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Commemorating Philip Roth means confronting his limitations head on
(JTA) — Next Sunday marks the 90th anniversary of Philip Roth’s birth. In celebration of the famed novelist’s work, a scholarly conference titled “Roth@90,” sponsored by the Philip Roth Society, will be held starting Wednesday at the Newark Public Library. That will be followed by a weekend of high-profile events — staged readings, panel discussions, a bus tour of Roth’s old Newark neighborhood — co-presented by the library and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Exactly 10 years ago, we commemorated his 80th birthday in a similar fashion. Dozens of Roth scholars made learned presentations about his work, of which Roth attended exactly zero. Later that week, the author read aloud from his novel “Sabbath’s Theater” in front of hundreds of fans, friends and well wishers. The proceedings were televised on C-Span.
Roth was being acclaimed for having just wound down an exemplary career. With the exception of the Nobel Prize, what garland evaded him? Was there a high-culture literary platform where his name wasn’t a virtual watermark? Could he publish any novel without hundreds of reviews being written in newspapers across the world? Was there a serious fiction writer out there with greater renown?
So much has changed in the decade between the two conferences. To begin with, Roth died in 2018. In that same span, the country witnessed the election of Donald Trump and the fissure it exposed in society in general and the Jewish community in particular. America endured one convulsive racial reckoning after another. Finally, in October of 2017, the #MeToo movement gained massive public salience.
All of those events, along with digital media’s indomitable ascent, have combined to affect and reshape Roth’s literary legacy. That legacy is far less assured than all the (justified) praise and lionizing that will occur this week might suggest.
Let’s start with Jews. The Trump era yielded two seemingly irreconcilable data points. On the one hand, Jewish-Americans endured the Charlottesville riot, the Tree of Life synagogue attack and a stunning rise in antisemitic incidents. On the other, there was staunch support for Trump among Orthodox Jews and supporters of Israel’s right wing.
Leaving that conundrum for others to parse, I simply note that Orthodox Jews and right-wing Zionists are almost completely absent in Roth’s fiction. A young Roth wrote a sensitive portrait of Holocaust survivors who want to start a suburban yeshiva in “Eli the Fanatic.” He also sketched a militant religious-nationalist Zionist in “The Counterlife,” Mordecai Lippman, who, according to Roth biographer Blake Bailey (about whom more below), was based on Elyakim Haetzni, one of the so-called founding fathers of the settlement movement. In the same novel, a version of the narrator’s brother falls under the settlement leader’s sway.
And that’s it, across a half century of writing. For traditionalist Jewish readers, whose political and social influence in the United States and Israel is substantial and growing, Roth’s fiction is not a mirror, nor a signpost, nor a scroll upon which is inscribed some essential truth.
The Jews who populated his stories, the Jews he best understood, were of Ashkenazi descent, white, liberal, assimilated and secular. His courage was to valorize them over and against other Jews who viewed them as defective, lost or even as apostates. Thus Anne Frank in “The Ghost Writer” was portrayed as a patron saint of secular Judaism. Elsewhere, his stories abound in proud, professionally accomplished diaspora Jews. They rarely think about God. Synagogue attendance is reserved strictly for lifecycle events and High Holy Days, if that.
A novelist, of course, is not a political clairvoyant. However, the immediate future of Judaism is being greatly shaped by Jews whose population and influence are growing and whom Roth rarely portrayed. In this manner, another stellar writer like Cynthia Ozick — herself Orthodox and quite attuned to the mindset of her co-religionists — might fare better commercially and emerge as more relevant than her friend in the coming decades.
Roth didn’t just write about Jews. In my book “The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race and Autobiography,” I pointed out that depicting non-Jewish Black people was an unrecognized “obsessional theme” across his 28 novels and 25 short stories. Much to my dismay, I found Roth’s multi-decade treatment of his African and African-American characters often to be crude, thoughtless and sometimes racist.
