The other victims of Postville
As bad as we knew things were with Agriprocessors, the allegations are even worse than we feared.
And yet, through this whole mess, there is one group of victims that the media has forgotten: the original Christian population of Postville, a town riddled with problems thanks to the frummies.
But does that explain everything? I don’t think so. Steve Sailer offers an interesting explanation on the tension between the communities. Remember before you assume anti-semitism on the part of the white Christians as contributing to part of the problem, consider that we know the Chassidim have been behaving in a predatory and brutal manner for many years, and that carries over into other aspects of engagement, or lack thereof, with others.
Sailer writes,
The point is not to pick on the business practices of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The bigger issue is that this kind of in-group morality is not at all restricted to Lubavitchers. In-group morality and sharp elbowed business practices are the norm among mercantile minorities across large swathes of the world, the great majority of them non-Jewish. (In fact, many are notoriously anti-Semitic.)
It’s the nature of low trust societies: you have the peasants and you have the business people, and never the twain shall marry.
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I agree with you, but bear in mind that Bloom’s portrayal has been called into question since the book came out. I read Postville, and I question his objectivity - concerning the gentile population, as well as the Hasidim.
You seem to have attracted a few Hareidi trolls, DK. Do they roam in packs now?
I assume they’re posting in the wee hours of the morning so that no one sees them using the internet, chos v’sholem.
“I agree with you, but bear in mind that Bloom’s portrayal has been called into question since the book came out. “
By whom? Hadassah?
No, seriously. Google him, or go and look at the comments on Amazon. Some people bring up legitimate points.
Again, I agree with you. I’m certainly not defending Rubashkin. There are enough opinions in addition to Bloom’s to justify condemnation. It’s just that in the course of reading the book, I came across enough strange statements on Bloom’s part to cause me to wonder about the extent of his bias, even as it concerned the gentile population.
It’s been several years, but I can remember a few examples. Here’s one: his son joined the Cub Scouts. He was hanging around with the other Dads a tthe end of a meeting, when the scoutmaster said something like, “Next week, we’ll be making decorations for Easter…”, at which point Bloom shot him a warning glance, so he said, “er, I mean, the holidays.” This is just one example; the whole book was like that, DK. I remember thinking, “He’s chosen to live in the heart of Christian America. What did he think it was going to be like? And, as the only Jew in town [other than the frummies], what business has he to come into town and start dictating terms to them?” In a way, he was nearly as demanding as the Lubavitchers he criticized.
And he seemed to miss the East Coast terribly; every time someone came out to visit them, he had them bring Jewish food, because he complained that they couldn’t get decent bagels there, etc. Yet, he elected to remain, insisting that the rural environment was a better one in which to bring up his son. If he felt that way, there were any number of eastern colleges and universities he could have applied to that would have been equally as rural, yet still much closer to “civilization” - but he never tried. It didn’t seem even to occur to him.
His thought processes just seemed odd from beginning to end.
In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and imitate our Hareidi friends - if his son, who must be in his teens now, grows up with no sense of Jewish affiliation and marries out, I won’t be at all surprised.
Jeff,
I wasn’t looking to Bloom as an example of healthy Jewish identity. I was talking about some of the antics of Rubashkin and Co., which seem vindicated by the facts that have emerged since the book was published.
Sure, I realize that. I was only telling you in case you wanted to quote him more extensively.
Interesting. But what caught my eye was: “Postville is a tiny town of 1400 that suddenly changed when 150 ultra-Orthodox fundamentalist Jews came and opened up a slaughterhouse.”
That sentence makes my brain hurt and the horror movie experienced side of me queasy, especially going over the failedmessiah Rubashkin storyline.
Actually, I think the sentence sums up the issue on multiple levels. Why couldn’t they run a soy farm and processing plant instead?
Sailer’s remarks about in group morality remind me of Karl Marx’s ideas regarding Jewish hucksterim in his essay on the Jewish Question.
Sailer fails to recognize that the situation at Postville arises not because of ultra orthodox business practice or any in group morality. It arises by reason of the nature of globalised economic activity. The alternative to an exploitative and cheaply run meat processing plant 20 miles west of the Missippi is not a well run and regulated plant 20 miles west of the Hudson, but an exploitative and cheaply run plant 20 miles south of the Rio Grande. The original Christian population of Postville who may not actually do the dirty work in the slaughterhouse but whose local ecomony is dependant on the continuing operation of this slaughterhouse are well aware of that fact.
A few years ago in a deprived area of the UK, some 20 illegal Chinese immigrants drowned whilst caught by a high tide whilst cockle picking.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opi.....do0804.xml
The explotation of the illegal workers at Postville has nothing to do with in group morality or in the words of Karl Marx, Jewish hucksterism.
It has all to do with the nature of our globalised economy. The alternative to a plant with bad working conditions 20 miles west of the Mississipi is not a well run plant some 20 miles west of the Hudson, but another exploitative plant some 20 miles of the Rio Grande. The Christian population at Postville may keep clear of the bloody slaughterhouse floors but they benefit in other ways from its operation.
There was much hypocracy in the UK a number of years ago after 20 Chinese illegals drowned whilst ‘cockle pickling’ on a dangerouse beach
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opi.....do0804.xml
“The Christian population at Postville may keep clear of the bloody slaughterhouse floors but they benefit in other ways from its operation.”
While that is certainly true in part, I am not sure that is true overall. I think most would prefer their town the way it was before. Without an this ultra-Orthodox slaughterhouse, and without this ultra-Orthodox community.
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