Gam Zu L'Tova - 3

Agriprocessors. The largest kosher beef slaughterhouse and processing plant in the country. Revitalized the economy of moribund Postville, Iowa and became its largest employer. Featured in Jewish Action and other publications. Then suddenly the whole house of cards crumbled. Federal immigration agents raided the place and arrested hundreds of illegal immigrant workers. Allegations of child labor and unsafe working conditions resulting in loss of fingers in some cases. Production crippled due to a shortage of workers. Finally the operation filed for bankruptcy. Retail butchers around the country face severe shortages of meat. Other kosher plants try to take up the slack but lack the production capacity.

Eventually the situation will get back to normal. Either Agriprocessors will successfully reorganize, another kosher producer will buy and operate the plant, or existing kosher suppliers will expand their operations and entrepreneurs will enter the field figuring to make a buck. But until then we will be thinking about where our meat comes from, whether we need to eat so much of it, or any at all, and whether the kosher meat industry as presently constituted is consistent with Jewish ethics.

Agriprocessors, like most American meat processing plants, was based on "factory farming." A factory farm has little to do with the family farms that used to be the backbone of American agriculture or the farming practices described in Tanakh. On a factory farm an animal is a production unit first, and a living, sentient organism a distant second. Male animals are castrated and shot full of female hormones so they could grow faster, but the growth is mostly fat. Cattle, which naturally eat grass, are fed grain instead, again for accelerated growth, but this unnatural diet makes them sick. They are packed into feedlots, wallowing in their own filth, which also makes them sick. The animals are then fed antibiotics to which the infecting pathogens develop resistance, which is transfered to human pathogens. Any number of gastrointestinal outbreaks have been traced to factory farms. It is an understatemet to say that factory farming practices raise issues of tza'ar ba'alei hayyim, unnecessary suffering of sentient animals. It also raises more mundane issues of kashrut. A modern slaughterhouse is an assembly line, where profit is maximized by processing the largest number of animals in the shortest amount of time. Can a shohet pay as much attention to the condition of the knife and the exacting technique of shehita as he could on a family farm where he could take as much time as he needed for each individual shehita? Clandestine video taken at Agriprocessors shows ghastly suffering from what looks to the layperson's eye like massively botched shehita. Granted, the video was taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a group hostile to shehita in general and not especially concerned with ethical treatment of humans if they happen to be Jewish. But pictures don't lie, and living cows writhing in pain with their trachea and esophogi hanging out is inconsistent with Jewish values, if not with halakha.

Now, for the time being, factory-farmed kosher beef will be in short supply. What there is of it will be much more expensive, due both to supply and demand and to the rising cost of animal feed and transportation. Cash-strapped Jewish families will be eating less beef, and that will be to their benefit. Factory-farmed beef is much fatter than what our stone-age ancestors hunted down on foot with primitive weapons, and fatter than livestock raised before the advent of farm machinery. All that fat is unhealthy and a major contributing factor to obesity and its sequelae. In my family we eat beef very rarely; we eat chicken (much leaner than factory-farmed beef) on Shabbat and holidays, and vegetarian fare during the week. Thank God I am a healthy and vigorous 56, at an age when my father's health began to fail, as is that of many of my carnivorous contemporaries.

We are now in a position to insist that our beef be raised sustainably, in a manner consistent with the animals' well-being and our own, fed mostly on grass, with a minimum of fertilizers and pesticides. The operation will be less profitable, and less beef will be produced. What used to be on the menu every day if not twice a day will become a treat for Shabbat and Yom Tov. And we will all be better off for it.

Shafran in Jewish Action

Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudat Yisrael in America, published an article in the most recent issue of Jewish Action, a publication of the Orthodox Union. In it, he lauds the essential unity between his camp and that of the Orthodox Union, despite differences over issues like Zionism and, to his way of thinking, tensions between comtemporary science and Torah. The following is a letter I sent to the editor of Jewish Action in response:


To the Editor:

I was surprised to see an article by Avi Shafran of Agudat Yisrael in Jewish Action, with its emphasis on commonality of interest between Centrists as represented by the Orthodox Union and haredim of the Agudat Yisrael stripe. However, I must take issue with some points raised by Shafran and by Berel Wein in his companion piece.

Rabbi Wein tells us that the term haredi was coined in the 1980s by Religious Zionists to disparage those on their right. The scenario I remember was quite different. I grew up in a modern, religious Zionist home and was a member of Bnei Akiva in the late 1960s. When we wanted to disparage Jews on our right we called them "khnyocks." A neighborhood that they took over (e.g. Boro Park, which once had a branch of Bnei Akiva that hosted spirited hakafot on Simhat Torah!) was said to be "ferkhnyocked." As far as I know, the first use of the term haredi was by the prophet Isaiah (66:5), referring to Jews who feared God. Why would any Orthodox Jew disparage another as "one who fears God?" I also remember Israeli products bearing the hekhsher of the Beit Din Tzedek of the Eida Ha-haredit, touted by those on the right as more trustworthy than that of the "Zionist Rabbanut." So, at least as early as the 1960s, the term haredi was being used by haredim, in keeping with the holier-than-thou attitude that they cultivate.

Rabbi Shafran, in his laudatory remarks about the state of Orthodox Jewry today, makes no mention of a matter in which he and his organization are nog'im badavar (interested parties), namely a festering sex abuse scandal in a yeshiva a stone's throw from my home and in a summer camp run by Agudat Yisrael. He can be forgiven for his silence because the matter is the subject of pending litigation, but we will not remain silent. Several years ago a similar scandal involving Baruch Lanner rocked the Orthodox Union and its youth group NCSY. Victims were encouraged to complain to the police, investigations were carried out and, needless to say, Baruch Lanner does not work for NCSY any more. In contrast, Yehuda Kolko was protected by his principal, Lipa Margulies, and given access to children for 40 years. Victims and their families were intimidated into not contacting the police, "gedolim" (Rabbi Shafran's outfit calls them gedolim; I call them resha'im) were recruited into the cover-up and, but for exposure by the blogosphere, Kolko would still be molesting children in Torah Temima. This occurs because the haredi camp maintains an attitude to secular authority carried over from the benighted tyrannies of Eastern Europe where Jews were singled out for persecution, and that is a touchstone of the debate between our two camps: do we consider ourselves full-blooded Americans?

Rabbi Shafran also cites the importance of kiruv rehokim, outreach to the unaffiliated and disaffected, but makes no mention of the fact that his camp is actively engaged in rihuk kerovim, alienating people born into observant homes. I refer to the scandal known as Slifkingate. Several years ago a Who's Who of haredi rabbinic authority banned several books by Rabbi Natan Slifkin that show with unimpeachable Torah sources that there is no conflict between modern biology and Torah. In the process these members of Aguda's Moetzet Gedolei Torah placed Orthodoxy, or rather their travesty of it, firmly in league with the Flat Earth Society. As a long-time biology teacher with a doctorate in the subject, I must say to Rabbi Shafran that if there is no place at the table for Rabbi Slifkin, and by extension for the Rambam, the Tiferet Yisrael, Rav Kook and numerous other distinguished Rishonim and Aharonim that Rabbi Slifkin cites (by his own admission, his works contain few if any hiddushim), then I must politely but firmly excuse myself from the table.

Sincerely yours,


Zev Stern, Ph.D.