Familiarize yourself with the degrading portraiture we receive of Black people in “The Great American Novel” (1973), or a short story like “On the Air” (1970), and you might reconsider what Roth was after in “The Human Stain,” in which an academic who is accused of racism turns out to be an African American who had been “passing” as white and Jewish. The book, the 2001 Pen/Faulkner Award winner, is often seen as a sensitive treatment of racial issues in America, and perhaps as the author’s attempt to extend the hand of friendship to another oppressed minority.
In fact, my best guess is that, as with many Jewish writers post-1967, Roth was shaken by the deterioration of the Black-Jewish alliance. His frustrations were reflected in prose that often referenced Black communities in his hometown of Newark but showed little curiosity about their lives or sympathy for their plight.
Obviously, this type of literary rendering of African Americans — or any minority group — is disturbing and dated. Insensitive racial representation inspires calls for publishers to drop authors. They disappear from high-school or college syllabi. This bodes ominously for the afterlives of the titans of post-World War II American fiction, including John Updike, Saul Bellow Bellow and Norman Mailer, all three of whom have been accused of being racially insensitive and worse.
Roth’s marketability also seems to be sailing into a squall regarding gender. As women began demanding an accounting of sexual abuse and misogyny within the media, entertainment and other industries, numerous think-pieces wondered how the author of “Portnoy’s Complaint” — whose libidinous narrator identifies most of the women in his life by debasing nicknames — would fare in such an environment. Would he — should he — be “canceled”?
The question is more complex than his admirers and detractors make it out to be. No doubt, many of Roth’s male characters mistreated women. Accusations of Roth himself doing the same exist, but they are fairly rare, unsubstantiated and contested. The dilemma for researchers is that Roth was a deeply auto-fictional writer. You sense his presence in his stories — especially when protagonists share much of his biography, including Nathan Zuckerman and Peter Tarnopol, and when characters are named “Philip Roth.”
It’s hard not to speculate about the relation between the author and the many misogynistic fellows who cut an erotic swath through his pages. There will, of course, be readers who give him the benefit of the doubt. They might observe that Roth’s toxic males provide evidence of women’s experiences that needs to be explored, not censored.
Not helping him cleanse his reputation were the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against his hand-picked biographer, Blake Bailey. The ructions engulfing Bailey came to dominate the discourse about Roth, leading to a peculiar cancellation by proxy.
The episode also revealed that Roth had instructed his estate to eventually destroy a massive trove of personal papers he entrusted to Bailey. This led Aimee Pozorski (co-editor of Philip Roth Studies), myself and 20 other Roth scholars to issue a statement reminding his executors that “scholarship can only be advanced when qualified researchers engage freely with essential sources.”
As if all these concerns weren’t enough, his grim prophecies about the demise of an audience for serious literature seem to be coming true. “The book,” Roth worried, “can’t compete with the screen.” Meanwhile, the English major is in a very bad way, and the institution of tenure is under siege. Professors (insufferable as we might be) teach the next generation who to read and how to read. Writers might not like them, but they need them.
Roth is also getting the scrutiny that he was at pains to avoid in his lifetime. His disregard for scholars who might be critical of him always struck me, one such scholar, as misguided. Instead, he surrounded himself with friends — friends who had preternatural access to major media platforms. These friends built upon his own interpretations of his own work. It doesn’t mean they lacked wisdom. It just means that when they talked about Roth, they talked about what Roth wanted them to talk about. To wit: Jewish Newark, his sundry interpretations of his life, his pesky ex-wives and lovers, the close-mindedness of his critics, and so forth.
I think, in this cultural moment, it’s prudent to confront Roth’s limitations head on and chart one’s own path through his fiction. I pitch him to my students as a writer with some racial, religious and sexual hang-ups — who among us is innocent of those charges? I also present him as a bearer of unique and meaningful insights. Let scholars (while they still exist) parade those insights into sunlight.
