23 Responses

1. Oh please. I live in Lakewood and I haven’t seen any meat shortage. The co-op has no meat on Friday afternoons because they always run out anyways. There are plenty of other meat plants out there with good (and even better) hechsherim. Don’t make this the next crisis – we’re all doing just fine.

2. Next thing someone will claim that it is possible to be frum with competing pizza places in the neighborhood (not to mention well stocked wine stores, weddings costing in the tens of thousands of dollars, restaurants with table clothes and waiters, etc.). Unbelievable. With such, no one could be frum like us. -)

3. you are correct to point out that because of the meat “shortage” we should consider how addicted and obsessed we have become with eating meat (much like a smoker who goes through withdrawal from cigarettes). and i agree that we should reassess the meat situation and its many lessons.
   but i would suggest that perhaps at the root of this problem is the fact that you continue to refer to “[a]… choshuve family – renowned baalai tzedoka…” and claim that their troubles reflect an “… unfair attack on Glatt Kosher shechita”
   this is denial. the magnitude of the charges/crimes involved in the present case go far beyond any political vendetta. the situation in iowa has gone from bad to worse because there has been continuous denial and continued encouragement/support by the frum community. in the past year (perhaps more, i don’t recall) the chillul hashem that this story has generated (and continues to generate) is probably unparalleled in history (from a media perspective, if nothing else). is this really what we want to support?? if we had to explain this whole tale to our children, would the lesson be that “the government is out to stop choshuveh, erliche’ yiddin from doing glatt shechita”?? think about it.

4. The rambam says and it is common sense that a person is influenced by their surroundings. This is not “der alte heim” where even among the gentiles meat and beef where not a regular staple like today. The gvirim of “amul” lived like real gevirim and everyone knew who they were and where they belong.
   Today we live in a great fog. Nobody knows who really has and who dosen’t. Fancy cars and beautiful homes are accessible to all with leases and loans of huge sums.
   To pick on the meat shortage as being a terrible thing is just a reflection of how spoiled we are.
   I feel terrible for the shochtim mashgichim drivers and butcher shops whos incomes have been greatly compromised and I daven that they find proper employment.
   We live in a high spending and lavish medina B”H. It is our nisayon to work on ourselves and role model to our children the often quoted mishna of eizehu oshir hasomeach bechelko. With the guidance of a rav we would be a happier and more content people not dealing with the meat shortage “crises”.
   Veyimaleh mishalosayny bemidah tova.

5. #1 you havent seen a meat shortage because you live in the east where there are a lot of meat companies. almost every chassidishe group has their own brand .
   ask someone from detroit, I hear the shelves are bare!

6. Oh please, while the writer makes a valid point that we should pause and reflect, lets not get carried away with “Yeshiva style” self-flagellation. G-d wants us to be happy and enjoy life, there’s nothing noble about having chicken in the chulent.

7. Come to Cincinnat, we’ll talk about a meat shortage. Sometimes we have meat and chicken and alot of the times we don’t. When there is people here take advantage of it and buy alot to store for the future. People in NY are very spoiled and don’t realize that out of towners have it better. We don’t try to keep up with the jones’s we don’t care about frivalities.

8. When I couldn’t find Chanukah Candles in the rural outpost I found myself in, I called and friend and she said, “You are so lucky!”

   “Why am I lucky?” I asked.

   “Because, in NYC, I have everything I need and I can forget I am in galut. You are reminded every moment.”

9. I live in Monsey and we have plenty of meat and chicken.

   Also I do not consider it a privilege to have kosher meat but rather a necessity my grandparents did not have a car so I should not take the car for granted!!

   Not sure what is your point?!

10. NYC wont have a meat shortage, but the prices will go up.

11. I’m from out of town and there is no meat “shortage” or “crisis” here. Only the strictly Rubashkin places are having shortages.

    I do not attempt to know the Ribono Shel Olam’s cheshbonos as to why this all happenned. I also can’t figure out why people are making out this family to be from the Tzadikei Doreinu!! I do know that Rubashkin did have the monopoly on the kosher meat market, and many smaller meat/poultry companies were knocked out and pushed out of the market because of them. If all the smaller guys were allowed to have a chance, we would not need a Mega Meat plant like this one was. It is never good to have one company so big. I there is chas v’shalom one mess up there, all of Klal Yisroel gets messed up.

    If we are allowed to have more smaller operations, this does not happen. And it would me much easier to control the Kashrus of many smaller operations.

    So there is no crisis and we seem to be getting excited over nothing. Let all these Shochtim split up and work for the liitle guys. Eneryone will produce a ttle more and we will all be fine!!

12. anonymouschochom: Part of the problem is that there are very few places to shecht. They can literally (and unfortunately) be counted on one hand. It takes over a million dollars to set up even a small place. The machines that are needed are very expensive (unless, of course, you want to buy used machines from Rubashkin…. hey… come to think of it… that wouldn’t be a bad idea). Then theres zoning to deal with. Most places have difficult zoning laws. Then theres the Department of Agriculture to deal with. A pain in the neck… to put it nicely. There are shochtim to pay, and bodchim and Rav Hamachshir and goyim to help hold the animals while being shechted (the animals, not the goyim :-), and people who cut up the animals and people who do the packaging and people who do the deliveries and the list goes on and on and on…..

