Nation File :: Feds Conduct Largest Raid Of Illegal Workers In US History At Kosher Plant, Also Cite Possible Drug Activity

Harry Baumert/Des Moines Register
Students from the Yeshiva of Northeast Iowa in Postville gather across the street from Agriprocessors Inc. to ask questions of U.S. Immigration and Customs officials regarding the raid on May 12, 2008.

By Ben Harris

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In laying the legal groundwork for a massive raid of the country's largest kosher slaughterhouse, federal authorities cited claims that illegal narcotics production took place at the factory and hundreds of illegal immigrants were employed there, including several of the rabbis responsible for kosher supervision.

The charges were among the most explosive details to emerge following the raid Monday at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa.

Agents arrested 390 workers in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the largest raid of its kind in U.S. history.

The raid, which required federal authorities to rent an expansive fairground in nearby Waterloo to house detainees, prompted the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa to temporarily relocate judges and court personnel to the site because the facilities in Cedar Rapids and Sioux City were inadequate.

"There have been other operations where more people have been arrested," Tim Counts, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, told JTA. "But as far as we can determine, this is the largest single-site operation as far as number of arrests go."

The raid follows a six-month investigation involving more than a dozen federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the departments of labor and agriculture.

Three Israelis and four Ukrainians were among the detainees held on charges of being in the country illegally, Counts said. Officials are expected to bring criminal charges against some of the detainees as well, most of whom are from Guatemala and Mexico.

Agriprocessors said in a statement Tuesday that it "takes the immigration laws seriously" and intended to "continue to cooperate with the government in its investigation."

"Agriprocessors will also inquire further into the circumstances that led to these events," the company said. "We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the families whose lives were disrupted and wish them the best. We are deeply committed to meeting the needs of all of our customers and are operating again today."

In the affidavit filed as part of the 60-page application for a search warrant, additional details were revealed of the government's investigation of Agriprocessors, a company that has been beset by numerous allegations of health and safety violations, mistreating workers and using controversial slaughter practices.

According to the document, a former supervisor at the plant -- identified only as Source #1 -- told investigators that some 80 percent of the workforce was illegal.

The source also said he believed rabbis responsible for kosher supervision entered the United States from Canada without proper immigration documents. According to the affidavit, the source did not provide evidence for his suspicions about the rabbis.

Source #1 also claimed to have discovered active production of the drug methamphetamine at the plant and reported incidents of weapons being carried there.

Methamphetamine, more commonly known as crystal meth, is Illegal in the United States. The popular nightclub drug gives users a sense of energy and euphoria that can last for hours.

Agriprocessors employees told investigators that sometimes they were required to work nighttime shifts of 12 hours or more.

The affidavit says that 697 plant employees are believed to have violated federal laws.

With Agriprocessors producing more than half of the nation's kosher meat, the raid has prompted fears of a disruption in supply. Though the plant was back in operation Tuesday, it was unclear if Agriprocessors could meet its normal production capacity with hundreds of its workers in federal custody.

Founded by Brooklyn butcher Aaron Rubashkin, Agriprocessors produces kosher meat and poultry marketed under the labels Aaron's Best and Rubashkin's.

The firm gained national attention in 2000 with the publication of the book "Postville," which described the tensions between the company and the local community. The company has attracted a significant population of Orthodox Jews to a rural pocket of northeast Iowa.

Agriprocessors did not respond to requests for comment from JTA. Asked if there was slaughter taking place Tuesday, a woman who answered the phone at the plant said, "We're trying."

The Des Moines Register reported that more than 100 cars were in the company lot Tuesday morning, but quoted a nearby business owner who said that foot and vehicular traffic to the plant was much lower than usual.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher supervision department -- the largest outfit certifying the kosher status of Agriprocessors' meat -- told JTA that other companies had assured him that they could make up for any shortfall from the Postville plant.

Genack reiterated the O.U.'s policy of leaving matters of immigration and labor standards to the government.

"No one else has the resources to do what the federal government can do," he said.

If the company turns out to be criminally liable, Genack said, that could be grounds for losing its kosher certification.