I’ve tried to illuminate that his fiction was preoccupied, for 50 years, by how individual and collective bodies (like the Jews) change. Transformation, metamorphosis, metempsychosis — his obsession with those themes, I’ve noticed in my classrooms, is shared by Gen Z. If the span between Roth@80 and Roth@90 has taught us anything, it is that Roth was right: Life is about radical, unpredictable flux. Now his own legacy is in flux. I wonder who will read Roth@100.
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Yiddish writer and Forverts columnist Miriam Hoffman has died
די ייִדישע שרײַבערין, דראַמאַטורגין, פֿאָרווערטס־קאָלומניסטקע און באַליבטע לעקטאָרין מרים שמולעוויטש־האָפֿמאַן איז מיטוואָך אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט אין קאָראַל ספּרינגס, פֿלאָרידע. זי איז געווען 90 יאָר אַלט.
אַלע וואָס האָבן מרימען געקענט האָבן געוווּסט וואָס פֿאַר אַ געניטע דערציילערין זי איז געווען. סײַ אינעם דאָקומענטאַר־פֿילם, וואָס דער פֿאָרווערטס האָט אַרויסגעלאָזט אין 2017, סײַ אינעם בוך זכרונות אויף ענגליש וואָס זי האָט פּובליקירט אינעם זעלבן יאָר, דערציילט זי אויף אַ פֿאַרכאַפּנדיקן אופֿן וועגן איר דראַמאַטישן לעבן פֿון סיביר קיין ניו־יאָרק.
מרים איז געווען אַ פֿרוי מיט אַ סך טאַלאַנטן. זי האָט יאָרן לאַנג געפֿירט אַ לעבעדיקן רובריק אינעם פֿאָרווערטס, וווּ זי האָט קאָמענטירט מיט אַ בײַסיקן הומאָר אויף דער ייִדישער געזעלשאַפֿט, באַניצנדיק זיך אָפֿט מיט אויסדרוקן פֿון איר היימישן פּויליש־ייִדיש. אַ טייל פֿון אירע עסייען האָבן אָבער געהאַט אַ מער ערנסטן, ווייכערן טאָן, בפֿרט ווען זי האָט איבערגעגעבן אירע זכרונות ווי אַ יונגע אימיגראַנטקע אין אַמעריקע. אין דעם רירנדיקן אַרטיקל למשל דערציילט זי ווי זי האָט מיידלווײַז פּלוצלינג אָפּגעשניטן אירע לאָקן כּדי זיך צו אַמעריקאַניזירן — און ווי אַזוי איר מאַמע האָט רעאַגירט אויף דער טאָכטערס „רעבעלירונג“.
פֿון 1999 ביז 1988 האָט זי געפֿירט אַ פּאָפּולערע ייִדישע ראַדיאָ־פּראָגראַם אויף דער פֿאָרווערטס־סטאַנציע WEVD.
מרים האָט אויך געשריבן אַ צאָל פּיעסעס פֿאַרן ייִדישן טעאַטער. אין איינעם מיט רינע באָראָו האָט זי געשאַפֿן דעם מיוזיקל „לידער פֿון גן־עדן“, וואָס האָט אין 1989 געשפּילט אין ניו־יאָרק, סײַ אינעם אָנגעזעענעם „פּאָבליק־טעאַטער“ סײַ אינעם שעקספּיר־פֿעסטיװאַל. אירע פּיעסעס האָט מען אויך אױפֿגעפֿירט אין מאָנטרעאָל, קאַנאַדע און איבער אײראָפּע.
במשך פֿון 23 יאָר איז זי געווען אַ באַליבטע ייִדיש־לערערין אין קאָלומביע־אוניווערסיטעט, און עטלעכע זומערן אויך אין אָקספֿאָרדער אוניװערסיטעט און אין װילנער אוניװערסיטעט. אין 2011 האָט זי אַרויסגעגעבן אַ ייִדיש לערנבוך, „אַ שליסל צו ייִדיש“, וואָס האָט אַרײַנגענומען נישט בלויז שפּראַך־לעקציעס, נאָר אויך געשיכטע, מנהגים, לידער און יום־טובֿ־מאַטעריאַלן.
