Devastating Effects Of Rubashkin Immigration Raid

Even though Agriprocessors, the Rubashkin family's Postville slaughterhouse, was open for business yesterday, one day after the largest immigration raid in the modern history of the United States, the effects of the raid…

…appear devastating. According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

…[Postville schools Superintendent Dave Strudthoff] said 90 percent of the Latinos at Postville High School were not in class Tuesday. He did not have the number of students that represented.

Interestingly, the number of Latino students not in school dropped dramatically as their ages dropped:

One-third of the Latino children in kindergarten through eighth grade were not in class, approximately 150 students.…

Meanwhile, KTTC reports on the economic impact for Postville itself:

… Agriprocessors, Postville may not survive.

Robert Penrod, Postville Mayor, says, "It leaves basically 2/3 of the housing empty. It will leave basically 95-percent of the downtown empty."…

The Cedar Rapids Gazette also reports on the impact on the Orthodox and kosher-keeping Jewish community:

Kosher consumers are bracing for shortages after Monday's immigration raid at the Postville plant of Agriprocessors Inc.

"When I saw that, I went, 'Oh my goodness,'" said Arlene Mathes-Scharf, a Sharon, Mass., food scientist whose Web site (www.kashrut.com) tracks recalls and follows trends in the kosher market. "They're the largest supplier of kosher beef in the country. If their production is down, it will definitely have an effect on prices and supply. Around here, the meat I can get in my supermarket is from them."

Officials said the plant was operating on Tuesday, though on a limited schedule.

The Agriprocessors market "is roughly 60 percent of all (kosher) meat, 40 percent of all poultry," added Menachem Lubinsky, editor of the trade journal Kosher Today. "Obviously, any disruption would be very damaging."

Meat that doesn't meet kosher standards is sold under Agriprocessors' Iowa Best Beef Brand. In 2003, company officials said non-kosher meat made up 70 percent of Agriprocessors' sales.…

"It has to have an effect because I just don't think there's a lot of excess capacity in the kosher meat market," said Mathes-Scharf. "When I get to my local supermarket, I'll see if I can get any meat."…

BTW, Mathes-Scharf's website has steadfastly refused to print bad news about Agriprocessors, in effect covering for Rubashkin during various scandals.

I searched he site tonight for any mention of Agriprocessors. This is what I found:

The following revised kashrus notice is from Agriprocessors and the OU and posted on April 17, 2008.

Products with the Rubashkin’s, Aaron’s, and Supreme Kosher are produced under the joint supervision of Rabbi M. M. Weissmandl and the OU. Products with Supreme Kosher label follow both Rabbi Weissmandl and OU standards. Products bearing only the OU follow all OU standards, and Rabbi Weissmandl ensures that those standards are followed.

The following  Kashrus Notice is from KAJ  on January 1, 2008.

The Rabbinate of K'hal Adath Jeshurun ("KAJ") has decided to remove its supervision of all Agriprocessors, Inc. (Rubashkin, Aaron's Best) facilities and stores, effective as of April 16, 2008. This decision was made in October and company was notified. The decision was confirmed by a letter, which was sent to the company on Friday. Letter linked to here.
Ed. note: Agriprocessors continues to be certified by the Orthodox Union and Rabbi Menachem Meir Weissmandl shlit"a, the Rav of Nitra of Monsey.

I got the same results for "Rubashkin" and for "Aaron's Best."

You'd never know Rubashkin had been (and still may be for all we really know) ripping the throats out of live animals with a meat hook.

And clearly, whatever pain and suffering Rubashkin's workers suffer is not her concern.

I think this is a good example of what I see as the theological bankruptcy of today's Judaism. Keep the letter of the law but ignore its actual intent and purpose.

Nothing explains Rubashkin's supporters better than that.

Comments

[Are You Sure?]

Do you have a link to the KAJ letter dated Oct. 2007 when KAJ first served notice?

[uncle joe mccarthy]

oh boohoo...the illegal kids aint in school anymore...no more free education for those who shouldnt be here in the first place...and agriprocessors doesnt have to shut down...let them go out and find americans to do the work at real wages..the way the economy is, i am sure that people will come from all over the country to work there...then the schools and downtown will be filled again

as for meat and chicken...no biggie, its veggie burgers for me

[Michael]

I hope this means that this means that Empire and other competitors' products will become more available, though over the last couple of months, I have already been seeing a switch in many stores in the DC area. Many stores have switched from Agri to a combination of Empire, Alle and Vineland. There is something very wrong when a company which seems to be following most of the rules (Empire) loses business, because an illegal operation like Agriprocessor has been dumping product onto the market.

I am no liberal, and am not overly sympathetic to unions. However, it does stand to reason that those companies which pay their employee a decent (relatively speaking) wage, provide health care, pay their fair share of taxes and adhere to the majority of federal and state regulations regarding animal slaughter are less likely to cause undue burden for taxpayers in the long run.

Oh yeah, if Agri is willing to compromise on safety, workers, shechita etc. do you really think the Rubashkins realy care whether or not we kosher consumers eat meat and poultry akin to what Upton Sinclair wrote about in "The Jungle?"