Genack said he was told by the plant's supervising rabbi that two foreign rabbis working at the plant had failed to renew their work permits when they expired a few weeks ago. He described the issue as a "technical" violation and insisted the two rabbis had not been detained.

Much of the information the government collected appears to have come from former employees of Agriprocessors who were detained by police on unrelated charges. Sources related similar stories of presenting fraudulent documents and Social Security numbers when seeking employment with the company.

Several said they were aware of undocumented workers employed at the plant that were paid by supervisors in cash.

The affidavit says the government has probable cause to believe that an Agriprocessors supervisor assisted workers in acquiring fake documents in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.

Federal investigators provided documentation for a former Agriprocessors employee, identified in the affidavit as Source #7, for the purpose of gaining employment at the plant. Once hired, the source reported on rabbis who insulted the workers and threw meat at them.

In one alleged instance, a "Hasidic Jew" duct-taped a worker's eyes and then hit him with a meat hook, "apparently not causing serious injuries."

Agriprocessors has come under fire before for its labor practices, as well as health and safety violations. In March, authorities fined the company $182,000 for violations at the plant.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has clandestinely videotaped a controversial slaughter practice used at the plant.

In addition, an investigation by the Forward weekly newspaper revealed allegations that employees were underpaid and exploited. Agriprocessors officials denied the allegations.

On Tuesday, members of the Conservative movement's Hekhsher Tzedek Commission condemned the company, saying that keeping kosher requires more than just adherence to ritual matters, but also sensitivity to the environment and respect for workers and animals. The Hekhsher Tzedek initiative is in part a response to past allegations of misconduct at Agriprocessors.

"The actions of this company have brought shame upon the entire Jewish community," the commission said. "Yesterday’s discovery, along with the other violations of the ethical standards set forth by our Torah and our tradition underscore the need for Hekhsher Tzedek. To be sure, halacha has never limited its concern to the ritual elements of kashrut alone."

World File :: Back to Burma

Courtesy Sammy Samuels
The colorful blue glass window of Yangon's Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue fell to the floor during the cyclone that ravaged Myanmar on May 3, 2008.

By Jacob Berkman

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The Starbucks on 50th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan is a world away from the gruesome mayhem that is the aftermath of the cyclone that hit Myanmar last week.

But as Sammy Samuels sips on a $4 coffee, his thoughts are with his home and family in the ravaged country's capital. His is one of only eight Jewish families in Yangon.

Samuels is heading there this week to deliver suitcases of water purification tablets and medicine.

When he arrives, the fourth-generation Burmese will become one of the few Westerners to bring aid into Myanmar, where an estimated 1.5 million people have been severely affected by the cyclone that ripped through the country May 3.

Cyclone Nargis killed anywhere between 30,000, the number given by the country's military rulers, and 100,000, the estimate provided by human rights groups.

With the Burmese left without homes, food, water and basic medical supplies, the United Nations is warning that the situation could spiral out of control.

Yet even as worldwide pressure is mounting on Yangon to admit aid from Western countries, and even as Thailand is becoming a staging ground for what could be the largest U.S. aid effort since the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the military junta has refused entry to aid workers from the West.

Only Westerners with Burmese citizenship are allowed in. Aid groups, including a number of Jewish groups trying to mobilize, are waiting to help but are handcuffed.

Along with the water purification tablets, Samuels will bring cash to buy a generator for Yangon's only synagogue and hopefully to help repair the 110-year-old temple, whose roof and windows were destroyed during the cyclone.

"I'm just tired of being worried away from home," Samuels, 27, told JTA in an interview Monday at Starbucks. "I just can't stay here while people are having a difficult time, having gone through these difficulties. I just can't stay here."

The Samuels family moved to Burma about 80 years ago from Iraq to pursue business interests in the rice and teakwood trade. At that time, its Jewish community numbered in the thousands. Most fled to Japan during World War II and the rest left when the military seized power in 1962 and nationalized many businesses. (The military changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar and Rangoon to Yangon in 1989.)