אויף מיר פּערזענלעך האָט מער פֿון אַלץ אימפּאָנירט מרימס קעמפֿערישע איבערגעגעבנקייט אויפֿצוהאַלטן ייִדיש ווי אַ לעבעדיקע שפּראַך בײַם ייִנגערן דור. אין די 1960ער יאָרן האָט זי, אין איינעם מיט דרײַ אַנדערע פֿרויען — געלע שווייד־פֿישמאַן, מלכּה גאָטליב און צירל וואַלעצקי, אַרויסגעגעבן אַ סעריע קינדערביכלעך אויף ייִדיש דורך אַ פֿאַרלאַג וואָס זיי האָבן אַליין געשאַפֿן, „אויפֿגאַנג“.
ווי מרים און געלע האָבן מיר מיט יאָרן שפּעטער דערציילט, איז די שטימונג אין דער ייִדיש־וועלט דעמאָלט געווען אַזאַ פּעסימיסטישע, און דער צוגאַנג צו פֿרויען אַזאַ נישט־בכּבֿודיקער, אַז קיינער פֿון די ייִדישע אָרגאַניזאַציעס — אַרײַנגערעכנט דעם אַרבעטער רינג און דעם ייִדישן קולטור קאָנגרעס — האָט די ביכלעך נישט געוואָלט אַרויסגעבן.
מרים און אירע מיטאַרבעטער האָבן זיך אָבער נישט אונטערגעגעבן. אַ דוגמא דערפֿון איז דאָס פּרעכטיקע מוזיקאַלישע פּורים־שפּיל, „פּורים איז אַ שפּיל אַזאַ“, אַרויסגעלאָזט אין 1968. אויף דער הילע שטייט אַז דער מחבר איז „גבֿריאל טאָליעס“. דאָס איז אָבער געווען אַ פּסעוודאָנים; מרים איז געווען די אמתע מחברטע. „מיר האָבן פֿאַרשטאַנען, אַז קיינער וועט דאָס ביכל נישט אויפֿנעמען ערנסט, אויב מע דערוויסט זיך, אַז דאָס האָבן פֿיר פֿרויען אַרויסגעגעבן,“ האָט מרים מיר געזאָגט. „האָב איך גענומען מײַן מאַמעס נאָמען, טאָליע, און געמאַכט דערפֿון: גבֿריאל טאָליעס.“
מרים שמולעוויטש איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין טאָבאָלסק, סיביר אין 1936. איר משפּחה איז אָנגעקומען קײן אַמעריקע אין 1950, וווּ זי האָט זיך געלערנט אין ייִדישן לערער־סעמינאַר ביז 1957; אין מיאַמי־אוניװערסיטעט ביז 1981, און פֿאַרענדיקט אירע גראַדויִר־שטודיעס אין קאָלאָמביע־אוניװערסיטעט אין 1983.
אין די 1970ער יאָרן האָט זי מיט איר מאַן מענדל און קינדער אַבֿרהם און בנימין פֿאַרבראַכט עטלעכע יאָר אין ישׂראל, וווּ זי האָט אין איינעם מיטן קאָמיקער שמעון דזשיגאַן אָנגעפֿירט מיט דער ערשטער ייִדישער טעלעװיזיע־פּראָגראַם אין דער ייִדישער מדינה.
