HEKHSHER TZEDEK COMMISSION Statement on Rubashkin Conviction

STATEMENT FROM THE HEKHSHER TZEDEK COMMISSION

REGARDING THE CONVICTION OF SHOLOM RUBASHKIN

New York, NY (November 13, 2009) -- The news out of Sioux Falls, SD, yesterday, that Sholom Rubashkin was convicted on 86 out of 91 counts of fraud in the federal investigation into criminal activity within the Agriprocessor's meat processing facility in Postville, Iowa, delivers both justice and a heavy heart to those of us who champion the cause of ethical kashrut.

 

The investigation into Agriprocessors has unfolded in slow-motion. First there were allegations of business fraud and worker abuse, then investigations, then negotiations – all with ample opportunity for the Rubashkin family to cooperate and self-correct -- then arrogant disregard for the law, shocking revelations, indictments, a plethora of press attention, the riveting scandal of the federal raid in May of 2008, the largest scale of its kind in US history...and finally the verdict of guilty on the majority of counts of business fraud in yesterday's trial.

 

It is important to note that the trial on charges of worker abuse is not even underway. The heartbreaking stories that will emerge in the course of this trial will be as cringe-worthy as they are criminal.

 

As the founders of Magen Tzedek, we were on the ground in Postville from the virtual start of this tragic drama in the summer of 2006, bearing witness to the terrible worker conditions and business practices at the nation's largest manufacturer of kosher meat and poultry, trying to steer the Rubashkin family towards taking responsibility and correcting their mistakes, acting in accordance with the biblical injunction – "hokhaih tokhiah et amitekha" – "rebuke your kinsman," that is, do not stand idly by while one of your brethren commits a grievous wrongdoing.

 

Although the miscarriage of kashrut at Agriprocessors was not the catalyst for the creation of Magen Tzedek, it provided an urgent context and need for us to develop our initiative, proclaiming publicly our belief that keeping kosher is inextricably linked to leading a life of ethical integrity.

 

There are tragedies within tragedies in the story of the fall of the house of Rubashkin, the worst of which might be the deaf ear of the Rubashkin family turned towards those who tried to prevent the collapse. We were at the epicenter of those who repeatedly reached out to the family. Yet as the investigation and trial wore on, it became clear that the deafness was a direct result of the Rubashkin family's flagrant disregard for the law and ethical behavior.

 

There is neither joy nor a sense of schadenfreude in yesterday's conviction. Those of us who toil in the field of tikkun olam are downright demoralized by this highly preventable outcome. This story could have ended very differently. Had the Rubashkin family done a sincere teshuvah – heeding, for instance, the three-pronged course of action we delivered to them in the summer of 2006 -- they would now be the heroes of the kosher world instead of its villains.

 

Given the sad outcome of this situation, we rededicate ourselves to the birthing of our Magen Tzedek seal of ethical certification, a process that has been long and arduous but more relevant with each passing day.

After thousands of hours of meetings, deliberations, drafts of our working guidelines and compliance procedures, we are getting closer. The soul and future of kashrut depends on the development of Magen Tzedek as an actual seal on kosher food products, indicating that it has been produced in accordance with high ethical standards for employee wages and benefits, health and safety, animal welfare, corporate transparency and environmental impact. What has emerged in the course of the development of this product is that Magen Tzedek is more than just a new certification for kosher food -- it is a worldwide awareness built upon the belief that we are how and what we eat.

Achieving Magen Tzedek is our ascent to Sinai, fraught with challenge and yet possessed of a promise. Like the Law that Moses receives at the summit of the mountain, Magen Tzedek will give Jews and all people of conscience a road map towards leading lives of ethical integrity through the portal of keeping kosher.

 

 

The Hekhsher Tzedek Commission

Rabbi Morris J. Allen, Project Director

a Bracha for turning off cell phone and cameras

Jehuda Reinharz JTA Op-Ed: "Concerted effort needed to meet demand for educators"

JTA Op-Ed: "Concerted effort needed to meet demand for educators"

By Jehuda Reinharz · November 15, 2009

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/11/15/1009199/op-ed-concerted-effort-needed-to-meet-demand-for-educators

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) -- The Talmud teaches that if a king of Israel dies, all Jews are eligible to succeed him. But if a scholar dies, we are told, he cannot be replaced.

