NYT: Label Says Kosher; Ethics Suggest Otherwise (16-year-old girls forced to work 20-hour days)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/nyregion/11kosher.html?_r=2


David Goldman for The New York Times

Aviva Miller, left, and Francie Elkins were among those who attended a discussion on Tuesday on the role of ethics in kosher law.

By PAUL VITELLO
Published: December 10, 2008

What it means to be kosher — the nub of a debate sparked in May by sweeping labor abuse charges against the Orthodox Jewish owners of the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the nation — was pondered Tuesday night in a panel discussion at Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan, the academic nexus of Orthodox Judaism.

It was, for the most part, a subdued and scholarly discussion about ritual law, Jewish ethics and what to do if you suspect that the kosher meat on your table has been butchered and packed by 16-year-old Guatemalan girls forced to work 20-hour days under threat of deportation, as alleged in a recent case.

“Is it still possible to consider something ‘kosher certified’ if it is produced under unethical conditions?” asked Gilah Kletenik, one of the organizers of the student group that arranged the session, which drew an overflow crowd of 500, most of them students.

In keeping with the Talmudic tradition embodied by the rabbis on the panel, the answer seemed to be yes and no.

“The basic underpinning of Jewish tradition is ethics,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, a Yeshiva dean and the chief executive of kosher certification for the Orthodox Union, the group that oversees kosher standards in 8,000 food manufacturing plants around the world, including about 25 meatpacking facilities in the United States.

But he said the process of producing food that is certifiably kosher according to Jewish law is one thing; the conditions in which that process is undertaken are another. “The issues are not obvious sometimes,” he said.

FULL story at link.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. I am Jewish and although attended a Reformed Synagogue as a child, knew/know very

little about Orthodox Judaism. I did though at one point worked and became friends with a woman whose family was ultra Orthodox, and in fact her husband and son were both Rabbis. We had some interesting conversations and one that struck me as particulary upsetting was about Orthodox Jews believing that non-Jews were less of a people than Jews are. The discussion was about unfaithfulness in marriage. She told me that if an Orthodox Jew cheated on their spouse with a non-Jew, it wouldn't be considered cheating. (She was very open minded and didn't feel that way at all. She was a really neat person.)

If I take what she said and extrapolated it to the inhumane practices that the owners of the meat packing plant, it doesn't surprise me at all, no matter how abhorrent it is to me.

I just thought I'd mention this because it gives a "rationalization" as to why this went on.