The Samuels family stayed and watched as the community dwindled to about 20. Four are his family -- his father, Moses; his mother, Nelly; and his two sisters, Kazna, 29, and Dina, 31.

Along with the Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue, Yangon has a Jewish cemetery. Moses Samuels, who runs a travel agency that arranges Jewish tours of Myanmar, serves as the de facto caretaker for both.

The beautiful brick synagogue features a two-tiered sanctuary -- the men sit downstairs and the women in the balcony -- but few in the community attend services.

Samuels recalls that as children, he and his sisters on sunny days would sit in the sanctuary and watch as a prism of light through the stained-glass windows fell over the area in front of the Torah ark.

Those windows were destroyed last week.

Samuels moved to the United States in 2002 to attend Yeshiva University, from where he graduated in 2006 with a degree in international business. He also came to find a Jewish bride. In Myanmar, with only 15 Jews who are not family, that's a difficult proposition.

He heads the information technology department for the American Jewish Congress but remains close to his native country. Samuels plans to move back one day, hopefully when the economy develops. Perhaps then he could earn more than the $100 to $200 a month he estimates he would earn now.

Samuels sends 10 percent of his salary to Myanmar to help keep up the synagogue and cemetery, which he estimates costs approximately $2,200 per month.

But Samuels says he feels tremendous guilt about being in the United States while his family, friends and fellow Burmese suffer through the cyclone and its aftermath.

The day it hit, he had turned off his cell phone because he was busy at work while the AJCongress held its annual meetings. Samuels turned on his phone to find 40 messages from friends and acquaintances asking about his family and the synagogue.

With no idea what was happening, he checked CNN and saw that several thousand Burmese had been killed. That number grew steadily as Samuels refreshed his browser.

He called home but couldn't get through.

"People died. My family, I tried to call them every 15 minutes -- for three days I had no contact with them," Samuels said. "I was so worried and terrified. I had no idea what was happening."

Samuels finally reached his family via e-mail through the Israeli embassy in Myanmar. The reports from his father were harrowing.

Though his family was unharmed in their big apartment building in Yangon, a city of 5 million, they were shaken.

"My father said in all his life, in 60 years he had never seen anything like that," said Samuels, slight of frame, bespectacled and Asian in appearance. "Both of my sisters, they were shaking and praying. All the winds and rain and sounds were just terrifying."

He recalls his father saying, " 'Even though we are here suffering like this, you cannot imagine how the small villages and the small towns and all of these small houses, what these families went though that night. You cannot imagine.' "

Despite his father's protestations, Samuels decided he would go to Burma.

"Though they wouldn't say so, I know they wanted to see me," he says of his family.

His two-week trip is turning into a relief mission through the help of Scott Klepper, a business consultant in Utah.

Klepper, 47, met Moses Samuels on a trip to Burma in March. Upon hearing about the cyclone Klepper, an avid outdoorsman, remembered the water purification tablets he uses when hiking.

He pulled out one, looked at the packaging and found the manufacturer, Wisconsin Pharmaceutical. Samuels called the company's president, who offered to sell him the pills at cost and make a donation of 20 percent of the total sale to help Myanmar.

Working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and through a self-propelled e-mail blast, Klepper by Tuesday had raised about $1,000 for the pills.

Klepper said he was hoping that by the time he sent the water purification pills by overnight mail to Samuels on Wednesday, he would have been able to buy enough to make up to 2,500 gallons of water usable.

Monday night, the Hillel at New York University and two partners held a fund-raiser at a downtown art gallery to help raise money for the Burmese Jewish community.

Samuels said the water purification tablets will go to help the general community, not just Jews. He also hopes the synagogue can be repaired quickly so it can take in those left homeless -- Jews and non-Jews.

Two Jewish families from villages just outside Yangon are now living in a building behind the synagogue after they were left homeless. A non-Jewish family is living with them.

Samuels' mission is only part of what is a mounting Jewish response to the cyclone.

The JDC has three staff members in some of the hardest hit areas of Myanmar. They entered the country on Israeli passports via Israel and through Thailand.

Myanmar has good diplomatic relations with Israel, unlike its paranoid attitude toward the American government.

