Agriprocessors
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Agriprocessors, Ethics and Kashrut: 10 Years Later Delivered by Rabbi Ari Hart Shabbat Vayechi, 12th of Tevet, 5778, December 30, 2017 Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Congregation, Skokie, IL It’s spring of 2008. I’m sitting at a table on the second floor of what I am slowly realizing is a completely empty diner in Lower Manhattan when the man across the table lowers his voice, points his finger at me and says: “You don’t want to know what happened to the last person who went up against my father in law.” The man is Rabbi Milton Balkany, a convicted felon known as the “Brooklyn Bundler” who served time for trying to blackmail and extort four million dollars from a hedge fund, among other encounters with the law. The father-in-law he referenced is Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of Agriprocessors. Balkany and two representatives from Agriprocessors sat on one side of the table and rabbinical student Shmuly Yanklowitz, Rabbi Jason Herman, and I sat on the other. “Was that a threat?” I asked. He replied that, of course, he would never threaten anyone, but he just didn’t think it was good for “you boys” to be involved in this. The “this” he was referring to was a letter that Uri L’Tzedek had sent to the Rubashkin family following the 2008 federal raid on its Agriprocessors plant. By the time of the meeting, thousands of other kosher consumers had signed on. In our letter and again in this meeting, we shared our deep concerns about Agriprocessors; how they had long exhibited a pattern of unethical business practices that had hurt many and created a massive chillul Hashem. Among them was paying what had been found to be the lowest slaughterhouse wages in the nation, rampant health and safety violations that put workers at risk, the presence of children working in the slaughterhouse, documented cruelty to animals, and more. Our ask was simple: convince Agriprocessors to create a compliance department within the company that would ensure it would uphold the law. Just the law. Until that was done, we could not, as kosher consumers, consume their products. Of course, the meat business is not a pretty business, and Agriprocessors was not the only slaughterhouse operator to act unethically. But, we argued, running a kosher business, a business that is supported by and serves the Jewish community and is visibly, proudly, Jewish is supposed to mean something more! We shared the thought of the great Rabbi Yosef Breuer, who wrote a powerful essay in 1949 titled “Glatt Kosher - Glatt Yosher” where he writes: “God’s Torah not only demands the observance of kashrut and the sanctification of our physical enjoyment; it also insists on the sanctification of our social relationships.” We shared the language of their own website: “as a producer of kosher meat products, we approach our business in the context of a deep religious tradition.” We asked: “does this deep religious tradition not include the mitzvah of veahavtem et hager, loving the stranger, the mitzvah of bal talin, proper payment of workers, the mitzvah of dina demalchuta dina, respecting the law of the land, the mitzvah of kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God’s name?” The meeting did not end so well. The threats and intimidation for speaking out about Agriprocessors continued. But, in a surprise, a few weeks later, the company announced that they were creating a legal compliance department and granted us access to the former federal prosecutor who was running it. Within a few months, however, the company was sold. Within another year, Sholom Rubashkin was sentenced to jail for 27 years in jail for bank fraud and money laundering. Within the next two years, hundreds of Agriprocessors former workers were jailed and deported. The town of Postville lay in economic ruin. While the government had acted strongly, I argue they did not act responsibly, and the consequences of the action led to great suffering of many, many people. We, the activists, reflected on our own role. Yes, we had raised a voice of moral consciousness when it had been needed, and yes, we helped make some changes in the company while it still existed, but we didn’t have much to show for our efforts on behalf of exploited workers now that Agriprocessors was gone. We began thinking to ourselves, what could be done proactively to encourage more ethical business practices in the Jewish community, and to support and protect vulnerable workers who make our Jewish lives possible? This began a ten-year journey that took me from the slaughterhouse in Iowa to basement restaurant kitchens in the Bronx, to meetings in Washington with the US Department of Agriculture to high stakes negotiating with Satmar herring makers. There were some successes: Inspired by an Orthodox group in Israel, Bemaaglei Tzedek, and their ethical seal for food establishments in Israel, we launched the Tav HaYosher, a seal certifying that, in addition to being kosher, businesses under its supervision were yosher, ethical. We ended up certifying over 150 food establishments, including many where we successfully convinced owners to change practices to get or keep our seal. We joined two dozen immigrant workers who had been making Flaums pickles and had been cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages. These workers won their court case in front of the NLRB, but the Orthodox owner of the plant would not pay what he owed. Through raising awareness and pressuring the company, we brought the owners to the table and helped the workers secure half a million dollars in stolen wages. We gave shiurim and wrote articles across the country about our Torah responsibility to treat those who work within our communal gates with dignity, respect, and fairness. And we had some failures: We were not able to act in other kosher institutions where people were and still are exploited. The Tav proved to be a difficult to sustain financially. Eight years later, its power and effectiveness are greatly diminished. The overarching goal, getting the whole of the kosher community to demand the clear, high standards of ethics just as it demanded clear, high standards of ritual, has not happened. Yet. The commuting of Rubashkin’s sentence and his release from jail has stirred up many of these memories for me. My own feelings are mixed: His 27-year sentence, though completely legal, was certainly harsh. He has children, including one with special needs, who were separated from their father. For financial fraud, he received a sentence much longer than Enron executives, those who were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, more than many rapists and murderers. I wonder what exactly would be accomplished by him, or for that matter any other criminal who is not a violent threat to society, languishing in jail for 27 years? And at the same time, he never said he was sorry. He never apologized to the court, to the workers in Postville, to the Jewish community for the tremendous harm, the tremendous chillul Hashem, that he caused. Further, I am deeply troubled that for many in our community, the commuting of his sentence has served as sense of triumph, rather than an opportunity to reflect and recommit to ethics in business, has served as a sense of vindication and a cause for rallies and jubilant celebration. As Rabbi Matanky of KINS said in his drasha about Rubashkin last Shabbat: “How do we teach [our children] what is wrong and what is right when we celebrate, defend and downplay those who committed crimes?” Amidst all the debate in the Jewish community about Sholom Rubashkin and the commutation, and how this topic has become something of a Rosharch test that tells us more about the people arguing than the real issues at hand, I kept thinking about someone else from Postville, Iowa. Her name was Inez. Shmuly and I met her on the back porch of her house a few weeks after the raid. She was unable to work at the plant because it had been closed, but she was also unable to leave because she was wearing an ankle tracker, awaiting immigration proceedings. She was stuck. An ad in her Guatemalan newspaper had promised great jobs and a great future with a great company called Agriprocessors in Iowa. She told us that her dream in moving to this country was to buy a house and raise goats. Inez came and worked in the chicken department at the plant for 3 years, making $6.25 when she started and ended at $6.75 when she finished. Her supervisors didn’t allow her to go home until all the orders were complete, meaning she would begin her day at 9:30 a.m. and often stay at the plant until 10:00 or 10:30 p.m., against her will. Never paid for overtime. She told us she had been forced to purchase a car she could not afford from her supervisor to keep her job, and about her three 16-year old cousins who had been working there. In a quiet, flat voice with her eyes downcast, she told us about the injuries she and her family and friends had endured there, deep cuts, lost fingers, a lost hand, injuries received while producing the meat that would sit on our communal Shabbat tables. And then she started to cry. She knew she was facing deportation and did not have the money to bring her 14-year old daughter back with her. She never imagined this would happen to her, to be treated this way, by the company, by the government, when all she had wanted to do was come to this country and work hard, and raise kids, and a few animals.