Postville or Rubashkins... The NafNaf take

I confess I’d never heard the story sited in a recent NYTimes article about Rabbi Yisroel Salanter not giving a hechsher to a factory that mistreated its workers, but after some determined sleuthing I found what I think is the complete text of the story and have reprinted it for reference.

Rabbi Salanter was asked to give a Kosher certification to a matzah factory. After touring the facility he informed the factory owner that he could not give him the kosher certification.
“Why not?” demanded the owner.
“Because there is blood in your matzos,” responded the Rabbi.
“What! How could you say such a thing? How could you repeat the Christian blood libel, which you above all people know is completely false!”
“You don’t understand me… Look at the way you treat your workers. You don’t compensate them adequately! You abuse them and mistreat them... you don’t properly maintain safety in the factory... you force your employees to work overtime for no pay...
“It is their blood,” continued Rabbi Salanter, “that is in the matzos, which makes it just as impermissible as if you had put real non-Kosher ingredients in the matzos.”

As the father of the mussar movement (a movement that stressed moral development), it makes sense that Rabbi Salanter would be careful to factor in the treatment of workers in a matzoh factories into giving kashrus certifications. His objections weren’t based upon his own list of moral statues, rather they were drawn from existing halacha: it is assur to delay payment of a hired man's wages (Lev. 19:13) and it is assur to strike a fellow Jew, and creating conditions that might cause injury (Deut. 22:8) is also prohibited by halacha. But the elephant in the room regarding this scenario and its comparability to the recent events, is that the oppressed workers in the 1800s Lithuania were most definitely Jews and the oppressed workers of the Agriprocessor slaughterhouse are most definitely not. This is not to say that there are no protections for non-Jews under Jewish law, but in our time secular law protects workers to a degree that chazzal never legislated and under dina d’malchusa dina we are obligated to follow these laws because they are the “the law of the land”. As an aside: I’m not entirely sure that our obligation to follow the laws of the USA is actually derived from dina d’malchusa dina. From what Rav Shechter writes here it appears that our obligation to follow secular law might stem from the fact that we honor communal agreements that benefit everyone, not from the absolute divine right of kings. In any case, Agriprocessors Inc. was clearly obligated by secular law (and the Jewish obligation to follow secular law) to follow OSHA guidelines, hire workers that were of age and to not abuse them.

Whether we are speaking from a Jewish perspective or not, if the allegations against Agriprocessors are true, the company engaged in practices that should horrify us all. The types of abuses alleged are all too common when there is a large population of rights-less people hired by a large corporation. Similar allegations have surfaced about many of the largest corporations in the United States (Walmart, The Gap, Apple to name a few) and the issue of economic immigrant rights is one of the largest questions facing the nation today. Where my opinion differs from Rabbi Harzfeld is in determining the correct Jewish response to this issue.

We are taught that whenever one takes enjoyment from the world we must first thank Hashem. In the situation that the particular type of enjoyment is culinary delight we are called to make one of six brachot, either she-hakol, ha-adama, ha-eitz, mezonos, ha-gafen or ha-motzi. A general rule is that if one is unsure of the correct bracha for a certain food, one should say the bracha she-hakol; but the l’chatchila or a priori impulse, one should try to be as specific as possible. The same logic of specificity carries over in all parts of the religion and is reflected in Talmudic writing. An example of this is a tosephos on the first daf of maseches Succah; Tosephos asks to question of why the language of “pasul” or unfit is used when a more specific language is more desirable (it is only the fear that laymen may misinterpret the seriousness of building a incorrectly made succah that forces the mishna to use a more “crude” language). So when Rabbi Harzfeld so eloquently put out the call for kashrus organizations to factor workers rights into the rubric of kashrus certification I asked myself one question, “Is kashrus a blanket under which we can stuff any ‘moral’ issue that we wish, or is it a specific concept?” Do we risk making the word kosher into a fuzzy concept that has less to do with food and more to do with the social concerns of a generation?

Kashrus organizations are firstly Jewish religious organizations, they derive their mission, bylaws, and structure from generations of halachic decisions; so if one were to add a labor/immigrant protection role to kashrus organizations the rulings would not necessarily be based on the laws of the United States, but rather a world of the past where a 13 year old could be expected to gain employment, anticipate marriage, and begin fending for himself. While this may seem backward and alien to most Americans, it is still the prevailing situation in most of the world; children regularly choose or are put to work by situations that are considered normal in the societies in which they live. The only worry in having young children working is whether they are treated humanely and given tasks that they can perform safely; it is alleged that this was not the case in Postville and I imagine a kashrus organization’s labor division would be similarly concerned about safety based upon biblical passages that prohibit the abuse of non-Jewish workers. But what would halacha have to say about ingress and egress routes, sprinkler coverage, providing belts for lifting heavy objects, keyboard trays for RSI or illegal immigration? These questions are mostly left for secular courts to negotiate, and for good reason, the United States is not Jewish state and is definitely not a religious Jewish state and Jews are bound to follow the laws of the country in which they live unless they are specifically discriminatory. When/if a religious Jewish state is founded these as well as other issues that the generations spread throughout the Diaspora never had the freedom to legislate will have to be decided.

