The Rubashkins go to great lengths to defend themselves: When the undocumented workers in Sunset Park attempted to unionize with the UFCW, the Rubashkins used a tactic that had worked for them in years past. They signed the workers up with a "sweetheart" union run by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews. The tiny Brooklyn-based union, Local 1718, was started by the Williamsburg sect of Satmar Chasids—which has some friction with the Lubavitchers—to combat the attempts by national unions to organize workers in local factories.
The Rubashkins also have a slick PR team. In May, the Rubashkins hired Ronn Torossian of fancy Manhattan firm 5WPR, whose client list has included Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame as well as Paris Hilton. In July, a 5WPR employee was outed for posing as conservative rabbi Morris Allen on a Rubashkin whistleblower blog, FailedMessiah.com, operated by former Lubavitch butcher Shmarya Rosenberg. Allen is the founder of Hechsher Tzedek, a movement for a new kosher seal, which the Rubashkins oppose. In a blog comment, "Allen" claimed to have given up his movement's boycott of Rubashkin meat. Rosenberg traced the user's IP address to a 5WPR vice president, though the firm at first claimed that the mistaken posting was the work of a rogue intern. Shira Dicker, spokeswoman for Hechsher Tzedek, says that Torossian called her while she was on vacation this summer and insinuated that if she had "cheated on her husband or her taxes," she would be in trouble. "That's when I entered Sopranoland," says Dicker, referring to her involvement with Agriprocessors. Torossian says he's "not aware" of the incident.
AP Photo/Iowa City Gazette, Jonathan D. Woods
Photos like this, of Agriprocessors CEO Sholom Rubashkin, are reverberating in Crown Heights.
Newscom/ Mark Hirsch/ Rapport
Conditions—for animals and people—at Agriprocessors have even loyal supporters of the Rubashkins wondering.
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In a community where it is practically taboo to speak out against the Rubashkins, dissent is finding an outlet on the Internet. On the most popular blogs in Crown Heights (such as CrownHeights.info or Vosizneis.com), every news item about the Rubashkins is heavily debated, sometimes receiving hundreds of responses. The Agriprocessors crisis has exploded long-lingering conflicts about how an intensely religious person, who follows a code of "divine" law, should regard the rules of the larger society.
Some argue that the Rubashkins have a greater obligation to the people of Crown Heights than they do the laws of the United States. Others shout back that making excuses for them is dangerous and will encourage other Lubavitchers to engage in law-breaking.
But if blog discussions have exposed a tension within the rank-and-file, support for the Rubashkins persists at the highest levels of the Lubavitch society. Zalman Shmotkin, a senior member of Chabad-Lubavitch, said during the summer that Chabad itself wasn't responsible for their behavior and was not going to take action against the family. "We're not a community of angels," Shmotkin said. "We're just a community of people trying to serve God." He explained that the Rubashkins were not major Chabad donors. But if the family doesn't sent money to headquarters, the Rubashkins support a number of local Chabad houses, community members say. For two years in a row, the Rubashkins were honored at the annual fundraising dinner of Colel Chabad, one of the oldest charity organizations connected with the movement. The dinner was attended by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Shmotkin says that patience with people and their flaws was fundamental to the movement. But even if Chabad wanted to censure the Rubashkin family, he added, the movement was too fragmented to do so. "It's not like there's some board of directors that we can kick them out of."
In recent days, the comments left by Lubavitch Jews at FailedMessiah.com are taking on an increasingly frantic tone as commentators discuss the news coming out of Iowa. Regardless of what the people of Postville felt about the Rubashkins, the company town, population 2,300, is falling apart without them. The Rubashkins owned most of the local real estate. Now that they've closed up shop, hundreds of people have been left without heat in the Midwest winter. Jobs have evaporated, and immigrants who weren't deported are literally taking the last buses out of town. Jeff Abbas, of the local KPVL radio station, says that for the first time in years, his primary concern is no longer the Rubashkins—he's just trying to find people a warm bed and a roof over their heads.
Even in the quiet isolation of Borough Park, things seem to be coming unhinged. Aaron Rubashkin stays in his office on the second floor of his one-room butcher shop. Moshe paces back and forth in front of the windowpane, glued to his cell phone. The Russian store clerks don't dare bother him, and even his teenage granddaughter says that it's too stressful to go upstairs. The customers continue to buy large quantities of meat, stocking up to feed their large families over the coming Sabbath, in one of the last places in America where there's no shortage. They know something bad is happening, but they are not exactly sure what.
Only the elderly Rivka Rubashkin, wearing a multicolored scarf around her head, busying herself in her soup kitchen, seems truly immune to the crisis unfolding around her. When asked about the situation, she smiles placidly. "The rebbe," she says, "will make things better than they ever were before."
