors.

Shmuel was mentored in “Open Orthodoxy” by Rabbi Avi Weiss, and revitalized a struggling Ohev Sholom congregation in Washington (which he modestly renamed The National Synagogue) by dint of his personality, vision, and knack for publicity (the good kind). 

Rabbi Weiss has been highly critical of the Times in the past for perceived anti-Israel bias, and was among the rabbis who joined a boycott of the paper in 2002. It’s worth noting that one of his proteges would use its pages as a platform to pressure Orthodox authorities.

And good for him. The kashrut authorities should have been way ahead of the grassroots in demanding accountability by Agriprocessors.   

Newsweek spins an odd report about a Catskills DUI into a thin and dated story about drinking in the Orthodox community, and among Jews in general. Its only other hook is a 2005 statement by the Orthodox Union warning about kiddush clubs.

Of course faithful readers will remember my seminal work on this topic.