DAMAGE CONTROL FOR AGRI

The above words were the headline in an article in the NY Jewish Week, dated 6/25/08. In the article we read:

““A lot of Hillels and restaurants around the country are changing their meat,” said Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder and co-director of Uri L’Tzedek: Awaken to Justice, which, he says, has collected more than 1,500 signatures of people and groups which are now boycotting Agriprocessors products.

Rabbi Lerner of the National Council of Young Israel dismissed the number of petition-signers. “Fifteen hundred signers doesn’t impress me a bit,” he said. “Give me an hour and I’ll get a petition for anything on the Web and get you 5,000 signatures.”

He described Uri L’Tzedek’s organizers as being “young kids who need something to put them on the map” who are taking advantage of Agriprocessor’s current problems.

He said that “we’re a bunch of idiots” to be Jews boycotting other Jews. “We’re going crazy, and I don’t think they [Agriprocessors] deserve it,” he said. “I’ve been eating their meat in places where no other company gets to, and for that the Jewish community owes them a debt of gratitude and at least the benefit of the doubt.”
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Rabbi Lerner- go learn derech eretz. Go learn the way a rav is supposed to speak. Go learn to live in the real world.

Rabbi Lerner’s put-down of Uri L’Tzedek is nothing more than the desperate croak of a man who has no constructive thing to say, who sees his own star slowly sinking below the horizon and who therefore strikes out at others in a desperate attempt to keep himself in the limelight.

When Jews act in a way that is a shondeh fur der goyim, when Jews act in a way that is a chillul hashem, the rest of us have a Torah ordained command to act and to act decisively. Did Rabbi Lerner miss that day in class?

Is the local Postville priest a liar out to “get” Agri? Is the priest an anti-Semite? Some of the characters involved would have us believe that nonsense.

We are tired of the spokesmen for our Orthodox establishment hiding behind a misuse of Torah concepts. Was prosecuting Baruch Lanner a chillul hashem, or was what he did a huge chillul hashem? Is prosecuting Agri a chillul hashem or is their behavior a huge disgrace?

You all know which way we are voting on that one.