I hope this is not so.

Like the Talmudic sages, today's Jewish educators have made it their life's work to ensure safe passage of our age-old tradition from one generation to the next. But they have become increasingly scarce. The growth we have seen in Jewish day school enrollments over the past two decades is truly a blessing. With it, however, comes an increased demand for qualified Judaic studies and Hebrew teachers -- a demand that, sadly, we have not yet met. There simply are not enough of them to meet current needs. Indeed it is possible that there never were.

This shortage includes administrators and heads of school, to be sure, but there is also growing competition among day schools for engaging and knowledgeable teachers who can educate and excite young minds on topics from Alef-Bet to the Zohar. Such teachers are increasingly hard to come by.

Synagogue religious schools have also long suffered from just such a shortage. In "A Serious Man," the new film by Joel and Ethan Coen, an elderly man whose accent makes clear he hails from somewhere in Mitteleuropa stands before a synagogue classroom mechanically conjugating Hebrew verbs for bored students. The scenario is so ingrained in our culture that it has now found its way to the big screen.

This is where we find ourselves: on the flip side of a gold coin, struggling to meet wonderful new demands whose emergence would have seemed altogether unlikely just a few short years ago.

What now?

The Jewish community must move quickly to prepare more, better teachers for both day- and religious-school classrooms. We must place a greater emphasis on encouraging our bright and talented young people to consider the field of Jewish education as a serious career opportunity. We must recruit and train them. And then we must work hard to compensate them fairly and to retain them.

A number of positive signs have emerged recently indicating a move in the right direction.

In September, the Jim Joseph Foundation announced $12 million in grants to three leading academic institutions that train Jewish educators. The Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Yeshiva University will receive the funds in an effort to increase the number of future educators, and to improve the quality of professional preparation and Jewish education they receive.

The initial grants will be used as financial aid for students pursuing education degrees or certification in programs that prepare them to work with Jewish youth and young adults, and to assist each institution in planning new and enhanced programs that will attract more educators to the field.

For the next five academic years, the foundation will give $700,000 per year to each of the seminaries. The rest of the grant money will be divided among the institutions to be used in the 2009-10 academic year for planning and innovative programs. Uniquely, the grant encourages JTS, HUC and YU to collaborate on projects to provoke creative new directions in Jewish education and a renewed commitment to educating future Jewish educators.

This is a welcome development. Even as the difficult economic climate forces institutions from coast to coast to cut back, rein in and shut down, this grant allows these three major institutions of Jewish learning to expand and to innovate. Further, according to Arnold Eisen, the JTS chancellor, the collaborative nature of the grant has led the heads of the three schools to engage in more conversations over the past year-and-a-half than their predecessors did during the prior decade or more.

Our tradition teaches us that "kol Yisrael areivin zeh la zeh" -- "all of Israel are responsible for one another." This grant has inspired a meaningful realization of this beautiful ideal.

Generous individuals and foundations are funding day schools at very impressive levels today; this is very, very good. The non-Orthodox Jewish movements are trying to freshen their religious school curricula. This, too, is good. Indeed, things are going very well in several different realms of Jewish education -- so well, in fact, that we simply cannot meet the demand for high-quality Jewish educators. Doing so will take smart marketing and more money.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is placing a large bet on the future of U.S. Jewry, and this grant truly offers a bright ray of hope. But it cannot stand alone atop the hill as a light unto the nation. Other funders concerned for the Jewish future must follow its lead and step up with similarly targeted grants. It is going to take a concerted effort on the part of Jewish leaders across the spectrum -- from funders to first-grade teachers, from the presidents of our schools to their principals, from YU to JTS to HUC -- to reach the promised land.

It is not enough if we successfully replace the scholars we lose. We need more and better, still.

(Jehuda Reinharz is president of Brandeis University and the Richard Koret professor of modern Jewish history.)

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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Coffee for Kislev! Minyan this Wednesday at Netivot Shalom!

Coffee for Kislev! 
Rosh Chodesh Minyan this Wednesday
at Netivot Shalom!
1316 University Ave., Berkeley

Come celebrate Rosh Chodesh Kislev this Wednesday morning with Congregation Netivot Shalom!   Minyan begins at 7:15 that morning, and will be followed by Bagels and Peets Coffee in honor of the new month!
 