בײַ מרימען איז דאָס לערנען ייִדן די ייִדישע שפּראַך, קולטור און געשיכטע, און נאָך מער — אָפּשטעלן די געוואַלדיקע אַסימילאַציע — געווען אַ הויפּטציל אין לעבן. אין 2015 האָט זי אין איינעם מיט איר עלטערן זון — דעם אָנגעזעענעם ייִדישן אַקטיאָר, רעזשיסאָר און פּראָדוצענט אַבֿי האָפֿמאַן — פֿאַרלייגט די אָרגאַניזאַציע „ייִדישקייט איניציאַטיוו, ווי אַן אופֿן צוריקברענגען ייִדן צו זייערע ייִדישע וואָרצלען דורך לעקציעס און פֿאָרשטעלונגען וואָס שילדערן די ייִדישע ווערטן און קולטור.
מרים האָט פֿאַראָבֿלט אירע זין אַבֿי און בנימין, פֿיר אייניקלעך און אַן אור־אייניקל.
אַנשטאָט בלומען אָדער מתּנות, בעט די משפּחה מע זאָל געבן אַ בײַשטײַער דער „ייִדישקייט איניציאַטיוו“ אויף דעם אַדרעס, YILoveJewish.org/donate.
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Amid blazing heat and rising tides, artists find beauty and desperation in these biblical times
Daniel Rothbart’s floating aluminum and glass forms are at once playful and lyrical, biomorphic and other-worldly; prehistoric and futuristic. They are set in a pond and two small pools in Staten Island’s Snug Harbor, a hidden pastoral gem that once served as a safe haven for sailors.
Overflowing with colorful flowers and plants and shrubbery, the scene is idyllic, short of the oppressive, steamy heat that has settled over the landscape. But then that’s part of it too. Rothbart’s Serpentine Sibyls: A Floating Sculptural Installation, animated by winds and currents, are site-specific and immersive. He is keenly in tune with its ecology.
“No, my work has not always addressed political issues, but water is a fraught medium,” he told me over the phone. “You can’t work with water without addressing its importance to life on this planet and climate change and stewardship. Water has always fascinated me.”
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest the ocean was a constant alluring presence. And as a Jew, the water’s historical, cultural and religious traditional significance is defining, he said.
“There’s the purification ritual of the mikveh, the parting of the Red Sea, the washing of hands and feet before entering the temple in Biblical times and the casting off of sins, Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah. Water diplomacy and technology has always been central in Israel. Making the desert bloom.”
Rothbart, a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited across the globe, is the author of Jewish Metaphysics as Generative Principle in American Art, which examines how Jewish mystical traditions, especially Kabbalah, informed abstract American art in the post-World War II years.
Erudite and heady, Rothbart said that his work can be viewed through the lens of tikkun olam, the Jewish imperative to help repair a fractured world, but it also borrows from Japanese culture, outer space imagery, Marcel Duchamp’s dadaism and Greek mythology.
The title of his exhibit references Sibyls, the Greek female prophets who were consulted in catastrophic times, not unlike our current era cursed by floods and wildfires and heat waves.
Rothbart started thinking about floating sculptures in 2007 for a piece he was conceiving for the Venice Biennial. A city surrounded by water cried out for it. Japanese glass fishing floats came to mind.
“The Japanese fishing floats would wash up on shore in Oregon where I grew up,” he recalled. “I loved the fragile recycled pieces of glass that came from the orient and that I could de-contextualize a common object and in so doing create something new.”
To anchor the sculptures, Rothbart and his assistant kayaked to the middle of the pond. There, once he established where he wanted each sculpture, he dropped each form, now attached to two to five-pound iron weights.
“The sculptures are sensitive to any existing life in the water,” he said. “The pond here has turtles and fish. I’ve found that the animals adjust to the new forms. I love the relationship between life in the pond and the foreign objects.”
Three artists, one flood
The Interchurch Center in upper Manhattan is currently hosting Noah, A Future of Hope, 3 Faiths/ 3 Artists/ 1 Story. A traveling exhibit, it employs the story of Noah and the flood to gently remind viewers to save, protect and celebrate the environment. The topic is explored respectively through a Christian, Muslim and Jewish vision. The artists — Yona Verwer, a Dutch-born Jew, Brian Whelan, a British-born Christian of Irish heritage and Hady Boraey, an Egyptian Muslim — each merge their religious identity with personal aesthetics and the need to advocate for the environment.