The JDC opened an online mailbox to raise money and will allocate whatever it raises to help Burmese citizens of all faiths.

The United Jewish Communities and the North American Jewish federation system, as well as other groups, also will funnel money to the JDC mailbox.

During the Indian Ocean tsunami four years ago, the system raised some $18 million for relief to help build infrastructure, schools, community centers and low-income housing, the JDC's executive director, Steve Schwager, told JTA.

The American Jewish World Service by Tuesday had raised some $60,000 to funnel to the 19 grass-roots organizations it works with on the Thai-Burmese border. And B'nai B'rith International announced last week that it would allocate $10,000 to help the Israeli organization IsraAid send 10 relief workers, including paramedics, doctors, nurses and water specialists, to Myanmar.

A team of Israeli volunteer doctors, nurses and water specialists from two Israeli nongovernmental organizations under the umbrella of The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid also arrived in the area May 8. It is expected to stay three weeks.

But money has been slow to come in from the United States, according to Schwager. When he spoke with JTA on May 8, a day after the JDC opened its mailbox, the organization had received about $50,000. On Tuesday, according to another senior staff member at JDC, the number still had yet to reach $100,000, though it expects the federation system appeal to slowly start funneling more money into the relief effort, Schwager said.

That staff member said JDC purchased a ton of bananas, rice and bottled water to ship into the region, and it was working with the Israeli Red Cross, Magen David Adom, in getting medical workers into the region. It was also searching for Burmese organizations with whom JDC could partner.

The junta is warier of foreign press than of aid workers, and it is hard to appeal for aid when it's so difficult to describe the situation on the ground to donors.

"The issue is that pictures are missing from the press," Schwager said. "It is purely all about the pictures.

"During the tsunami, it was about dead bodies in the streets and corpses not yet picked up. The folks in Myanmar are busy expelling reporters."

Just as it did in the aftermath of the tsunami, JDC is organizing a coalition of Jewish groups to mobilize a collaborative relief response. But while 40 to 70 organizations worked together in the aftermath of the tsunami, Schwager said only 10 participated in a conference call Monday.

U.S. relief organizations are livid but not surprised by the junta's actions.

"The military regime is infamous for being extremely closed to international organizations and having very strict restrictions," said an AJWS spokesperson, who asked not to be identified. "They are one of the most egregious human rights violators in the world. It is a very difficult place to work for international groups.

"The situation now in Yangon illustrates that the military government has no responsibility towards its citizens."

That relief worker is applying for a visa into Myanmar and is afraid of being identified because the government, which scours the Internet for negative news reports, would likely deny the visa for speaking out against it. Similarly, Sammy Samuels won't say much on the record about his mission, about the things he has seen in Myanmar in the past, and about his feelings about the situation there now.

Samuels loves the Burmese people. He says they are peaceful, respectful of other faiths and beautiful. And he is hopeful that one day the country will open up.

"It is not their fault. They should make a positive thing now and join with all the relief workers to let them in," he said of the government. "The natural disaster is not their fault, but their action now, that is their fault."

Is he angry?

"Yeah," he says, but then tempers his response. "Not only me, but all the international people."

But his eyes belie his lips, framed by the sparse beginnings of a Vandyke beard. They grow cold and angry when he says that he understands the government's position on not allowing in aid to help the 1.5 million citizens it claims to protect. He understands that the junta is afraid of Western influence from aid workers inciting a coup.

Those eyes warn that one should not misread his understanding as sympathy. And they grow a little nervous when he is asked to consider if something should go wrong, if authorities grow fickle and arrest him for bringing in aid from a Western country -- albeit just a suitcase or two of tablets and medicine.

"I hope they have sympathy," he said. "It is part of he Burmese culture. But whatever happens, I have to go."

Nation File :: Reform Student On Track To Become First Black Female Rabbi

Janine Spang
Alysa Stanton, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, is preparing to be ordained as the first African-American female rabbi in May, 2009.

By Sue Fishkoff

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Alysa Stanton-Ogulnick isn’t particularly interested in being a standard-bearer.

