Undead Preemie: didn't surviveIn a story that will likely be featured in pro-life literature for years to come, a baby that had been pronounced dead began breathing and showing vital signs hours later in Nahariya, Israel. A baby breathing hours after being pronounced dead—it’s a pro-life activist’s wet dream.

The baby’s mother was five months pregnant when tests showed that there was intrauterine bleeding, and that her fetus had no pulse. Doctors then initiated what’s being called a “second trimester termination procedure” the baby was delivered and pronounced dead. The baby was then sent to a cryogenics lab where she was put in a refrigerator, and five hours later, when the baby’s father asked to see it, doctors found that the baby showed signs of spontaneously breathing. She was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to survive for even 24 hours. Presumably this time, when doctors pronounced the baby dead they checked a little more thoroughly.

Here in America, pro-lifers are being forced to make a tough decision in the upcoming Presidential election, and pparently neither candidate has convinced hardliners that he’s the best choice.

Rubashkins: not winning any prizes anytime soonSince the raid on the Agriprocessors plant on May 12th, bashing the kosher meat giant has become something of a sport. Everyone from the New York Times to failed messiah to yours truly has taken a few shots (some cheap, some well-deserved) at the Rubashkin family and the business they run out of Postville, Iowa.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Rubashkin family. In fact, I called for a boycott of their meat in January, months before Uri L’Tzedek was on the case. But I’m getting a little frustrated with the way the scandal is being dealt with by liberal-minded people like me.

First of all, the boycott was a joke. It was called off too early, but even if it was still going on it wouldn’t be having any effect on the company itself. Many, if not most, of the people involved in the boycott are not regular purchasers of kosher meat to begin with. Either they’re vegetarians, or they buy non-kosher meat. So while it’s admirable that they want to be on the record against the practices at the AgriProcessors plant, they’re not creating much of a business loss for the company. Case in point: A good friend of mine manages a kosher restaurant in Chicago, and said he received an irate phone call from a Reform rabbi who demanded that the restaurant stop buying Rubashkin meat. But the rabbi in question had never eaten at the restaurant before. My friend just hung up on him. AgriProcessors is having business trouble these days, but it has to do with a lack of workers, not a lack of demand. If their workers weren’t mostly incarcerated, they would likely be producing as much as ever.

Like many lefty issues, the decision to buy other brands of kosher meat, if they’re even available, and especially to push kosher organic meat, is only viable for the people who can afford the significant price tag that comes with most AgriProcessors alternatives. An ultra-Orthodox mother of 10 in Borough Park might care deeply about labor practices and animal treatment, but if she can’t afford organic kosher meat, she’ll end up with Rubashkins.

I’d love to say that vegetarianism is the answer to this crisis. As a milchigatarian I’ve observed the Rubashkin uproar with an admittedly smug smile. But while I think vegetarianism would be great for the Jewish community, I think the sell would be about as effective as the abstinence pitch for teenagers. It might work on a select few, but for most, the allure of a hamburger is just too great.

If we want to change the way AgriProcessors does business we have to recognize how important their product is to our community and be respectful and cognizant of what they need to stay a profitable business. We should also not forget ways in which the Rubashkins have been generous in the past. This includes donating kosher meat to various Jewish institutions, and exporting members of their small community to even smaller communities that otherwise wouldn’t have had a minyan for the High Holidays.

As far as I can tell, the most effective way of dealing with the Rubashkin family would be within a halachic framework. It is clear that they don’t feel any obligation to the American legal system, but they have to pay at least lip service to halacha, so an appropriate conversation with them would focus on the halachic violations in their plant (of which there were many) and how they could change their behavior to be compliant with halacha and maintain whatever profit margin they require. Obviously this conversation needs to be initiated by someone within the frum community, preferably someone within Chabad. A liberal activist, even one with smicha, is unlikely to be taken seriously by Rubashkin.

I have some pretty serious doubts as to whether AgriProcessors is likely to ever change its ways significantly enough that it would pass inspection by the liberal Jews I identify with. But if there’s any chance it will ever happen I think we need to be realistic about what would be the most effective way of negotiating with a company that doesn’t take us seriously.