---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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Register now for: Discover Judaism! Jewish Holidays with Rabbi Shalom Bochner

Discover Judaism: Jewish Holidays
With Rabbi Shalom Bochner

The rhythm of a Jewish year is based on the cycle of Holidays.  And while Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur are the days where more people might attend a synagogue, there are many calendar-based moments for Jewish connection that evoke joy, memory, celebration, sadness, commemoration, and pride.  Each session in this series will focus on a different "type" of Jewish Holiday, including those based in the Torah, and those that have emerged since. No Hebrew is required for this class.

Dates:   Tuesdays, Nov. 17, 24; Dec. 1, 8, 15
Time:    7:30 to 9pm
Place:   Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave., Berkeley
Class fee: $50-$75 — (sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds)
For more information or to enroll call Netivot Shalom at 510-549-9447

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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Hebrew College Blog: "Why My Students Were Texting in Class…and Learning"

Hebrew College Blog: "Why My Students Were Texting in Class…and Learning"

Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed
Mon, Nov 09, 2009

http://jewish-education.hebrewcollege.edu/jewish-education/bid/28084/Why-My-Students-Were-Texting-in-Class-and-Learning

Picture this: You walk into a Prozdor classroom of ninth graders and see them all texting on their cell phones while the teacher is writing on the board. "So sad," you think, "another case of teaching gone bad." In fact, I was the teacher (filling in as a substitute), and I was encouraging the students to text during an introductory class about mitzvot. How did I come to design a class using text messaging as my active learning experience? And why do I think this was a successful and effective class?

In designing my lesson plan, my hope, as a constructivist educator, was to create an active learning experience that would engage the students by using tools that were familiar and comfortable for them. At first my plan was to play a game, something like "Mitzvah Jeopardy." But I needed something different, something new, which would push my boundaries as an educator. Answering a text on my phone in the midst of my planning, I found my inspiration: text messaging in class as a tool for collaborative learning.

"How many mitzvot are there? Let's text a sister, a friend, Dad, as many 'lifelines' as we want." My students eagerly clicked on their cells, and the numbers started coming in. "Do we have to fulfill all the mitzvot?" A quick yes/no text poll of everyone sparked an engaged conversation about the different understandings of commandment as obligation.

Comments from our lifelines punctuated our conversations: "My mom thinks that the mitzvot we fulfill are about making our lives feel more connected to other people." "My dad thinks we can't do mitzvot that have to do with the Temple." One friend remembered that there was "something about Israel" and how that changed which mitzvot we do. Our conversations became multidirectional--we were conversing around our text and around our texting, and we were conversing with one another and with our lifelines, who were conversing with us and with their texts (at least one parent was on Google and another on Wikipedia). 

The students loved this lesson. They loved using their phones, but more than that, they loved the learning. Our classroom discussion was rich, full of personal connections and probing questions. While I have no empirical evidence that it was the medium that provided this depth, as a teacher, I had the clear sense that the conversation was informed by the medium. The explicit and implicit integrated curriculum brought it all together. An added benefit was that parents loved this lesson. It provided a rare window into their kids' experience at Prozdor without having that awkward car conversation: How was class? Fine. What did you learn? Whatever. 

It is time for Jewish education to engage 21^st century technology, to connect with our students using the media that are such an integral part of their daily lives. This is an educational imperative for formal as well as complementary Jewish education, and it is a valuable pedagogy for experiential education, as well. Texting is only the beginning. Distance learning courses, wiki building for Jewish teen education, YouTube instructional videos, Twitter for Jewish education, fantasy world gaming meets the Bible--all this and more are the next steps in today's Jewish educational teen curriculum.

As for me, I can't wait to hear from you--how are you using technology in your Jewish educational venue?  I want to know before I have to substitute for my next absent teacher.   

Rabbi Karen G. Reiss Medwed, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College, where she is Dean of Faculty of Prozdor, Director of the EdD in Jewish Education Leadership and Coordinator for the Pardes Educators Program. This spring she will be teaching a distance learning course at Hebrew College, Theories and Foundations in Jewish Education, where she will explore theories such as constructivist education, and practices such as collaborative education and technology in Jewish educational venues. 