She’s proud to be black, proud to be a woman and proud to be a 45-year-old single mother who raised her adopted child on her own.

And when she says that next May, following her ordination as a Reform rabbi, she will become the first black female rabbi, the huge grin on her face lets folks know she feels pretty good about that, too.

But Stanton-Ogulnick, who is studying at the Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, didn’t set out to be the first. It just kind of happened, like so much else in her life.

“If I were the 50,000th, I’d still be doing what I do, trying to live my life with kavanah and kedusha,” she says, using the Hebrew words for intentionality and holiness. “Me being first was just the luck of the draw.”

Stanton-Ogulnick -- she’s still getting used to the second part of her hyphenated last name, the product of a recent marriage -- was in this city over the weekend for a conference of ethnically and racially diverse Jews and Jewish communities sponsored by Be’chol Lashon, an organization that supports their efforts to enter the Jewish mainstream.

That’s something the future rabbi knows a great deal about -- as a woman, as a convert and as a Jew of color. She’s had to fight for success and acceptance in a world that wasn't always welcoming.

“At this conference there are people from all over looking for their identity,” Stanton-Ogulnick says. “Maybe I can help them on the path by breaking down barriers.”

That’s among her goals as a rabbi, she says: breaking barriers, building bridges and giving hope.

Like many rabbinic students now, Stanton-Ogulnick is on her second career. She came to the rabbinate as a licensed psychotherapist specializing in grief and loss issues.

Stanton-Ogulnickhas worked with trauma victims in Colorado for the past 16 years, at the same time becoming more active in Denver’s Temple Emanuel. She has served the synagogue as a para-chaplain, religious-school teacher and cantorial soloist.

Raised by Pentacostal parents, Stanton-Ogulnick spent her childhood and young adulthood as a spiritual seeker, making the rounds of various Christian denominations before finding her home in Judaism. She converted more than 20 years ago.

“People look at me and ask if I was born Jewish," she says. "I say yes, but not to a Jewish womb. I believe I was at Sinai. It’s not as if one day I scratched my head and said, hmm, now how can I make my life more difficult? I know -- I’ll become Jewish!”

Stanton-Ogulnick made her choice to join the Jewish community as an adult, well aware of the difficulties that might arise. Her daughter Shana, now 13, didn’t get to choose; she was dipped in the mikveh as an infant.

The year they spent in Jerusalem, Stanton-Ogulnick’s first year as an HUC student, was the most difficult. Shana, then 7, faced daily prejudice at school.

“She was beat up, and once was literally kicked off the bus,” her mother says with quiet anger. “We’d been in Israel three months and her only friend was a cat.”

One day, Shana came home from camp beaming because one of the other children held her hand.

“ 'Nobody ever holds my hand, Mommy,' she said to me,” Stanton-Ogulnick recounts. “I said, why? She said, 'Because I’m shochor,' ” or black.

“Ani lo tov, ani lo yafah,” the little girl told her mother, using the Hebrew for “I’m no good, I’m not pretty.”

Even telling the story now, six years later, Stanton-Ogulnick shakes her head.

“Sometimes I’ve been in tears with what I have put this child through,” she says.

Stanton-Ogulnick relates some of the difficulties of her life’s journey in a monologue she created last fall called “Layers.”

First performed at a conference of Reform religious-school educators in October, the piece opens with her standing on stage with her head in a noose, a shocking evocation of slavery. The monologue deals with her journey to Judaism and other major changes in her life, including a recent weight loss of 122 pounds.

Pulling out an old picture of herself at her former weight, Stanton-Ogulnick shakes her head again. Is she really no longer that person? Is she really about to become a rabbi?

It’s all so remarkable, she muses.

At the end of one performance, she says, a woman came up to her in tears, saying, "You told my story, thank you.”

“It’s those moments," Stanton-Ogulnick says, her voice trailing off as she smiles. “Even though the journey is long and the path difficult, if I can provide someone with a little hope and a sense of purpose, it’s worthwhile.”

It’s experiencing those moments that she is most looking forward to as a rabbi, whether she ends up in a pulpit, working as a chaplain or in some other position.