“Each artist was invited to create eight paintings that visually inspire our imaginations to heal our world by honoring our intricate connection to the earth as our sustainer, and by maintaining a sacred balance with all her life forms,” said curator Paul G. Chandler in his introductory remarks at the exhibit’s opening night reception. “In this way, the story of the ark, its animals, and the flood, take on contemporary relevance as we face today’s climate crisis.”
Seven is a significant number in each religion, so Chandler selected seven core lessons, each reflecting some part of the Noah story, for the artists to address. The eighth painting from each artist served as a kind of synopsis of the work that was to follow.
Water is a common image throughout the exhibit; indeed, water plays a major role, not only in Judaism, but in Christian and Islamic rituals as well, from Christian baptism to the washing of feet and hands before prayer in a Mosque.
When I asked Chandler if he could guess the religion of each artist on the basis of their paintings he said he could for the Jew and Christian, but wouldn’t have had a clue that Boraey emerges from an Islamic tradition.
“His paintings have an individual aesthetic and a more universal feeling. Still, you never see the face of Noah in his work. In Islamic tradition you can only view him from the back. To see his face is idolatry. Jews have the same tradition, but may not adhere to it as rigidly.”
Some of Verwer’s work incorporates Hebraic texts and characters. In “Care for the Species,” a figure is blowing a shofar. Similarly, Chandler said, he’d know that Whelan’s paintings were made by a Christian. They are literal illustrations of key moments in the Noah story.
His depiction of Noah evokes a figure right out of vaudeville, grinning broadly, sporting a little hat and in more than one instance looking slightly confused.
“Christians turn catastrophe into a kind of children’s bedtime story,” Chandler said. “It’s very Christian to sanitize the story. Jews don’t do that.”
“My being Jewish — a religious Jew—has had a bearing on how I look at everything,” said Verwer who says that water and its preservation is deeply important to her not least because for more than 2,000 years Judaism has had many rules to safeguard water. As a Holland native, she, like Rothbart, grew up near water and so it was always part of her universe.
Verwer’s work is also exhibited in an accompanying solo show, Fluid Futures-Living Waters, which features eight paintings that explore ocean pollution through a comic sensibility. One piece, bal tashchit (prohibition against needless destruction) depicts an octopus, submerged in deep ocean waters, clutching a soda can in its mouth.
“I don’t feel a painting is finished if I haven’t laughed at least once,” Brian Whelan said. “But it also needs a message.”
His major challenge was Chandler’s insistence that the paintings embrace a note of optimism.
“I don’t see any hope in what’s happening to this planet,” said Whelan. “My work mostly follows in the tradition of East Anglican medieval narrative paintings found in churches dating back to the 14th-to-16th centuries.”
For me his strongest piece is “Humans Outside the Ark Perished,” which appears in his linked, one-man show, 40 Days and 40 Nights. Here we see desperate hands reaching towards Noah for safety. A mouse sits alongside Noah, a poignant image. It’s safe and sound compared to the desperate humans.
Of the three painters, Boraey said his work was the least likely to be connected to any one particular religion. Unable to obtain a visa to the States he spoke to me on the phone from the Northern coast of Egypt.
He said his piece “The Great Collapse” spoke most vividly to both the Noah story and the ecological precipice we’re now facing as a result of climate change.
In the foreground, we view Noah from the back gazing out across a body of water at masses of people crushed together and almost immobilized as they hopelessly struggle to move forward. In the background hangs a giant and cratered blue moon sinking below the horizon and into the ground. It is at once foreboding and exquisite.
