Forward.com

Agriprocessors’s Bi-Coastal Critics

Agriprocessors — the kosher meat giant that has been in the national spotlight ever since its Iowa slaughterhouse was the target of a massive federal immigration raid in May — is taking flak from critics east and west.

The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe both published editorials yesterday assailing Agriprocessors for its treatment of its workers. This time, however, the focus isn’t on allegations of mistreatment of workers at its Iowa plant (a story our Nathaniel Popper broke back in 2006).

Instead, the papers are unloading on Agri over its efforts to prevent workers at its Brooklyn distribution center from unionizing (another story Nathaniel broke for the Forward, this one just last month).

Both papers take aim at an attempt by Agriprocessors to void a 3-year-old vote in favor of unionization by its Brooklyn workers. The company has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court arguing that workers who are in the country illegally have no right to unionize, a position that, both papers note, flies in the face of a 1984 Supreme Court precedent.

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Stop the Presses: Ha’aretz Discovers Jews on Upper West Side (But the Times Beat Them to It)

Writing in Ha’aretz, Marco Greenberg offers an ode to Jewish life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and drops the following bombshell: “Even the New York Times has recently picked up on the UWS-Jewish connection.”

Greenberg goes on to observe that the “Upper West is perhaps the last spot on earth where people walk rather than drive.” Clearly, he has never been to the Upper East Side.

Celebrity-Studded ‘Bark Mitzvah’

Fox 5 reports on a new (canine) take on an age-old Jewish tradition.

Yid Vid: Cohen @ Mushon

Why? Why not? They’re dope, fly, fresh and phat… as the kids used to say.

Oh, also, a much more famous Jewish musician recently produced a much stranger video.

It’s the End of Jerusalem as We Know It, and Israelis Feel Fine

In an anguished column, Ha’aretz’s Uzi Benziman warns that Jerusalem — Israel’s capital and the spiritual heart of world Jewry — is being ceded to its ultra-Orthodox population:

For years the Jewish/ultra-Orthodox component in the Jerusalem landscape has been increasingly crowding out the colorful mosaic that characterized it in the past. Not only secular and moderate Orthodox people have become a minority in the city - the multinational and multireligious minorities that once bustled through the city’s streets seem to have withdrawn in the face of ultra-Orthodox domination.

Predictions show that in seven years the number of schoolchildren aged six to 14 in ultra-Orthodox educational institutions will be three times the number in state secular and state Orthodox schools.

The state and the wider public treat this trend complacently: They leave it to Jerusalemites to determine their municipal fate. The most productive population in the city has indeed drawn its own conclusions and is leaving in droves - there has been negative migration of about 60,000 over the past five years.

Why should it matter that Jerusalem is becoming increasingly ultra-Orthodox? Well, for starters, there’s the matter of Israel’s capital being dominated by a population that is, for the most part, either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist and, by and large, doesn’t serve in the Israeli military. Then, there’s the fact that the ultra-Orthodox community hasn’t been the most tolerant steward of the city, whether it was the ugly resistance to gay pride events in Jerusalem or the ridiculous insistence that young girl dancers cover up at the celebration for the city’s new Santiago Calatrava bridge.

But Benziman directs most of his anger, not at Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community, but rather at the larger Israeli public, which, he suggests, seems remarkably indifferent to Jerusalem’s fate. Perhaps they forgot the words of the Psalmist: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.” The ultra-Orthodox, it seems, have not forgotten.