(Cross-posted on The Jew and the Carrot)

Affirmative Action: or reverse discrimination?Home Center, an Israeli home wares chain, has been offering  a secret discount to Arabs. When customer Eli Chai discovered and reported this last week, a Home Center spokesperson explained, “Home Center offers a wide range of attractive discounts throughout the year. As part of a plan to target specific communities, the chain offers different discounts for different sectors from time to time.”

The situation does seem pretty odd, but not altogether uncalled for. I wouldn’t be surprised if Arabs do more than 70% of the construction in Israel, and thus end up spending the most money at those sorts of stores. Why wouldn’t Home Center capitalize on that customer base by offering a good deal?

Of course, that’s not how it’s being framed in Israel. Chai is quoted as saying, “I didn't expect to get a discount, but I was appalled when I realized that had I been Arab I would have received one. I tried to think what would happen if it was a discount only for Jews, or Sephardim, or Ashkenazim.”

There's plenty of discrimination against Arabs in Israel, and Chai isn’t bothered by that. But when Arabs are favored, it’s a grave in justice!  It may feel inappropriate to offer a discount based on ethnicity, but it’s hardly shocking in a society that’s so clearly divided along those lines.

Home Alone: but less funnyLately there have been a number of high profile neglect cases in Israel. We’ve learned that many Holocaust survivors live in abject poverty. A woman revered as a spiritual authority was found to have abused and neglected many of her children. And in just the past few weeks, there have been three cases of children neglected in airports: A four-year-old girl was accidentally left in Ben Gurion Airport when her parents failed to keep track of all six of their children en route to Paris. An 8-year-old boy was accidentally flown to Brussels instead of Munich (this appears to be the fault of his El Al escort), and a 12-year-old was sent to the UK by her mother, with no one scheduled to meet her at the airport, and only the address—which turned out to be incorrect—of a family friend. When her mother was found and arrested, she explained that she couldn’t care for her kids and wanted them to find political asylum in the UK. Turns out she’d already sent her 9-year-old to Leeds.

There are plenty of cases of severe neglect reported in America every year (this story comes to mind), but in Israel it seems to be a symptom of the political situation. Israelis walk around all day trying to distract themselves from their own suffering and trauma. It seems to me that as a result of having to push their own personal grief below the surface, they also end up ignoring all kinds of suffering that they see around them, be it the suffering of Palestinians, Holocaust survivors, or even their own children. To a certain degree, we all push those thoughts aside in order to get through the day, but we try to maintain a sense of compassion. In Israel, because it’s nearly impossible to really ignore the suffering, society has developed a sort of flat affect. Neglect happens and everyone acts shocked but quickly moves on, not wanting to dwell on any more pain.

There’s something about the Israeli machismo that appealing, and that makes me proud to be Jewish. But there’s something ugly under that machismo -- a gaping hole where I’d expect to see compassion, and it’s horrifying.

Tisha B’Av begins tomorrow night, and Jews all over the world will be fasting, reading the book of Lamentations, and thinking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem that took place almost two thousand years ago.First be nice: then kill me

But Tisha B’Av shouldn’t just be a commemoration of events that happened hundreds of years ago. Contemporary Jews have experienced plenty of major traumas, events that rocked the Jewish community, and changed the way we practice Judaism. Most recently, the raid on the AgriProcessors plant in Iowa, though certainly not as spiritually damaging as the destructions of the Temple, has had serious reverberations around the Jewish world. It has affected what we buy and serve and eat, and how we think about our treatment of our colleagues and those who work around us. It has changed our relationships with the world, both humiliating us -- as the poor behavior of our brethren is exposed to the world -- and forcing us to shape up and raise the standards we have for ourselves and those we support.

Ancient Jews brought sacrifices to the Temple: animals killed in the name of God. But the sacrifices were not enough. Prophets warned us that our behavior was as important as the sacrifices, and when we didn’t learn, the opportunity to bring sacrifices was taken away. Here we are, more than a thousand years on, and somehow we’ve fixated on kosher meat, and not on our own behavior. Maybe this experience, as difficult and upsetting as it is, will serve to remind us about what’s really important, and will reconfigure our priorities.