Times: Big Crowd Gathers at Yeshiva University - but not for Worship or Torah Learning

I was just talking to a friend who sometimes goes to Yeshiva University on Sundays to study Torah with their great scholars and 50 other Jews in a regular weekly program.

I ruminated, Why do the Goyim attract thousands to their churches for programs every week and we Jews struggle to make 50? I knew the answer. We just don't get it. We just don't get it!

And now we have an event at Yeshiva University that attracts hundreds and is written up in the Times. And we Orthodox still don't get it. It's the Conservative Movement that is out ahead on this issue of the corporate corruption of the kashrus industry. The Orthodox are not even in the game.

And yes, rightfully so, Rabbi Avi Shafran gets his head handed to him in this story. That will be the case whenever the real world gets to check in on this disgusting bag of self-righteous rabbinic wind. Lord, who can even start to estimate the damage that this pomposity masquerading as "Rabbi" Shafran has done to the cause of Orthodox Judaism?

It was, for the most part, a subdued and scholarly discussion about ritual law, Jewish ethics and what to do if you suspect that the kosher meat on your table has been butchered and packed by 16-year-old Guatemalan girls forced to work 20-hour days under threat of deportation, as alleged in a recent case.

“Is it still possible to consider something ‘kosher certified’ if it is produced under unethical conditions?” asked Gilah Kletenik, one of the organizers of the student group that arranged the session, which drew an overflow crowd of 500, most of them students.

And for the Shafran fans among you, the man has gone on the record in the newspaper of record to wit:

In a more pointed comment, Rabbi Avi Shafran, who has defended the prerogative of the Orthodox rabbinate against what he sees as well-meaning but misguided efforts to add social-justice protections to the criteria for the production of kosher food, said, “Lapses of business ethics, animal rights issues, worker rights matters — all of these have no effect whatsoever on the kosher value.”

Yikes! Shafran has the audacity to usurp the authority to declare such utterly embarrassing statements of religious certitude.

And it is the utter inability of Yeshiva University rabbis to locate any meaningful message in their Judaism that guarantees they will remain in a dark era indeed, together with their 50 regular attendees.