“That moment, that ‘a-ha, I’m not alone’ that comes when I’m talking with a congregant or an individual struggling with something and I’m helping them find a solution,” she says, “that a-ha moment is what it’s about for me."

Israel File :: Israeli Court Revokes 15-Year-Old Conversion, Sparking Uproar

By Dina Kraft

TEL AVIV (JTA) -- A recent rabbinic court ruling in Israel is prompting thousands of converts in the country to worry if their conversions to Judaism are at risk of being revoked.

The ruling in the city of Ashdod retroactively annulled the conversion of a woman conducted 15 years ago after she acknowledged that she is not religiously observant today.

It also cast doubt on the validity of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other conversions by suggesting the annulment of those converted by Rabbi Haim Druckman, the state-appointed rabbi who has been charged with overseeing a more tolerant, open conversion process in Israel.

"Our phone has been ringing off the hook with people who have gone through conversions who are deeply concerned about their status and potential converts who are trying to figure out if this whole process is worth the effort," said Rabbi Seth Farber, who runs the Jewish Life Information Center, or ITIM, which runs a 24-hour hotline for those seeking assistance on Jewish issues in Israel.

One of the callers was Florence Rouaux, 27, who converted to Judaism two years ago with the assistance of ITIM after moving to Israel from her native Belgium.

"I am angry, sad and disappointed -- all the things you can imagine. It's very hurtful," she said. "It reminds converted people that they are converts when you are trying to build your life as a Jew."

The ruling prompted an emergency Knesset hearing Tuesday, and public outrage and confusion both in Israel and the Diaspora.

It again has laid bare the politically charged ideological struggle between religious Zionist, Modern Orthodox rabbis and fervently Orthodox, or haredi, rabbis.

The more moderate rabbis seek to ease the process of bringing Israelis who are not Jewish according to Jewish law, or halacha, into the Jewish fold --especially immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The haredi rabbis want to block the conversions of anyone who does not comply with strict Jewish religious observance.

"The ultra-Orthodox, who don't see conversion as a possible solution, are willing to sacrifice on the altar of Jewish history not only those non-halachic Jews but even legitimate converts who would be accepted by any standard,” said Farber, a Modern Orthodox rabbi. “They are essentially engaging in an anti-traditional and, in my opinion, an anti-halachic battle.”

In New York, the Rabbinical Council of America, an organization representing moderate Orthodox rabbis in North America, issued a stinging rebuke to the court decision.

A statement from the group said the Israeli rabbinic court ruling, its language and tone, "are entirely beyond the pale of acceptable halachic practice, violate numerous Torah laws regarding converts and their families, create a massive desecration of God's name, insult outstanding rabbinic leaders and halachic scholars in Israel, and are a reprehensible cause of widespread conflict and animosity within the Jewish people in Israel and beyond."

Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the chief Sephardic rabbi who has jurisdiction over Israel's religious courts, reportedly has tried to quell the fears of the decision's opponents. His office issued a statement that the ruling would not signify a new precedent in religious law.

Rabbi Nahum Eisenstein, a fervently Orthodox former rabbinical court judge aligned with those in favor of the stricter interpretation of conversion law, said the matter was not one of invalidating so-called "valid" conversions but of nullifying those that were granted erroneously -- when prospective converts tricked rabbinical court judges into thinking they would live an Orthodox lifestyle.

“If this commitment never took place, the whole process was never valid,” he said.

Eisenstein takes issue with the notion that conversion to Judaism should be a tool for nation building.

"Conversion is a halachic issue," he said. "It cannot be used to solve a demographic problem in the country. That's a big mistake.

Critics said the court ruling was part of a trend at some marriage registry offices -- overseen by the fervently Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate -- to cast doubt on the validity of conversions done under the auspices of the Conversion Authority.

Some marriage registry offices reportedly question one-time converts about their observance levels when dealing with marriage or divorce proceedings.

Although the Conversion Authority has exclusive legal jurisdiction over conversion issues, the Chief Rabbinate oversees marriage and divorce.