So unless we find a hidden mesechta that gives guidelines for all of the issues that concern the workers’ rights community in our time, a labor rights enforcement unit would essentially be an enforcement arm for existing secular law. And there lies the rub, why is an organization whose primary responsibility is food preparation branching out into an area duplicated by arms of the government and watchdog groups on either side of the political spectrum? Do we ask animal control to do drug interdiction? INS to do ISO certification? PETA to help out the DEA? The examples I use are extreme, but not dissimilar to the proposal to add non-Jewish labor law into considerations of kashrus. PETA would laugh if told to idle their volunteers, teach them labor law until there are well versed, and then ask them to enforce it while commandeering Japanese whaling boats in the Pacific; but we Jews, so scared of disapproval from our gentile neighbors, are suggesting just that. In what world are OSHA regulations and immigration within the purview of kashrus? Only in a world where ones’ zealousness to not break gentile law deludes one into thinking that it is Jewish law. The moral statues of the world we live in are subject to change and obfuscation, the same groups that decry illegality of the violence that is alleged to have been unleashed against Postville’s undocumented workers openly flout and protest laws regarding these same immigrants’ undocumented status. Which side would those calling for a “Jewish” moral response have the rabbis take in the struggle for the rights of some of the hardest workers in America? The left’s stance that they should be afforded the same or similar rights as those who are citizens, or the right’s approach that calls for deportation procedures against people for breaking the law by entering our country illegally? I don’t want the rabbis who should be out checking that Chinese factories aren’t spiking my processed food with treif bogged down in meetings deciding which stance to take on issues that are not, and have never been their purview. It is my view that most of the calls to do such a thing come from an inferiority complex borne of years feeling like “the other” and a communal worry about what “they’ll” make of our shaggy bearded relatives who sharpen their knives to carry out ancient ritual. But I want to whisper a suggestion to those who are scared of this possibility, “they’ll do that anyway.”

Kashrus organizations are there for one purpose, to check on food; they are not there to evangelize, to make friends, or to act as ambassadors for the Jewish people; but I am sensitive to the outrage over the hillul Hashem that seems to have occurred at the Postville plant, so here’s my solution: Give clear guidelines for what rabbis are to do when they see deplorable behavior. Rather than add to the canon of kashrus law we must work alongside agencies and groups who already fulfill the watchdog and enforcement duties over the food industry. A cow schlepped by a 14 year-old undocumented worker is and always should be perfectly kosher, no issur of the Torah has occurred; but if a rabbi sees said child being abused the violence should be reported to the police and dealt with by the proper authorities. It is inappropriate for additional structures to be created to carry out missions that have nothing to do with kashrus, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t use existing institutions to achieve the same goals. The orthodox community (the most faithful consumers of kosher food) is by in large not involved with community and social rights organizations; and for good reason, the tides of moral thought can easily result in what’s “right” according the changing standards of society being on “wrong” in the following generation (the Nazis were big boosters of animal rights). But those who choose to get involved can and should do so on their own; and just as they shouldn’t be denigrated for their approach to life, they mustn’t denigrate those who do not tie their Judaism to whatever moral stance they chose on their own to support; there is enough mudslinging in this world without adding the slingshot of religious coercion into the argument.

During the Nine Days Rabbi Herzfeld asked us to “…think about the current state of our kosher meat industry. We should think about what it means to literally keep Kosher and what the word Kosher has come to mean in American society…” I have thought about it; kashrus is adherence to Jewish law regarding the slaughtering of meat, the preparation of food and the supervision that assures of that the law has been followed. What kashrus is not is a catch-all term that means that we will decide the halachic fitness of food preparation based upon secular law or philosophy. It is incumbent on every human being to help his fellow when he’s in danger as the Torah says “thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor” (Lev. 19:16) so I neither condone nor see as responsible the rabbis who are accused of either watching as workers were physically abused or took part in the alleged abuse; but we must not conflate the mission of Kashrus with social justice. The abuses that occurred MUST be vigorously prosecuted and the law of the land upheld. If the various allegations are true the Rubashkin family should be ashamed for their behavior.

Labels: kashrus, Postville, Rubashkin