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Jewish Labor Nemeses Pair Up, Pat Backs

What’s a little INS raid among friends?

by
Ari M. Brostoff
June 08, 2009

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty held a gala breakfast at a Manhattan hotel yesterday, at which lots of people presented lots of other people with awards. One awarder-awardee combo stood out: Menachem Lubinsky, a director of the Met Council, presented a “Jewish Community Leadership Award” to Stuart Appelbaum, a vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. The intriguing part: Appelbaum’s UFCW represents workers at Agriprocessors, once the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, which the federal government raided last year after discovering that the company was employing and mistreating hundreds of undocumented immigrants. Lubinsky was until a few months ago Agriprocessors’ unapologetic spokesman—and one of the chief targets of his criticism was the UFCW. It seems there’s a poverty-fighting Lubinsky and a poverty-inducing Lubinsky—and, when there’s money to be raised, people only remember the latter. You know, like with Jewish philanthropist Bernie Madoff and all-time greatest scourge of Jewish philanthropies Bernie Madoff.

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.