---
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
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Why did the Chicken cross the road?

[an egg-ception to "Thou shalt not forward..."]

Why DID the chicken cross the road?

 

Abraham: And G-d appeared to me and said, Avraham, Avraham, take the chicken, thy only chicken, that thou lovest, and take it across the road...

Shulamit Aloni: I'll eat as many chickens as I like on Yom Kippur, it's nothing to do with the haredim what I do in my home...

Baal Shem Tov: There was once a chicken in Medzibozh...

Ben & Jerry: New Launch: Grandma's Funky ChickenSoup Ice Cream, or Funky Chicken for short. 20c per tub to the Environmental Chicken Fund

David Bar-Ilan: This question represents the worst sort of gross anti-Semitism on the part of the world's media. Reuters is particularly culpable...

Edgar Bronfman: I shall be taking this matter up, on behalf of the WJC, with President Clinton, the Pope, and whoever's head of Russia this week...

Charles Bronfman: Forget the chicken! Let's get these teenagers to Israel: just think what will happen if they see an ISRAELI chicken crossing the road...

Buber: I and Thou, Chicken

Shlomo Carlebach: Yannani nini nini; yannani nini nini; yannani nini, yannani nini, yi nini nini;yini yannani yannani, yi ninininini, yanani yanani yi ni ni ni ni ni, yanani, yanani yininininini.....

Bill Clinton: Chaverim, I'd like to share with you a d'var Torah on this important sh'eylah...

Hillary Clinton: I know we had Jewish friends at Yale but this is getting ridiculous!

Clinton's speechwriter: Yo! That's another 50 bucks the guys at the poker game owe me!

Complete Artscroll Siddur: Bend once when the chicken goes onto the road (bending first at the knees, bending fully as it takes its second step); bend again as it reaches the middle of the road (only a half bow); bend a third time as it nears the other side. If it gets across without being run over, say also a shehecheyanu (p358); unless the congregation is saying brochos before and after the shema, in which case no interruption, even for a brocha, is permitted. No brocha is said on yontef, rosh chodesh, or during the entire month of nissan. On erev Yom Kippur the chicken may be used for kapporos.

G-d: Thou Shalt Cross The Road !!

Ibn Ezra: It was not a specific chicken, it was any chicken (cf. Rashi)

Fackenheim: We must all help the chicken across the road, whether the chicken wants to or not; to fail to do so would be to grant motorized vehicles a posthumous victory. The responsibility to help the chicken across the road is holy; it is not negotiable; it is the 615th Commandment...

Viktor Frankl: It was searching for meaning.

Arthur Green: A contemporary Jewish theology must incorporate the chicken's need to cross the road, even if we don't fully understand why it wanted to cross the road in the first place.

Blu Greenberg: In the first ten years or so of our marriage, Yitz and I didn't really focus on this question, we lived quite conventional Jewish lives, and had chicken soup every Friday night. I remember quite clearly the moment at which I first began seriously to think about this important question in a radically new light....Nevertheless I want to emphasize that in my view a synthesis of orthodoxy, feminism and the rights of the chicken is absolutely possible, difficult though this may sometimes seem in practice

Yitz Greenberg: There have been three quite distinct historical Jewish responses to this question...

Bonna Haberman: What's most important is that chickens be able to daven freely at the kotel...

David Hartman: As I was saying to Shimon, Yitzhak, Ezer Weizman, Edgar Bronfman and the Pope, all of whom wanted to know my views on this subject...That reminds me, Motti, I want two chickens! And three bottles of wine!!

Herzl: One day, chicken, you WILL reach the other side. You may not believe it; others may not believe it; but fifty years from now...

Heschel: If that chicken makes it to the other side I'll be radically amazed!

Hillel: If I am not for the chicken, then who will be? But if I am only forthe chicken, then what am I? And if it doesn't cross now, when?

Meir Kahane: The only good chicken is a dead chicken.

Levi Lauer: Levinas is the key contemporary thinker on this problem.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Stupid question. We simply follow the halakhah. The chicken crosses the road. That's it.