Having participated in exhibitions in the Middle East and Europe, Boraey said he was most influenced by the surrealist art movement in Cairo in the late 30s. The marriage between folkloric and political motifs is its hallmark.
The Noah tale for him is “both pessimistic and optimistic because hope is always there and they survived at the end of the story,” he said. “Noah saved humanity. He reminds us that we have to be very careful with the earth.”
In harmony with nature
Back at Snug Harbor, the late afternoon heat dome has made the airless, sun-baked space even more relentless than it was earlier in the afternoon. Rothbart’s visitors are slowly straggling out of the park, some wiping away sweat with bits of tissue, others fanning themselves; still others pouring water from their bottles onto reddened necks and arms and legs indifferent to the water splashing on to their clothes.
“Talk about global warming and climate change,” he told me. “This weather only drives home the point of just how serious this is and how we have to learn to live in harmony with nature and our environment.”
Serpentine Sibyls will run through Sept. 28.
Noah: A Future of Hope will run at the Interfaith Center through Aug. 26 and then continues its global tour.
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Fire at Postville, Iowa, kosher meat processing plant shuts down production ahead of the High Holidays
(JTA) — A major fire at one of the largest kosher meat processing plants in the United States is poised to increase the price of kosher meat ahead of the High Holidays, in addition to devastating the plant’s local community.
Investigators in Postville, Iowa, said on Wednesday that the fire that devastated AgriStar Processing started accidentally in the facility’s laundry room. The fire, which began on Tuesday, destroyed at least 75% of the plant and has put more than 600 people out of work, Fire Chief Jeff Bohr told the local TV network KCRG.
The fire has also interrupted a linchpin of kosher meat production, according to OU Kosher, the oversight agency run by the Orthodox Union.
“The damaged facility means a significant portion of kosher beef and chicken slaughtered and sold in the US will not enter the kosher supply chain,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the organization’s CEO, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Kosher consumers will feel the impact of the tightening supply with reduction of availability.”
Elefant said OU Kosher was working to “find solutions for ramping up production at other plants” while warning that the crisis could fuel bad actors.
“Unfortunately, when supply is limited, it creates opportunity for unscrupulous individuals who seek to make money by preying on the well-meaning Kosher observant public,” he wrote.
Jarad Bernstein, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, said the fire represented “a terrible situation” in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“The impact on the local community and the business will be large,” he said.
The fire is not the first time that a crisis at AgriStar has sent the community into a tailspin. In 2008, a federal immigration raid at the plant, then known as Agriprocessors, netted the arrest of hundreds of workers and led to the arrest and conviction of the company’s longtime CEO Sholom Rubashkin on 86 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. It also led most of Postville’s Jewish residents to leave the town, which had developed as an unusual stronghold of Orthodox life in eastern Iowa.
Saying that “many people” believed Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence had been excessive, President Donald Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence in 2017. Rubashkin’s conviction stands.
Canadian Jewish billionaire Hershy Friedman purchased Agriprocessors and reopened it as Agri-Star. He told JTA in 2016 that he had done so after being urged by Jewish leaders to ensure competition in the kosher meat processing industry.
“It wasn’t done for financial purposes; it was done to really cater to the Jewish community,” he said about the purchase. “During the time Rubashkin was closed, the price of beef roughly doubled. After we acquired it, it came right back down.”
Friedman also said he had shored up the company’s employment practices, which had run afoul of the law, and made improvements to the slaughter process that had made Agriprocessors a target of animal rights activists.
Agri-Star said in a statement on Wednesday that it appreciated the first responders who “worked tirelessly and selflessly to protect lives and contain the fire” and the employees who had shown “inspiring” care for each other. It also indicated that it did not yet know the future of the plant.
“We understand there are many questions about what comes next,” Agri-Star wrote on social media. “While we are still gathering information and evaluating our short-term plans, we are committed to sharing verified updates as soon as they become available. We appreciate your patience as we work through this process thoughtfully and responsibly.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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