Ethical Kosher Seal Nearing Marketplace for Conservative Jews

Conservative movement’s ambitious ‘Magen Tzedek’ in testing stages, hoping to have certified products on store shelves within year.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Rivka Oppenheim
Special To The Jewish Week

With the trials of Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, still looming large over the kosher food industry, the Conservative movement is ready to make its mark on a field that is dominated by Orthodox companies.

After years of discussion and planning, the “Magen Tzedek” — which the Conservative movement calls the world’s first Jewish ethical certification seal — will complete beta testing with two food companies by the end of 2010.

“Our expectation is, a year from now, to have 15 companies that will be promoting the Magen Tzedek,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, project director of Hekhsher Tzedek, the commission that has developed the seal.

Rabbi Allen, 55, spoke to The Jewish Week before participating in a session at this year’s Rabbinical Assembly convention, on “Moving Magen Tzedek in the Marketplace: How the Conservative Movement is Seating Itself at the Kosher Table.”

Conservative rabbis from all over the United States and Canada crowded into the chapel of the Upper West Side’s Congregation Ansche Chesed Monday night to get an update on the initiative, which began in 2006 — two years before federal agents raided the Agriprocessors plant.

Meanwhile, Tav HaYosher, a more modest initiative launched by the Orthodox social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek one year after the Rubashkin raid, has just marked its one-year anniversary — with 40 participating establishments in five states.

Rabbi Michael Siegel, national co-chair of the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, acknowledged some people’s frustration with the slow pace of his project.

“People in your congregations are saying ‘Nu? Hurry up,’” he said.

Rabbi Siegel, who is senior rabbi of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, asked every congregation to appoint an ambassador who will sign on for a one-year commitment, promoting the Magen Tzedek mission throughout the Conservative movement.

“It won’t simply be the rabbis pounding on the bima,” he said.

The Magen Tzedek is not intended to replace kashrut certifications, such as the Orthodox Union’s seal of approval. That’s why Professor Joe Regenstein, who drew up the guidelines for the Hekhsher Tzedek Commission, refuses to actually use the term “hekhsher tzedek.”

“That caused confusion and unnecessary concern,” he told The Jewish Week.

Regenstein, head of the Cornell Kosher and Halal Food Initiative, told the audience at Ansche Chesed that besides fruits and vegetables, which don’t need a heksher, any Magen Tzedek-certified product would also need to have kosher certification.

“Pork sausage is not going to qualify, no matter how good [the plant is] at social justice,” he said.

Hekhsher Tzedek will consider five issues in awarding its seal of approval: labor (wages and benefits, and health and safety); animal welfare; consumer issues; corporate integrity; and environmental impact.

A social auditing firm, Social Accountability Accreditation Services has been hired to help develop and implement the standards. Rabbi Siegel said he plans to work with ROI Ventures, a strategy firm, to look into the economic sustainability of Magen Tzedek.

Whereas Tav HaYosher lists only three criteria on its website, all of them issues that already fall under existing U.S. labor laws — the right to fair pay, the right to fair time (one day off per week, compensation for overtime, breaks etc.) and the right to a safe work environment — the Magen Tzedek standards go well beyond legal requirements. A summary version is available on the Magen Tzedek website.

After opening the set of standards to public comment last fall, Regenstein prepared a response for every single one.

“It’s got to be something that’s objective, auditable, fair,” said Regenstein, a professor of food science at Cornell. “The process needs to be transparent.”

And while Uri L’Tzedek works only with restaurants and grocery stores, Regenstein has bigger plans for the Magen Tzedek, which he hopes to promote internationally.

“It would be a jam processor in North Dakota who is already kosher-certified, to a Kraft, to a Unilever,” he told The Jewish Week.