Michael Lerner: When I was the leading chicken's rights activist in the 60's, I actively studied the question. In the politics of meaning, no chickens will have to cross the road if they don't want to...

Levinas: [Answer completely unintelligible]

Yediot Aharonot: Chicken Run Over By Mack Truck!!! Graphic photos, pages 1,2,3,4 and 5; The Sex Life Of The Chicken, pages 6 and 7; You Too Can Have Sex With A Chicken, page 8; other news, pages 9 & 10.

Moses: And the Lord said: "Thou shalt cross the road"

Orthodox rabbi: A very interesting sh'eyla. There are many different halachic opinions on this vital question for our time. In my tshuva I shall review the opinions of the tannaim, amoraim, Rashi, Ralbag, Ramban, Rambam,the ger, the gor, the grib, the grilbag, the grandpa, grodzinskis, my grocer, Jerry Garcia, and heilige harav hagaon hashlita rebbe Mendel Shneerson, zt'l.

Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi: There can be no answer to this or any other question until this government increases allocations to the yeshivot immediately, fires Shimon Shetreet, and ends all archeological digs...

Israeli Sephardi Chief Rabbi: There can be no answer to this question until I consult with Arye Deri. He's awaiting a jail sentence for fraud? Err, let me get back to you...

Rodger Kamenatz: It was amazing to see how this question united the age old cultures of Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism. As Yitz Greenberg said to Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, while the Dalai Lama looked on and several hundred Buddhist monks waved traditional prayer flags in the hazy Indian wind..

Mordechai Kaplan: Give the chicken a voice,not a veto.

Yosef Leibowitz: Why did it cross the road? Creation, revelation, redemption...

Pinchas Peli: I was privileged to hear the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik, speak on this subject. His discourses, which lasted several hours, were an experience which represented an exquisite and unparalleled combination of erudition, western philosophy, Torah learning and knowledge of poultry...

Shimon Peres: Yitzhak Rabin, zichrono livracha, would have wanted the chicken to cross the road; it is our duty to unite together to see that it comes to pass..

Pirkei Avot: Moses heard the answer at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua...

Judith Plaskow: Where was the chicken in Jewish history? What was its name? Let us begin now to reclaim its significance, to refashion new rituals, to allow its voice to speak through the ages ...

Letty Cottin Pogrebin: In the early days on Ms magazine I cared more about women than chickens; but I see now that this was a sort of false consciousness, an anti-chickenism within the movement...

Ramban: Really the chicken didn't have to cross the road: this was G-d's allowance for the weakness of human nature. In the time of the mashiach chickens will no longer have to cross the road.

Rashi: THE chicken: [i.e., without the definite article this might be any chicken, but THE suggests a particular chicken]; there is a midrash that this is the first chicken created in gan eden. A second opinion: poulez [old french]

Reform rabbi: Because it wanted to; in the modern era we all have autonomy, including chickens. And if any "orthodox" institution attempts to stop chickens crossing the road we will protest at this outrageous infringement of religious, civil and poultry freedoms...

Rosenzweig: The chicken hasn't actually crossed yet, but I hope it may one day do so.

Jonathan Sacks: It is impossible to answer this quesion, (or, for that matter, any other), without referring to Alasdair MacIntyre's magisterial "After Virtue" (London: Duckworth, 1981). His argument is taken further in his "Whose Justice ? Which Rationality ?" (London:Duckworth, 1988) and "Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry" (London: Duckworth, 1990). Also of interest are his earlier works, "A Short History of Ethics" (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), "Against the Self-Images of the Age" (London: Duckworth, 1971) and especially "Secularization and Moral Change" (London: OUP, 1967). MacIntyre's ideas are developed in a theological context in Stanley Hauerwas, "The Peaceable Kingdom" (London:SCM,1983). The Talmud Bavli and the London Beth Din also hold views on this question.

Sforno: It is desirable that the chicken should cross the road, even in the time of the coming of the mashiach (cf. Ramban)

Shammai: Typical Hillel! Comes out with complete nonsense, and everybody ends up quoting him! Life is so unfair! And as for the chicken! - if I get my hands on that chicken it'll be straight to my talmidim for Intro Schechting 101...

Danny Siegal: The chicken was doing a mitzvah, and so should we!