[Yochanan Lavie]

As a teacher I don't ask about a kid's immigration status. I'd rather not know. I feel ambivalent. I have sympathy for a kid who is dragged here illegally by his family, but is virtually an American and speaks English as his/her best language. As an American and a taxpayer, I don't want people breaking the law and getting benefits they're not entitled to. Because of dina de malchuta dina, Rubashkin should have obeyed the law, anyhow. "Everyone does it" was an excuse for avodah zarah back in the day.

[John K. Diamond]

Let us all pray that this is the initial round of the complete destruction of the Rubashkin animal "Horror House" empire.

May this be HaShem's Will.

[steve]

THESE GUYS FED YESHIVA CHILDREN DONATED LEFTOVERS WHILE THEY SOLD THE GOVT. FOOD-ALSO INFLATED THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS-

Rabbis admit to cooked books in lunch case
BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, May 14th 2008, 4:00 AM

There will be no free lunch for a couple of crooked rabbis who pleaded guilty Tuesday to ripping off a government program to feed needy students at Brooklyn yeshivas.

Mordecai Sorcher, 51, and his brother, Sroya, 47, face up to a year in prison for inflating the number of students eligible for free breakfast and lunch. The rabbis allegedly fed some students warmed-up leftovers donated from a local deli while pocketing government funds that were supposed to be used to buy nutritious food.

"Claims were submitted for breakfasts and lunches which we didn't take care of properly," Sroya Sorcher admitted in Brooklyn Federal Court.

A witness also saw boxes of government-issued food being loaded into an auto by a relative of the Sorchers.

The rabbis agreed to pay the government $75,000 in restitution under the plea deal. Mordecai Sorcher's lawyer had argued that his client was selectively prosecuted because he ran a parochial school.

[Shmarya]

Do you have a link to the KAJ letter dated Oct. 2007 when KAJ first served notice?

Both Letters:

October.

December.

[Are You Sure?]

Thanks.

[R' Levi B.]

Thanks, Steve.

I was looking for proof that this blog and it's regualrs have only one agenda.

The only obvious common theme between these two case is that the admitted criminals and the alleged criminals are Orthodox Jews. On the other hand, the fahrbissiners on this blog never seem to notice that for every frum person who fails to live up to the standards of the Torah there are countless other frum people who live up to those same standards lifnim mishuras hadin.

Yes, these two gave in to temptation and stole food intended for school students and will be punished. A reader knowing nothing about frum communities would think that this is all there is to the picture.

You are so fixated on the few thieves amongst us that you can't see the malochim living amongst us who do without so that others might eat.

You (and certain other unorthodox bloggers) are so filled with anger about Kolko that you don't see the thousands of people who have chosen to live almost pas b'melach in order to teach our children. You are so angry at Margo (SR"Y) that you cannot see the hundreds of menahalim of yeshivos and day schools who are so iber g'gevin to their schools that years later former students will schedule their own weddings around what dates the menahalim are able to share in their simcha.

growing up on the inside of the yeshiva world I can tell you all the shmutz just like you can tell me about all the shmutz in crown heights. Where willl it get me? To the point that I can no long appreciate that my daughter's high school menaheles calls every student who is out for a day to make sure they are OK? That i can no longer remember the rebbe I had who took money out of his own pocket to buy treats and prizes for us, to encourage us to try harder, who always figured out why we deserved the prize even if we were not yet able to accomplish the targeted goal, as long as he saw we were trying? That I lose the memory of the abused teenager who's only safe haven from his father's mid-night rages was our menahel's home? That I forget the Menahel's wife caring for the 'lost' kids, cooking, cleaning, washing their laundry, and crying for and with them at their worst hour as if they were her own?

No, there are not enough of those people out there and not everyone is blessed to find them. Why? I do not know. However, I will never let my anger at the Kolko's and Margo's of the world control my life or distort reality.

The reality is that we have problems in our communities just as there are in all communities. We need to do more and need to demand more of oourselves and we must stay as far away as possible from the false sense that we are OK and everything is fine so lets not discuss it any more.

The fact that the rest of us don't walk around with chips on our shoulders and yelling about corrupt rabbonim and mosdos does not mean we don't know or don't want to know. It often means we know about all the problems but coose to concentrate on what we can accomplish and not on what others fail to accomplish. We choose to concentrate on the good we can do and not on the bad others have done.

It is a plan I encourage you to try for a while. If I had never made the change myself I would tell you that it is easy. It isn't anything but easy.

I don't know you so I don't know who did what to get you to this point just as you don't know me and have no idea of what I went thru to get to my low point in life and and what it took to get out of it. I'll assume that as bad as I was victimized worse happened to you or a loved one. What I do know is that you sound like me twenty years ago and I hope you too can find a way to put it behind you. You'll never be able to forget and maybe not even forgive. I've done neither. I just decided not to let them ruin any more of my life than they already had. Constant anger just means you have let an enemy occupy your heart and mind rent-free.