Rabbi Siegel went even further, telling the assembled rabbis that there have been discussions about giving Magen Tzedek to synagogues — ensuring that fair labor practices are enforced in houses of worship, not just in restaurants and factories. An article in the Forward newspaper this fall noted that the labor standards Magen Tzedek calls for in the food industry are met in few Conservative synagogues and other movement institutions, many of which, according to that article, do not pay a “living wage” or health benefits to custodial and other part-time staff.

Like the Magen Tzedek project, Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek, is hoping to keep growing.

After receiving Orthodox rabbinical ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the 28-year-old will move to Los Angeles next month to launch his organization on the West Coast.

Yanklowitz says in the past year, 60 compliance workers have been trained to help enforce the standards of the Tav HaYosher, and that the movement now has “thousands of constituents.”

“I think that the community momentum is immense right now,” he said. “Our constituents are really demanding rapid response. I think there’s not patience for long, drawn-out processes.

“We’re at a crucial stage for the development of the ethical kashrut narrative and for the identity of the concerned Jewish, socially conscious consumer.”

Asked about expanding the Tav HaYosher to other areas besides food, Yanklowitz said that conversation is premature, and that there is a “danger of overextending.”

“We really need a serious victory on creating social change in kashrut first,” he said.

The measure of that victory? When “those that are not complying will need to comply in order to stay afloat.” Already, he said, “multiple owners have told me they’ve gotten thousands of dollars more business because of the Tav.”

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Kashrut Division, is skeptical over Magen Tzedek’s potential impact on the kosher food industry.

“I don’t see many companies willing to sign on to a standard that’s different than what’s in place, in terms of government regulations,” he said.

While Rabbi Genack said he’s willing to sanction the Magen Tzedek symbol appearing next to the OU’s, he also said the government should be the ones to handle labor issues — even as he slammed the government over its handling of the Rubashkin case.

“Everything it did was an overreaction,” Rabbi Genack said. “It destroyed a company. It destroyed the economy of the region. ... Asking for a life sentence was an absolute outrage.

“I think the one that should be in the dock is the U.S. Attorney. That’s where I think there’s an ethical outrage. The justice that was done is more reminiscent of Soviet jurisprudence.”

Sholom Rubashkin is currently being tried by the state of Iowa on child labor charges. He faces 83 counts of child labor violations. Federal sentencing has been postponed until June 22, after Rubashkin was convicted last November of 86 counts of bank fraud.

After initially pushing for a life sentence, prosecutors have asked for a 25-year sentence, which Rabbi Genack says is “essentially still a life sentence” for the 51-year-old Rubashkin.

Unlike Rabbi Genack, Magen Tzedek’s Rabbi Allen said relying solely on government inspectors to enforce labor laws might not be the best course of action.

“The mine disaster in West Virginia and the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana have demonstrated that oftentimes the government is unable, or becomes too involved, to be able to stop certain kinds of industry practices,” said Rabbi Allen, spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn.

“We wouldn’t trust New York law when it came to ritual law. We shouldn’t necessarily simply trust American law when it comes to upholding Jewish ethical norms, either.”

JTA contributed to this report.

Conservatives’ ethical seal nearing kosher marketplace

By Amy Klein · May 25, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- “We will not put a hechsher on pork products.”

Counterintuitive as the need for that statement about kosher certification might sound, it was just one of the points about the Conservative movement's planned ethical seal that the group responsible for the certification wanted to clarify at this week’s gathering of Conservative rabbis in New York.

The Hekhscher Tzedek Commission announced at this week's Rabbinical Assembly convention that it had hired a social auditing firm to compile standards for what the seal will represent. The Magen Tzedek certification has been in development for three years following multiple scandals at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa.

Beta testing with two companies will be finished by the end of 2010.

“Over the course of the next year we will be in the marketplace,” promised Rabbi Morris Allen, the Hekhsher Tzedek project director and spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Jacob in Minnesota.

Joe Regenstein, an adviser to the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission and professor of food science at Cornell University, said the new certification will cover five areas: wages and benefits; health and safety of workers; animal welfare; environment and sustainability; and a broad category of corporate responsibilities, such as nutritional labeling and good practices.