Gary Shapiro: Leo Strauss is the key thinker on this question.

R. Soloveitchik: There were actually two chickens: Chicken One, and Chicken Two...

Steven Spielberg: I'm covering this in my new movie, Raiders of the Lost Chicken-Coop, from which all profits will go to my new Chicken Foundation (which my mother, who has experience in these things, is going to head).

Adin Steinsaltz: See my book, The Many Petalled Chicken.

Leo Strauss: [Just about comprehensible, but somewhat boring]

Arthur Waskow: At Chavurat Shalom we experimented with a chicken-free Judaism; the beginnings of modern eco-kashrut...

Ezer Weizman: Grunt [expletive deleted]

Leslie Wexner: I'm happy to announce a new $40 million endowment to help answer this crucial question.

The Zohar: Rabbi Pinhas was on his way to visit his daughter, the wife of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai. On the way, he encountered a chicken crossing the road, and he heard the sound of a cow. He said: There are no cows in sight. The chicken answered him: I am a cow, I am crossing the road to Yerushalayim, so that I can be offered up as an olah. Rabi Pinhas responded: Would that I could offer you as an olah, for your fragrance would rise directly to the ein sof. But, alas, cows don't have feathers.

Kitvei ha-Ariza"l: If Rabi Pinhas had only offered the chicken up as an olah, Mashiach would have come.

Kafka: I woke up one morning to discover that I had been turned into a chicken. I immediately felt a compulsion to cross the road. I can not say why.

Uzi Meshullam: The chicken was abducted from it's true Yemenite owners, and it was crossing the road in an attempt to find it's way home. And I'll kill anyone (.has ve-shalom) who says otherwise.

Rav. M. Tendler: Of course I could answer this most simple and obvious question, but this attempt to state the most fundamental belief of Judaism through the impersonal medium of email is fraught with danger. Can I possibly prevent your erroneous and illogical deductions in this attempt to teach the Torah "while standing on one foot." In all likelihood, you couldn't understand, although I can tell you one thing. Chicken, kosher; swordfish, treif.

Judah ha-Levi: My road is the East, but my chicken is in the farthest West.

Woody Allen: I mean, it was, it was... a chicken... of legal consenting age. It wasn't like it was my REAL daughter or anything. The heart wants what it wants. (And don't believe anything that Mia says about me.)

Aviv Geffen: I would say it again, but I got into too much trouble the last time I said it.

Discovery Program: If you look at the portion of Tamar and Yehudah, where Tamar is waiting on the ROAD, and you take every 13th letter of each alternating line, you AMAZINGLY get the words to "Uf Gozal", proving, once and for all, that Arik Einstein has ruah ha-kodesh. (Someone should tell Uri Zohar).

Elisha ben Abuye: There is no chicken, there is no road.

Neitzsche: See: Elisha ben Abuye

Hasdai Crescas: Some would say that the chicken was exercising it's free will. But of course I have already proven that free will doesn't exist, so it must have had some other purpose in mind. If it was trying to exercise it's free will, it was guilty of a philosophical error typical of lower vertebrates.

Israeli Border Guard: And what is your purpose for crossing over to the other side?
Chicken: Bok
Guard: Is that your only reason?
Chicken: Bok, fock, bok!
Guard: No need for fowl language!

Jacob Neusner: The answer to that question will be in footnote 22b to my next book, "Epistemology of Bava Metzia" (University of South Florida, 1996) which I am about to start writing. Uh, it was published already? George!!!!!

Bibi Netanyahu: Most Israelis on the left mistakenly think that they want the chicken to cross the road. But not to let them get to the other side. And that's not really crossing the road. That's why I say it's better to keep them in the coop.

Sarah Netanyahu: You, Chicken, are the WORST %#*@ing housekeeper, EVER!!!! YOU'RE FIRED!!!!

Rav Ovadiah Yosef: If it was shechted by an Ashkenazi, it's treif.

Rav Landau (Bene Berak): If I didn't shecht it, it's treif.

Hebrew National Co.: So what if we routinely fire our mashgichim, it's kosher.

Nearly everyone else: It's treif.

Chief Mashgiach of the Rabbanut of Israel: I thought all chickens in Israel were kosher, aren't they?