Rabbi Morris Allen's testimony on behalf of a state bill, the meatpacking workers' bill of rights

It is truly an honor to present testimony before the committee chaired by my distinguished Senator, Jim Metzen. Sen. Metzen, as you know represents the 39th Senate District. It runs from South St. Paul to Mendota Heights. There is great economic disparity between the communities. That economic disparity should not translate into any disparity in the dignity of the labor that any one performs --whether in Mendota Heights or South St Paul. As a state we cannot tolerate any situation where the dignity of a human being is considered a matter of debate, or an issue worthy of disregard. What this bill represents is the powerful voice of this state weighing in on matter of human dignity with resolve and commitment.

I have spent the better part of 21 years in the pulpit, in the same congregation, promoting the observance of Kashrut, the Jewish Dietary laws. Kosher means fit. The animal which we are permitted to eat must be kosher--must be fit. The slaughter of the animal must be done in a kosher manner- it must be fit. The meat from that animal must be processed in a kosher fashion- it must be fit. I am not sure if anyone of you has seen kosher slaughter. It is truly a moving and beautiful act, carried out by a trained individual who must approach the animal about to be slaughtered with awe and respect. The purpose of their act is to remind us that in the taking of the animal's life, we continue to understand that we must minimize its suffering and understand with gratitude the gift that the meat represents. I have witnessed this act, done by a trained ritual slaughterer--called a shochet. It is moving and meaningful.

But what happens when the person down the line must work on and process that meat. Should we not be as concerned about that worker down the line as we are about the meat coming down the line. Should the meat not be produced in a way that we say the worker is also fit--is also kosher. The ancient Jewish scholar, Maimonides stated that a product which is the result of tainted labor is not to be used. Our workers need to be treated in a way that is just as kosher as the meat which they are producing. They too need to know that their work is kosher, that it is fit.

We should not tolerate a workplace where training takes place in a language other than the language in which one is able to communicate. In a world in which meatpacking workers are often new workers from Guatemala and other Spanish-speaking countries, their ability to be fully trained and able to understand the intensity of the work they are to perform should not be compromised by the language by which they are trained.

Workers in this industry need to know that their bodily needs can be taken care of and are protected by the state of Minnesota. One aspect of the laws of kosher meat involve the lung itself--whether it is smooth or not. That is the difference between glatt and non-glatt meat. Our concern as Jews about the lung of an animal should in no way compromise our concern as citizens of this state about the bladder of the line-worker.

Let me just close with the following. At one plant I visited, I met with a worker from another plant that happens to be a union plant. As the chair of the commission I chair for the USCJ and the RA(the congregational and rabbinic arms of the Conservative Jewish movement), I opened our meeting with the following:

"I am a Conservative Rabbi and serve as the chair of our joint commission on worker dignity and kashrut. We are interested in knowing what it is like for you to work in a plant that processes the meat that we are obligated to eat."

He turned to me and said:

"I have worked in X plant for 10 years. In that time I have on a daily basis worked next to rabbis and ritual slaughterers who were slaughtering and supervising the meat. In that entire time, no rabbi has ever has me what it is like FOR ME to work in such a plant."

At that point, I realized that all faith communities sometimes focus exclusively on the rituals that we are to perform, and forget the ethics by which we are to live. This Bill, coming from the state itself, secular in nature, reminds us all that the purpose of our lives is to celebrate the dignity of labor and the dignity of the individual performing that labor.

--Rabbi Morris J. Allen

I, Too, Am An Immigrant (by Steven S. Foldes)

Why do you people care about this, about us?” asked a man in Spanish, as I stood in front of a crowd of Latinos at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on the West Side of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was not a hostile question, but one of curiosity. Most of this crowd of recent immigrants, many of whom were undocumented, probably had never knowingly met a Jew, much less discussed with one driver’s licenses for undocumented workers. The speaker’s curiosity was further aroused because I came to the gathering as a representative of my synagogue, Beth Jacob Congregation, and of Jewish Community Action, a Twin Cities social justice organization.

“I am an immigrant myself,” I explained. “I escaped during a revolution, crossing a dangerous border from Hungary with my family in 1956 when I was seven years old. We were fleeing a repressive Communist regime. But Jews have been immigrants for centuries, throughout the world and often involuntarily. Most Jews came to the U.S. three or four generations ago to escape antisemitism and desperate poverty, and those who came to settle in St. Paul first lived here on the West Side.” I pointed out that they were only the latest immigrants to arrive on the West Side and, though still surprised, this explanation seemed to satisfy my questioner.

I came of age politically as a college student during the Viet Nam protests of the 1960s, and I have championed many causes, ranging from universal healthcare coverage to peace in the Middle East. But no issue has engaged me more than the growing plight of immigrants and refugees throughout the world and, especially, in the U. S. The 2000 census revealed that nearly one in ten people living here were foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1930s. More than 900,000 refugees entered the U.S. since 1993. Millions of new immigrants will come, with and without documents, making immigration one of the key issues of this century. Some will become our physicians and our intellectuals, but most will continue to supply the shadow army of minimum-wage laborers who pick our fruits and vegetables, fry our French fries, fix our roofs, and clean our hotel rooms. They will continue to transform our downtowns and suburbs and create a veritable Babel of languages in our public schools, often causing anxiety and false claims about their drain on our economy and social services.

For me, the myriad social issues generated by these changes are personal, because I understand only too well the difficult lives of these resettled immigrants. When I arrived in Los Angeles, having already lost most of my family during the Holocaust, I instantly lost my language, my friends, my school, my favorite foods, my culture, and everything else familiar. We suddenly became poor, and my family went to work at menial jobs. It took years for me to gain a foothold in American society, and my parents and grandparents never felt fully accepted here.

If we are to take seriously that the Torah commands us no fewer than 31 times to remember the stranger, for we were once strangers in the land of Mitzrayim, it is incumbent on us as Jews to ally ourselves with other immigrants. And we must care for the undocumented as well as the documented for, as my rabbi, Morris Allen, asserts, we were perhaps the original “undocumented workers.”

We make alliances in two ways. First, we must organize. Shuls and their social justice committees must reach out to immigrant communities and their religious institutions. Social justice organizations, such as Jewish Community Action and Just Congregations, which use organizing as a tool to create grassroots coalitions, can play a critical leadership role. Second, we must listen to the immigrants. Only by listening, as we did to the Latino immigrants we met, did we come to understand that their key community issue was driver’s licenses, without which undocumented workers could contribute to our economy but not establish even minimal lives.

Those initial conversations at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church grew into a movement that engaged Jews from many Twin Cities congregations, along with a church-based social justice organization named ISAIAH, the Catholic Church, business leaders, and elected officials. We lost the driver’s license campaign after 9/11, but our coalition led the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to enact “separation ordinances,” barring all city departments, including the police, from inquiring about any resident’s immigration status in the course of city business.

The alliances we built through these campaigns invigorated our shul’s social justice
committee and gave new meaning to our congregation’s mission of tikkun olam. It enriched our lives and reestablished a place for Jews, as Jews, in the coalition of progressive organizations that seeks social and economic justice in Minnesota and our nation. And it led us most recently toward an emerging issue of importance to both immigrants and Jews: the struggle for safe working conditions and economic justice for the Latinos who work in the Jewish-owned kosher meat packing plants of Iowa.

Steven S. Foldes, PhD, is an anthropologist. He is Director of Research and Evaluation at the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and is the immediate past Chair of the Board of Jewish Community Action and a member of the Board of Directors of Beth Jacob Congregation. REPRINTED with permission from Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, March 2007 (www.shma.com)