Rabbi Genack pointed out that, very often, liberal Jews use the term "kosher"- as a "generic phrase"- to denote practices they consider morally acceptable.
Menachem Lubinsky, editor of Kosher Today, said those who use that definition are "missing the fundamental issue of kashrus: obedience to Jewish law."-
He said most Orthodox rabbis have dismissed the attempts to discredit Agri, characterizing most of the complaints as "an irrelevant misinterpretation of what kosher represents."-
Boycott
While some of the liberal groups, including the Jewish Labor Committee, have discussed boycotting Agri products, most of the people they might influence do not observe kashruth anyway.
According to Rabbi Jerome Epstein, leader of the Conservative movement, only 20 percent to 30 percent of Jews who identify as Conservative make a point of buying kosher products, even though most of them, he said, do not keep kosher all the time.
More potentially problematic for Agri was a petition circulated by some students at the politically and religiously liberal Orthodox rabbinical school, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The petition called for a boycott of Agri's products if the company does not make the changes the school's students demand.
In Washington, Congregation Ohev Sholom's Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who is loosely associated with YCT, has asked the local Vaad Harabonim to "temporarily suspend Rubashkin's meat in the stores and caterers it supervises."-
The Vaad did not respond to calls, and, thus far, has not issued any comment on Rabbi Herzfeld's request.
To Large to Boycott
Short of becoming vegetarians, the kosher would-be boycotters might have a hard time following through.
Agri is responsible for 60 percent of the kosher beef and between 30 and 40 percent of all kosher chickens consumed in the US, causing concerns last month that the raid and the subsequent slow-down of activities caused by the lack of workers could result in a shortage and a steep increase in price.
Only Empire Chicken sells more kosher poultry than Agri, and no one sells more kosher beef.
According to Mr. Lubinsky, some kosher meat distributors feared the worst when the plant was temporarily shut down. But production resumed very rapidly, increasing each day as the plant exerted major efforts to replace the workers who had been detained or deported by the authorities.
Survivors
Like Mr. Lubinsky, many observers said they were not surprised at the way Agri has rebounded. The company is, after all, a survivor, managing to stay in business despite surreptitious films by an extremist so-called animal rights group that made no secret of its desire to outlaw kosher slaughter; a fine levied against the company last March by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for violations at the plant; the publicly unexplained decision by one of its previous kashruth supervisors, K'hal Adath Jeshurun (KAJ-Breuers), to withdraw supervision of the plant as of April 2008; and a federal appeals court decision last January rejecting Agri's claim that workers in their Brooklyn distribution center should not be allowed to unionize because many of them are illegal aliens.