Wishing you Shalom U'Vrachah and much success evicting your free-loading tenants.

[Charles B. Hall, PhD]

Yochanan,

Remember that some of those kids may not have been "dragged here"; if they were born in the United States they have every right to be here even if their parents do not.

Please, this is the Failed Messiah blog. We don't let facts, logic or careful consideration of complex situations get in the way of our opinions.

So if we hate the Rubashkins and we hate Rabbis then the Rabbis at the OU are guilty of child-abuse as soon as someone accuse a Rubashkin-owned company of hiring children.

I wonder if we can find some Chinese rabbis to blame for the real abused children who work in the Chinese plants that produce kosher certified canned foods.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Dr. Hall: I don't believe in birthright citizenship, because that produces the phenomenon of anchor babies. Canada, I believe, has ended the practice. However, in my classroom, I treat all my students equally.

(BTW, I too have a PhD, in English Literature, from NYU).

[Aryeh G]

Cut Arlene some slack. Her site is basically a clearinghouse of official information received from the various kashrut agencies, and as such it's useful. When the hachsher tzedek gets their act together, I'm sure Arlene will include their information too. (I'm not holding my breath for the established agencies to change their policies.)

Disclaimer: I knew Arlene in college.

Dr. Hall: I don't believe in birthright citizenship, because that produces the phenomenon of anchor babies. Canada, I believe, has ended the practice. However, in my classroom, I treat all my students equally.

(BTW, I too have a PhD, in English Literature, from NYU).

Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | May 14, 2008 at 10:45 AM

So maybe Rubashkin doesn't believe in Employee Rights. You two could have much more in common than you'd like to admit.

[Yochanan Lavie]

I believe in employee rights (within reason, of course), which is one reason I'm against illegal immigration. It's a race to the bottom that is turning this country into a Third World Nation.

I do have a lot in common with Sholem Rubashkin. We are both male caucasian homo-sapiens of Jewish descent.

[Chaim]

We met a shokhet 3 yrs ago during Pesach that was one of the originals brought over by Rubishin from Russia. For 2 hours I heard the whole story! Since then I changed my buying habits and prayed that one day justice would come to them. I personally know a family that I grew up with that married into their clan. Down here in Florida a virtual monopoly has been established as almost all the Kosher retailers only carry their products as it was established with strong arm tactics to keep others out. The vast majority of Frumkheit and kosher keeping conservatives here are completely uniformed about the history and problems that the average observant up north is well aware of.

Now...As I see it and experienced the experience my thing is regarding the OU and the Rabbis that went all along with this busha for all these years. I remember a letter posted on the OU site regarding there position on the Gush Katif affair. It read as if written by 13 lawyers. The same can be said about Oslo and now this. As a son of a holocaust survivor who went through 7 death camps my mind and ears are always alert to the waves that reach my shore. All the g.d fearing families that followed and listened to their "local rabbi" regarding the Russian Mafia are now going to pay the price. They will also have some moral decisions to make. I felt different today scanning labels looking for OU marks at my local super, a liitle like a moron! How can the OU be the purveyor and judge of Kashrut and at the same time make a huge business from it. If we have no leadership regarding something like this then what will happen when the new Haman really knocks on our doors? We will all have to reach locally to survive.

[yidandahalf]

R'Levi B, I am in agreement with much of your post and I found it refreshing. But you left out one thing and that happens to be the crux of the entire matter. You and yours are leaving the great burden to us 'farbissiners' to clean up. Pick up your share of the load.

[Isa]

Birthright Citizenship came about after the Civil War to grant American Blacks the right to vote as a Constitutional amendment. The South tried to keep the American Black from voting by saying they were not citizens.
Now you know the rest of the story.

By the way, when Pres. Bush was governor of Texas. He forced through a law granting education rights to children of illegals.

[Haforsko]

The 14th Amendment which established birthright citizenship was to reverse the Supreme Court ruling in Scott v. Sandford (1857). The ruling held that persons of African descent were not United States citizens even though nearly all were US born.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks Isa and Haforsko for the history. I din't know it. I am eager to learn, I just get annoyed when people assume I don't know commonly known facts (such as, that birthright citizenship exists at all). Of course, African Americans and Native American Indians are and should be citizens. They have been here longer than my family has, so they are more American than me (2nd generation). I just want to end the practise of people jumping the queue by having their pregnant wives sneak in here to drop their babies, and voila! (nice Ameercian word, LOL) instant citizenship. It is particularly unfair to poor whites, poor Blacks, legal Hispanics, and Native Americans- or other economically depressed groups, by driving down wages and driving up taxes to pay for social costs.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

ba-aod reshoeem rinah.
time for hallel (beli brokho).
ze hayom asoh hashem nogilo venismecho boy

[haforsko]

FYI, Native Americans did not receive US citizenship until 1924

[one of many]

what about these poor children?
who cares about them?
I hope they are in good hands and safe

WWhat about Native Chickens? Can they vote to?

[Frimke]

Well that explains the empty section...