New York, NY – Rabbis from major Orthodox organizations will address the role that ethics plays in Jewish dietary laws at “The Kosher Quandary: Ethics and Kashrut” at Yeshiva University tonight Tuesday Dec. 9. The discussion is a timely response to the controversy surrounding Agriprocessors, one of the largest kosher meatpacking companies in the U.S., which recently filed for bankruptcy after facing criminal charges and fines for labor violations.
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The Orthodox community was beset with questions about the relationship of kashrut and ethics after news reports that the Jewish-owned Agriprocessors was raided for employing illegal immigrants, many of whom claimed to be under-age and working in abusive conditions.
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Panelists at the student-sponsored event include Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs at Agudath Israel of America; Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator and CEO of the Orthox Union’s Kashrut Division and a rosh yeshiva [professor of Talmud] at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary; Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America; and Shmuly Yanklowitz, co-founder and director of Uri L’Tzedek, an Orthodox social justice organization.
The program serves as the launch event for TEIQU, which stands for A Torah Exploration of Ideas, Questions and Understanding, a student-run organization devoted to nurturing intellectual dialogue on campus surrounding Jewish matters of import. The event is sponsored by the student-run Torah Activities Council, Stern College for Women Student Council, Student Organization of Yeshiva and the Yeshiva College Student Council.
“We want to frame a frank conversation about the relationship between ethics and kashrut to provide the students of Yeshiva University and the broader community with the opportunity to confront these complexities head on,” said Stern College for Women senior Gilah Kletenik, who will moderate the discussion with TEIQU co-founder and director Simcha Gross, a sophomore at Yeshiva College.
“The Kosher Quandary: Ethics and Kashrut” will take place tonight Tuesday, Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. in Weissberg Commons on the Wilf Campus.
Can someone tell me when Uri L’tzedek was established and if it was formed in response to the Agri crisis. Is it a modern orthodox organization? Just curious.
Ethics shmethics, the bottom line is, is it kosher? Who are they the Rebbono shel Olam??
is this in response to hechsher tzedek?
Let kashrus organization be what they were made for to to supervise kashrus that’s all, we still need siyata dishmaya they should do the job they were made for why do we want them to take on more responsibilitys, we will just lose out on everything
I think the important think to addres is price fixing, why would a 1 lbs bread cost 50 percenr more in will then bp ????
There is no idea of “ethics” in Judaism. There is idea of uniting this world to Hashem through a set of channels (Torah mitzvos) that define our behavior. Everything else is liberal b.s.
To # 5. 100 percent on the nail, this is against the halcha and us law as well . Their is 3 or 4 dist and the contol the food market , its time to talk about it
How can we have kashrus without yashrus? Not only will that encourage producers to behave improperly, but will lead to the kind of chillul Hashem we have already suffered with the Rubashkin debacle.
With all due respect to the integrity behind this endeavor, I don’t think the Chassidim and chareidim are going to “buy” any of the findings of this conference. The spirit of the YU intellectual inquiry, i.e, “Torah u’maadah,” is a universe apart from their co-religionists on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course this is a generality…But for the most part, even having a panel with “a boy” and “a girl” together as moderators will not be kosher!!
I don’t know about that. I have a feeling that even if the food is technically kosher in the view of the laws of Kashrus, it may be just as ossur to eat if it is produced through violation of other haluchois.
Just like the most kosher food becomes 100% ossur if you still it on Shabbos (while it is on the blech). The food is still “Kosher” but ossur. In fact blias are also considered ossur!
Why? Because the food preparation was assisted by chillul Shabbos. But, all the ingredients are 100% kosher..
The same may apply here.
I remember my father telling me mother to stop buying meat at a certain butcher in Boro Park. He said he did not like the mean way he did business, and thought he was masig g’vul. He felt that eating this meat was wrong, and forbid my mother from shopping there. He asked my mother to go out of her way and go to a butcher on New Utrecht Ave, which was not on her way at all, and also had slightly higher prices. But he said they were ethical, and that was important.
I was just a kid at the time, and did not ask him for a halachic explanation.
But, I now can see that there truly may be an issue that can’t be overlooked.
Just because a food is “Kosher” does not mean it is “Mutar”
#9 , do you have any idea what your talking about? Your general ignorance of Torah and Judaism in general is truly deplorable. We hold our selves to a higher standard in what we eat, how we dress, and how we act. The higher standard dose not end with wearing a black hat or a long coat, but in how we as Jews act toward the world, if you believe that how we come by what we eat is not relevant, other than that it is kosher, you are a sad person indeed. Just as we are forbidden to gain from a stolen object, so to we are stealing from those oppressed by organizations guilty of such gross violations of the law. If you have no care as to where your food comes from even if it has the bold of the innocent upon it I am most gratified that I have never eaten food from your table.
If food has to be produced under the ethics certification of these guys in order to be kosher why doesn’t everything else we buy need to be produced the same way?
Whay are they only going after food companies? Is it any better if my shirt is made by underpaid workers? Or if my furniture is bought from a store that doesn’t comply with overtime laws?
Just because they let in rabbonim to certify kashrus doesn’t mean the rabbonim are now in charge of the accounting department.
This polyana attitude towards ethics and to the world that the aymishta created is why I left the “derech.”
Now that I have freaked you out – I dropped the garb and the labels and remain a torah (not toirah) obervant Jew living in a gentile country.
it is unethical to base this discussion on ‘worker abuse’ at agri – when there is no evidence of such abuse.
With the exception of Shmuly Yanklowitz of Uri L’Tzedek, the panalists presented a thoughtfull discussion. I assume that there was some degree of worker abuse as there probably is in all similiar plants. It has to be a miserable job spending 8+ hours a day cutting meat, but they workers could have simply quit. No one can deny that Rubashkin made reliable kosher meat available in many distant communities where the nearest kosher butcher is hours away.
Now it is important to open a watchdog group to monitor those kashrus organizations if they do their supervision properly, and find all flaws and gaps in their systems.