At the convention panel at which the certification was discussed -- “Moving Magen Tzedek Into the Marketplace: How the Conservative Movement is Seating Itself at the Kosher Table,” the co-chairman of the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission, Rabbi Michael Siegel of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, urged the dozens of rabbis in the room to make the commission's projects known to their communities.

The commission wants each synagogue to appoint one socially aware and active member to work directly with the commission for a year.

Siegel also urged the audience to make sure that their synagogues and Jewish organizations are in compliance with the ethical standards espoused by the seal, such as using fair labor practices for workers and ensuring that outside contractors, like catering companies, adhere to the standards.

“We have to set the right example in our own synagogues. It's a serious issue,” he said. “This will be our Achilles heel if we don't address it.”

The commission hired Social Accountability Accreditation Services (SAAS) for help in coming up with the standards a food company must meet in order to be approved for the Magen Tzedek, or star of justice. The commission posted draft standards at the Magen Tzedek Web site for three months, inviting public comment, and now the standards are being finalized.

“We think that social justice in the marketplace is something that we can make happen,” said Eileen Kaufman, executive director of Social Accountability International, which accredits and monitors organizations as being in compliance with social standards. “What we do at SAAS is take creditable standards and put them in a structure that enables them to be carried out and used as criteria for purchasing. That proves as incentive for organizations to follow them.”

At first the label will be targeted toward U.S. kosher food product companies, Regenstein said, estimating the number at about 10,000. It will include only products that already have been certified as kosher, including non-food items like detergents and aluminum foil, as well as products that do not require kosher certification, such as fruit and vegetables.

Even though some companies might adhere to the social justice practices enumerated, if they are not kosher, they cannot get the seal.

“We are a Conservative Jewish organization. We will not put a hechsher on pork sausages. That's just not who we are,” Regenstein said. The Magen Tzedek is “tied to Jewish ethics and to Jewish law. The companies have to meet a minimum of Jewish law.”

Regenstein prefers to call the accreditation the Magen Tzedek rather than use the term hechsher.

“The word hechsher means kosher certification, and this program is not kosher certification,” he said. “This is a social justice program attached to previously recognized kosher certification.”

Regenstein added that the term hechsher made the Orthodox community nervous.

“They thought, and perhaps rightfully so, that we were going into the kosher certification business," he said. "We are going into the ethical certification business.”

For now the seal will not apply to restaurants. Other organizations, like Uri L'Tzedek, certify kosher restaurants as ethical.

Eventually the Hekhscher Tzedek Commission hopes to certify catering companies.

After the SAAS criteria are finalized, the commission will conduct an economic feasibility study to determine the cost of accreditation, Regenstein said.

He noted that it might prove economically desirable for kosher companies to acquire the seal because it will widen the market for their foods to those who care about ethics even if they don’t keep kosher.

“By tying it to kosher products, you will have more Reform and Conservative Jews looking at products that are kosher,” Regenstein said. “They can reach the entire Jewish community and people outside the community looking for a framework to choose ethical products.”

The seal may even help people become kosher observant, he said.

“All of a sudden it's not just people who keep kosher” who will be eating kosher products, Regenstein said, “but people who are interested in social justice.”

Conservative Movement Finds Unity In Promoting New Hekhsher Guidelines

By Anthony Weiss
Thu. Sep 11, 2008
The Forward

Two years after a bruising debate on sexuality that left some wondering if the Conservative movement was irreparably divided, an initiative to link kosher food regulations with labor and environmental standards seems to have reunited the movement’s rabbinate.

A number of rabbis have agreed to devote at least part of their High Holy Day sermons to the initiative, which is known as Hekhsher Tzedek, Hebrew for “justice certification.” In late July, the committee spearheading the initiative released the guidelines that will be used to judge food producers, but the High Holy Day push ensures that the move will be widely discussed when synagogue attendance is at its highest.

