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The Difference Between Religion And Ethics
I was minding my own business when my husband told me about this article in USA Today.
The article about Sholom Rubashkin and Agriprocessors, a Kosher meat empire, accused this man of fraud, claiming that he had "ordered employees to create false invoices," thus becoming able to obtain advances on a revolving bank loan; it is alleged he diverted the money to himself, which amounts to stealing the bank's collateral.
In addition to 91 fraud related charges, he has also been charged with 72 counts related to illegal immigration. Apparently 389 illegal immigrants have been arrested and most of them deported.
It is important to note that Agriprocessors were Glatt Kosher, which would have meant to any knowledgeable Jew (including me) that the company claimed to adhere to higher standards of what it meant to be "Kosher" than other stores or brands.
The founder of the group was Sholom's father, Aaron Rubashkin. He and son seem to have had problems with everything from child labor laws to disability for workers to fraud.
Aaron's other son and Sholom's brother, Moshe Rubashkin, was indicted a couple of years ago on a number of counts of operating hazardously or inappropriately or illegally in the New York area garment trade.
If they were still alive, my parents of blessed memory would have simply said that this person could not have been a real Jew, or that he was a "Jewish Anti Semite" because he seemed to have brought shame upon the Jewish people. They wanted to idealize our ethnic type, believing we could do no wrong.
The Chicago Tribune provided a relatively dispassionate and objective coverage here.
They have apparently pulled the trial out of Iowa and moved it to South Dakota in a laudable quest for objectivity.
Earlier coverage in the New York Times talks about financial losses of the company, hiring of illegal immigrants (Guatemala) and all other sorts of problems.
I can only get so far from press coverage. It is written in the classical Jewish writings that every good deed that a Jew does pushes the judgment of the Jewish people to be more positive, while every evil deed that is done by a Jewish person causes the whole people to be judged more negatively.
From what I have read about this family, my greatest hope for these people, who allegedly have a history of criminal acts, would be, either rehabilitation in this life, or finding and obliterating just the DNA sequence that would be responsible for these kinds of behaviors.
There is an opening, a vast chasm, between organized religion and ethical behavior.
My mother of blessed memory could not believe that there actually were Jewish men in the local prison, so the family Rabbi took her to visit them. She was horrified -- because they all claimed to be innocent and she believed them. Innocent Jews were being imprisoned!
Obviously, Mother was a loving and caring person -- but would never be appointed to the Supreme Court.
When I worked in prisons, religion and religious gatherings were very popular. Generally, people had not been terribly religious at first, but once they had
entered prison, there were precious few things to help people feel good about themselves, so many people turned to religion.
This is something else. The Rubashkin family members have fully embraced their identity, seeing themselves as Jewish and devout, judging both from the way they dress in photographs (skullcaps and beards). They have positioned themselves in the Jewish community as not only the most pious of the devout, but ones who help other Jews achieve the highest level of piety in observing their faith.
I have seen people stretch civil law because they are "pious." I have seen religion and piety permutated -- and sometimes perverted -- every which way to justify or even excuse human behavior.
Some of these contortions are fairly innocent. I remember vividly a rural town in Kansas where Mennonites who could not, by their religious laws, do anything that was not "utilitarian." Women reached a high level of art in cooking and quilting. And although utilizing an automobile was too "worldly" and the prescribed mode of transportation was horse-and-buggy, one common sight was men driving around downtown in deluxe tractors, with air conditioned cabins and such -- all justified because the tractor was a "utilitarian" vehicle necessary for their agriculture.
My grandparents, like many Jews, came to America seeking freedom from totalitarian regimes. My grandmother, for example, told me how the Russian Cossacks came into the family cottage and took all the ceremonial silver. She knew she would come to America because things like that would not happen. Of course, she idealized a bit, and really thought the streets were paved with gold. But she knew when she came that she would abide by the laws of her new country. That was never put into question. She always wanted me to do something wonderful and special for America.
Although she didn't live to see one of my proudest achievements, I thought about Bubbie when I took my oath to serve in the U.S. Army -- Captain Goldstein, MD. I know she would have been as proud of me as she was of her daughter, my beloved Aunt Sadie Gold, who served in the armed forces of this great country as a nurse in World War II.
The treatment of the Rubashkins, which has been followed more than I could have imagined in both the international Jewish and the secular American press, has nothing to do with Jews or being Jewish.
A long time ago in France, an insightful psychiatrist told me that Jews see themselves as the "chosen people" and that is fine, surely backed up by the lists of accomplishments of Jews in society. But are we really better than everyone else?
I think we have geniuses and scoundrels and a lot of people in between. Let each one be judged on his or her merits, his or her own accomplishments. Of course, this needs to include compliance with the laws of the country that has welcomed you with open arms.
I always really liked that Thomas Jefferson wrote, when he wrote the laws of the colony of Virginia, when he wrote some Federalist papers, about a wonderful new nation that would protect "beneath her mantle/Jew and gentile alike."
We Jews ought to return this enormous favor by not breaking laws.
We ought to be smart enough to realize a faith to be something really different from the people who organize communities to perpetuate it, not to mention the people who profess to practice it. We can worship ideals, whether they are our own or not.
We must be very careful not to condemn a faith because of ethical errors made by some of its practitioners.