"Even years after living as a Jew people are now being told they are not Jewish. It's a terrible thing," said Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, the chairman of Tzohar, a group of religious Zionist rabbis that seeks to present to Israelis a more tolerant face of Orthodox Judaism.

Feuerstein cited a commandment in Leviticus that forbids Jews from harassing a convert: "You shall not oppress the convert in your land."

Tzohar rabbis were among those present Tuesday at a stormy four-hour session of the Knesset's law committee. At the meeting's end, a call was made for legislation that would secure the status of converts.

At the meeting Zevulen Orlev, a member of the National Religious Party, made an unprecedented declaration that he would consider revoking the Chief Rabbinate’s authority on personal-status issues such as marriage and divorce if they proceed to nullify past conversions.

Nation File :: Methodists Reject Divestment

By Ben Harris

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Jewish groups have been worried for months that the United Methodist Church would revive a push for anti-Israel divestment measures at its convention.

Instead the meeting last week drew no fewer than five laudatory news releases from Jewish organizations.

B'nai B'rith International, the Reform Religious Action Center, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League all celebrated the rejection of five separate petitions calling on the church to divest from companies that support or profit from the Israeli occupation.

The groups described the actions, taken at the church's quadrennial convention in Fort Worth, Texas, as contributing to interfaith understanding and the quest for peace in the Middle East.

Some attributed the positive outcome to successful grass-roots lobbying by local Jewish leaders.

Even one Jewish organization that supports divestment was choosing to see the bright side of the convention's proceedings.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a California-based group that considers divestment a legitimate and peaceful tool to end the occupation, focused instead on a separate decision requiring the church to consider the ethical dimension of its investment decisions.

In a news release, the group called the decision a "stunning rebuke to anti-divestment groups."

"This is an important step forward for a major U.S. church that has a longstanding history of opposition to the Israeli occupation, and is now moving towards one of the only nonviolent actions that can lead to real peace in the region," said Sydney Levy, director of campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace. "Each day Israel's occupation and settlement expansion continues unabated, the divestment and sanctions movement will grow."

Concern that the United Methodist Church would adopt a divestment resolution has been building for months, fueled by a study guide the church published last year on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Jewish groups compared to hate literature.

Jewish organizational leaders worried that the church, as the largest mainline Protestant organization in the United States, could reignite a push toward divestment by other Protestant groups.

Last month, the United Methodist Church withdrew from consideration a resolution targeting Caterpillar Inc. after the company agreed to enter a dialogue with the church. Caterpillar produces equipment that Israel uses in the Palestinian territories.

No less than 14 petitions concerning Israel and the Middle East conflict were considered at the Methodist convention among some 1,600 pieces of legislation.

While rejecting divestment petitions that specifically named Israel, the church did adopt two general resolutions on ethical investing. It also moved to create a task force to establish standards for responsible investing consistent with the church's ethical principles.

Jewish groups were hailing as well a resolution urging the observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day and calling the church "to contrition and repentance of its complicity in ‛the long history of persecution of the Jewish people.'" Another resolution that earned plaudits opposed proselytizing to Jews.

David Michaels, B'nai B'rith's director of intercommunal affairs, called the grass-roots lobbying effort a "key part" of the positive outcome.

"Credit really goes to the Jewish representatives at the local level," he said.

The Methodist conference elicited an intense lobbying effort on both sides of the divestment issue.

Several major Jewish organizations had representatives on the ground in Texas to fight the divestment push. Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace also undertook a broad effort, with seven members dispatched to the conference and the launch of a pro-divestment Web site.

"What we came away with is, this isn't going away," said Rachel Pfeffer, Jewish Voice for Peace's interim executive director. "The Methodists are dealing with this in their way. They haven't said no to divestment. It's going to keep going."

But the mainstream organizations countered that Jewish Voice for Peace was trying to save face after coming up empty in its massive pro-divestment effort.

"If it was a stunning rebuke to those who oppose divestment from Israel, then it was also a stunning rebuke to those who oppose divestment from Cleveland or anywhere else," said Ethan Felson, the associate executive director of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs. "It just wasn't situation specific."