Rabbis and leaders of the Conservative movement who spoke with the Forward were universally positive about Hekhsher Tzedek, a display of unity that would have been astonishing only two years ago.

“It’s something that is obviously one people can get behind, because who is opposed to tzedek?” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, referring to the Hebrew word for “justice.” “Among rabbis, I think it’s a great relief to be able to talk about tzedek.”

In 2006 Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota started the kosher food initiative in response to reporting by the Forward about labor conditions at the giant Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa.

The moves by Allen and his commission came at the height of the movement’s earlier problems. In December 2006, the movement’s committee on Jewish law passed a legal opinion paving the way for same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian ordination. In response, four rabbis promptly resigned from the committee in protest. Earlier this year, four synagogues in Toronto, where opposition to the sexuality rulings had been particularly high, voted to leave the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella group for Conservative synagogues.

As the same-sex marriage debate unfolded, the Conservative movement’s numbers were dwindling and some observers warned that the movement might be coming apart at the seams.

The new certification program has drawn anger from many leaders of Orthodox Judaism, but the blend of ritual, ethics and food seems to have formed a powerful combination that has spoken to the various strands within the Conservative movement.

“There’s no divisiveness on this,” said Ray Goldstein, international president of the USCJ. “Everywhere I go, people are speaking about it. Rabbis have gotten passionate about it, and also laypeople.”

The most striking element of the support has been that it has come from both sides of the earlier debate about sexuality. Rabbi Loel Weiss of Temple Beth Am in Randolph, Mass., had opposed the liberalization of the movement’s strictures on homosexuality, but he has spoken out in favor of the new movement.

“This is one of the very few examples where the movement has come out to modify Halacha in a more vigorous, dynamic way,” Weiss said. “This is one of the most exciting developments that the Conservative movement has produced over the last two decades.”

Likewise, rabbis who pressed for the new rulings on sexuality have been supportive.

“I think this is a real moment of definition for the Conservative movement,” said Menachem Creditor, rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, Calif. “If this translates into something that’s visible, the Conservative movement will have achieved something it hasn’t done in a long time, which is translating a profound idea into personal action.”

Observers suggest that one thing making Hekhsher Tzedek so unifying is its combination of Jewish law and a socially liberal mission. Where these impulses parted ways on issues of sexuality, they have been fused together in Hekhsher Tzedek.

“Gay ordination became a symbol of the fault lines between the halachists and the post-halachists” in the Conservative movement, said Steven Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s contemporary Jewish life department. With Hekhsher Tzedek, Bayme added, “suddenly, you have an issue that bridges that gap.”

Within Orthodox Jewish streams it has been exactly this fusing that has caused concern. A number of Orthodox rabbis have said that Jewish law about the proper treatment of employees should be kept separate from Jewish law about the preparation of kosher food. These rabbis have argued that kosher supervision should focus on ritual food preparation while issues like labor rights and environmental regulation should be left to the government.

“[L]aws, halachic and otherwise, are already in place to ensure proper treatment of animals, workers, consumers and the environment; and ignoring any of them renders a company subject to punitive action by federal and state agencies,” wrote Avi Shafran, a spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel, in the September 8 issue of the Jewish Observer. “To the extent that an envisioned new ‘badge of approval’ simply reiterates those requirements, it is superfluous. And where it aims to go further, beyond halachic and/or governmental strictures, it overreaches, and can serve only to make mischief.”

Shafran went on in the article to accuse the Conservative movement of using Hekhsher Tzedek as “a bald attempt to portray itself as something other than dwindling and desperate,” citing the recent divisions over sexuality issues.

Even within the Conservative movement, there are still questions about whether the excitement about the initiative among the clergy will translate into greater participation by ordinary members. A number of rabbis also warned that consumers must see concrete examples of the Hekhsher Tzedek on the shelves of their supermarkets if the initiative is to hold people’s attention. The rabbis who lead the commission have said that they hope to provide the first evaluation of kosher companies within the next year.