POSTVILLE, Iowa — In developments that are likely to cripple the availability of kosher beef in large parts of America, three of the five largest slaughterhouses producing kosher beef have halted production this week. All eyes have been on the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, in Postville, Iowa, which stopped producing beef last week due to…
Postville, Iowa — This past weekend, everywhere you went in this normally industrious Iowa city, there were groups of men sitting around with nothing to do, plotting how to skip town. A group of Somali refugees who, until this week, had worked for the kosher meat producer Agriprocessors, were eating a meal at Postville’s Mexican…
POSTVILLE, Iowa — Oscar Andres has worked on the poultry line at the kosher meat producer Agriprocessors here since September and he says that a few dead chickens always make it out of company holding pens and onto the slaughter line conveyor belt. On October 31, though, Andres said that nearly half the chickens coming…
The kosher meat company Agriprocessors has defaulted on a $35 million loan, leading a St. Louis bank to foreclose on the company’s assets. If the foreclosure proceedings move forward, it would appear that they would force Agriprocessors out of business. On October 31, a U.S. District Court judge in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, appointed a temporary…
Washington — Comedian Sarah Silverman has gotten a lot of mileage out of the notion that older Jewish voters, especially those in Florida, need to be persuaded to support Senator Barack Obama. Yet as it turns out, those bubbes and zaydes may be the ones prodding their grandchildren to support the Democratic nominee for president….
Observers and participants from all points on the political spectrum agree that the 2008 presidential election has focused, to an unusual degree, on Jewish issues and Jewish voters. “The intensity of the interest in the Jewish vote started much earlier and is more intense in the larger press,” said Ira Forman, executive director of the…
Haifa, Israel — During the majority of his political career in the Likud party, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was known as a hawk. After he joined the Kadima party, Olmert was said to be increasingly dovish. Today, he is referred to with a third avian metaphor: a lame duck. It has already been 12…
An unprecedented American military raid into Syria has halted a fragile diplomatic engagement between Damascus and Washington and prompted speculation that hawks within the Bush administration wanted to send a message to Syria and to the next president. The operation was conducted by American military helicopters against an alleged Al Qaeda-linked network funneling fighters and…
For researchers looking at what have become known as the “Jewish breast cancer genes,” much of the last decade has been spent identifying women who have the gene mutations and finding medical procedures to battle the breast and ovarian cancers that result. Now many of the same scientists are striking out in bold new directions,…
Washington — Shifting American policy toward Iran is forcing pro-Israel activists to re-examine their priorities and tweak some positions that now seem out-of-sync with the new winds in Washington. Regardless of the election results, experts and observers are already seeing changes in the way America is dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue: a broader dialogue…
Washington — Barring a repeat of the problems and lawsuits that marred presidential voting eight years ago, Americans should know the name of their next leader soon after the polls close on November 4. Dissecting the Jewish vote may well be a story for another day. Exit polling conducted for the major television networks and…
