More in ‘Agriprocessors’

Sholom Rubashkin, former manager of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, was convicted yesterday in federal court of 86 financial fraud charges. Rubashkin’s sentencing date has not yet been scheduled, but he will likely be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, the AP is reporting. In addition, he still faces a second trial ...

• Shalom Rubashkin was convicted of 86 out of 91 fraud charges during his tenure as owner of the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Iowa; “combined sentences could reach over 1,250 years,” says the JTA. [JTA]
• Meantime, the Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by Florida attorney Scott Rothstein is growing in scope as the FBI ...

The federal fraud trial of Sholem Rubashkin, the former CEO of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse, isn’t painting a very flattering portrait of the kosher butcher, who faces a maximum 1,280-year prison sentence on fraud charges—plus another potential 715 years for hiring hundreds of undocumented workers, in a second trial that will begin after this one ...

•A federal fraud trial opened in South Dakota yesterday against Sholom Rubashkin, head of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa shut down last year after an immigration raid. It’s being held in South Dakota because a judge ruled that Iowans are already biased against the Rubashkins. [USA Today]
• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is ...

When the animal-rights group PETA released grisly undercover footage shot in 2004 at the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, it began four-year cycle of bad press and misfortune for the company that is only now coming to a close. We couldn’t help but think of the meat plant—and feel a little pang of ...

Israel’s Supreme Court decided yesterday that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate was wrong to hold a messianic Jewish baker to a different standard than it would any other baker when it comes to running a kosher business. The governing precedent, the court said, was a case from the ’80s in which the rabbinate withheld kosher certification ...

It has been said by some in the Jewish world—and the implication is almost always unkind—that there’s something “un-Jewish” about Lubavitchers, particularly those who believe that the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson was (is?) the messiah. (Chabad is the “religion closest to Judaism,” according to an oft-told joke.) Lubavitchers, understandably, take offense when presented with this ...

Agriprocessors, the Iowa-based kosher slaughterhouse that was infiltrated by Peta in 2004, raided by federal agents last May, and which filed for bankruptcy in November, seems, at long last, to have gotten what appears to be a break. The A.P. is reporting that Hershey Friedman, the president of a Montreal-based plastics company, and two partners ...

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty held a gala breakfast at a Manhattan hotel yesterday, at which lots of people presented lots of other people with awards. One awarder-awardee combo stood out: Menachem Lubinsky, a director of the Met Council, presented a “Jewish Community Leadership Award” to Stuart Appelbaum, a vice president of the United ...

Best Predictably Awesome Cameo in a Christmas Special

Jon Stewart thrilled and reassured us all year with the Daily Show’s political coverage, but soon after the election results were in, he appeared on pal Stephen Colbert’s much-hyped special, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All. The other semi-bold-faced names to make appearances carried out ...