Four Years After Its Founding, Magen Tzedek Ethical Supervision Still Has No Active Certifications

The Conservative Movement's ethical kosher supervision has yet to sign up a company, and its seal of ethical compliance is nowhere to be found.

Magen Tzedek is supposed to supervise the ethical aspects of doing business, similar to how kosher supervision companies, hechshers, supervise compliance with kosher food halakhot (Jewish laws).

But four years after its founding, Magan Tzedek still has no customers.

Why?

The Forward has an article that attempts to explain this.

But that Forward article doesn't mention many of the actual reasons Magen Tzedek has floundered.

Here's what the Jewish 'paper of record' missed:

1. The infighting in the Conservative Movement that slowed down Magen Tzedek's launch.

2. The extremely slow progress of the committee tasked with writing Magen Tzedek's guidelines. The ponderous process itself (rather than the difficulty of the actual task) is probably responsible for half of the delay.

3. The resistance of some Conservative rabbis and synagogues to Magen Tzedek's proposed standards prompted by many of those synagogues' own failure to meet those standards.

4. The economic crash which caused many companies to stop doing new untested things.

5. In retaliation for the the immigration raid on Agriprocessors and the government's successful prosecution of its VP, Sholom Rubashkin, on 86 bank fraud related charges, threats by haredi and Centrist Orthodox kosher supervisions to remove their supervision from the products of any company that adds a Magen Tzedek seal to its products. (Haredim view Magen Tzedek's founder, Rabbi Morris Allen, as a key player who supposedly convinced the government to 'persecute' Rubashkin and Agriprocessors – even though all the evidence shows that Allen was not in favor of the immigration raid and had nothing to do with Rubashkin's prosecution.)

6. A slew of news reports on the weakness of and the coming collapse of the Conservative Movement, which certainly did not inspire confidence in companies considering the Magen Tzedek seal.

What the Forward does get right is that it is difficult for companies to qualify for the Magen Tzedek seal. But that is true because Magen Tzedek requires not only complying with government laws governing workers rights but it also requires paying a living wage which is more money per hour than minimum wage, providing workers with certain benefits in excess of government minimums, and third party audits to confirm compliance. The Forward only lightly touches on this.

When Magen Tzedek was primarily Rabbi Morris Allen's project, relatively rapid progress was made. As soon as the Conservative Movement in effect took it over, that progress ground to a near standstill – just like much of the rest of the Conservative Movement is, essentially, in a standstill.

What has really stymied Magen Tzedek is the Conservative Movement itself.

Comments

[Rebitzman]

Following the sterling example of my haredi brethren, I suppose as a semi-proffesional Conservative Jew, my response to this story ought to be "Baaaabahooy" (or words to that effect), but the fact is much of it is correct.

However, one factor deserves mentioning - from a business standpoint - from a revenue standpoint - from a cashflow standpoint, the idea of Magen Tzedek is and has been a bit of a dog, and it would be more than a bit expensive to administer - and the decision to let this die had as much to do with money as it did anything else.

[I can't think of a name yet]

Without a doubt, the Conservative movement is a "has been"

[Blima]

Four Years After Its Founding, Magen Tzedek Ethical Supervision Still Has No Active Certifications

No surprise here. I saw that on day one. The only people who care about hashgacha are the orthodox and the only criteria is one relating to kashrut. On top of all this is the fact that this is a Conservative one.

[Korbendallas72]

Magen Tzedek was an attempt by the left to insinuate their green energy / new age claptrap into mainstream Judaism. Read their standards, it's like a UN stooge wrote the whole thing.

Conservative Judaism may be in a standstill, but Haredi Judaism is in a freefall. The Masorti are not degenerates.

[Garnel Ironheart]

Liberals talk a big game but never delver.

[Gevezener Chusid]

It's a tough call. On one hand we would like to see "liberty and justice for all"; however, how much more are we willing to pay at the proverbial pump? How much more COULD some people pay?

Well meaning upper middle class conservative Jewish types nearly always fail to understand that their bourgeois "ethical values" would cause prices to skyrocket, making products and services unavailable to the poor and lower middle-class people they are trying to "protect". Imagine the cost of having a sandwich at your local diner if all of the staff received a living wage, health insurance, paid sick leave, etc etc etc. And if the diner's owner were to swallow part of the cost he would be disinclined to stay in business or to offer the same quality of goods.

[Garnel Ironheart]

> Well meaning upper middle class conservative Jewish types nearly always fail to understand that their bourgeois "ethical values" would cause prices to skyrocket,

No, they do understand. Look, a few years ago a national survey in Canada asked people about global warming. 95% of people said it's a big problem that has to be address and 95% of people said they wouldn't not support any measure that would negatively impact their current lifestyle.
They want to live in a 5 star society but pay 2 star prices.
It's the same thing here - they want an ethical sandwich but don't want to pay double the regular price for it.

[state of the Jews]

Per usual, the orthodox see MT through the prism of their own lives and as a threat to their views. In truth, MT is an attempt to make Jewish values relevant to the lives of Conservative Jews and in particular their own children.

The split in the leadership of the Conservative Movement is really between those who want a movment that is self-defined and those who want a movement that is defined as "not-orthodox" or, "orthodox lite" and thus continue to compare themselves to orthodox.

[Jake24]

@Icantthinkofaname The conservative movement is not a "has been" There are more youth involved in USY then ever before and the Ramah camps are bursting at the seams with kids.

[simple jew]

B"H
Shmarya is it true more chabad institutions ins USA than reform and conservative combined?