    But if you know of any investors and/or people who want to take on the gargantuan headache of opening up a “small” shlacht house…. now is certainly the “sha’as hakosher”. (pun intended).

    The point here is that you shouldn’t assume that there are all these small places that can just open now with the snap of their fingers. There is a tremendous amount of enery invested between the pasture and your Shabbos table.

13. People,

    Wake up and search for Hashem! Why do you think Hashem is sending Yidden all over the diaspora so much trouble? Kosher meat is just one small insignificant problem for some, and major for others. Anti-semitism is on the rise, don’t get so comfortable in Chutz. You forget that this is not your home. When you get too comfortable, that’s when Hashem pokes you to remind you that you’re not home, until you go home. And where is home? Do you remember?

14. Pardon my spelling error. That was supposed to be “bodkim”. Not “bodchim”.

15. I have always wondered about the mentality that we are so spoiled.

    Since when is having “no shortage” spoiled. Baruch Hashem yom yom, that we have more than we need. its as if its our fault that we have all that we need.

    Should we starve ourselves or deprive ourselves so we don’t become “spoiled”?

    To what end???

    The only reason I can think of to understand this wide spread philosophy is that for so long in golus we were used to so much less than necessary, that we are “classically conditioned” to not relax and enjoy hashem’s brachah. But that we must always be on guard in case our fragile house comes tumbling down.

    The question comes down to:
    1. Should we enjoy good times, and worry about bad times when they come?

    2. Should we always never relax, and always worry that the bad times are just around the corner?

    Does your worrying really help anyway???

    Trust in Hashem, he always provides.

    yes you should save for rainy days, but don’t live life in fear on the verge of catastrophe. Enjoy Hashem’s brachos when we have them clearly, and build your emunah.

16. #12
    Yea, I think I remember the last time there was plenty of Chicken in Monsey

17. Dear Queen, it was worth a good laugh.

    However, this is a very serious subject and even with bodchim we should face up to the questions that current events must raise on anyone with yiras shamayim. There are several issues. Lashon Hara and business ethics are the more obvious ones, but there are others. We should each search our own pockets and check our own tzitzis before we start to search yenem’s.

    Let us also not forget to daven that this year will be one of much rain in Eretz Yisrael and that the drought will end. Let us daven that Hashem will have rachamanus on all of Bnei Yisrael, whereever they are (spritually and geographically). Let us learn more. Let us do more chesed. Let us be mekarev rechokim.

18. I would very humbly suggest that maybe it has something to do with how simple, easy and readily available purchasing Glatt Kosher has become.

    THIS COULD HAVE ALL BEEN AVOIDED, learn the rules and play fairly. Gd created cattle, chicken, duck, turkey so that his children would have good nutritious food to eat.

19. bacci40, go get a life. Chabad had nothing to do with it. We are already starting to see bare shelves here in Brooklyn. People tell me that their married children have been reporting meat shortages in Lakewood and Baltimore.

    I have already a very controversial solution; let’s go back to the good old days when people went and bought a live chicken, brought it to be slaughtered, and then came home and flicked the feathers and kashered them themselves in the basement using an old wooden washing board and a salt pail. I can still remember my mother going to the basement to do such a thing. But then again that was a few years ago….

    Then for meat, buy whatever you want and then go home and kasher it yourself! My mother always kashered her own liver because my father was not satisfied with the job that the butcher did. And after I got married I did the same; covered the stove with two layers of extra heavy aluminum foil, made little slits with a special knife set aside for such purposes, salted the liver and broiled myself. I was working and yes it was extra work. Would it solve all of the kashrus problems? No. But, I do believe that it would contribute to improving the current situation we are in now.

    It would also bring a zchus back to klal yisroel. Kashering was the specialty of the ba’alebusta. Not anymore. I watched the whole procedure once. It is so terrible to lift up the intestines of the chicken and look for the holes and any suspicious pimples or bumps.

    Like I said, it is controversial. Something to think about.

20. “ask the shearis Hapleta what is was like in the Heim” When? Before, during or after? Did the writer know that htere was a European meat shortage from the 1500’s to the 1960’s? Europe is not like North America. There is no “great plains” upon which to grow millions of head of cattle, sheep, etc for food consumptioin.

    My zeide’s fmily were butchers in the Tarnapol area. My mother a”h brought down stories of how, after shcechting an animal they Rav would darshen over every “moom” “trying to find a way to get the animal kosher” If only 305 of our cattle are kosher, imagine the terrific loss a treife would have been in the heim.

    is the sriter aware of the severe poverty of the East Euroopean jews during th 1800-1950’s? Poor people can’t afford to buy meat or chicken– that is why hthere are so many stories of Yidden buying fish ( herring) for Shabbos.

    Yes we are in golus, but we are not spoiled. not more than the goyim who can walk into any store and buy as much meat as they wish at prices 1/4 of what ours cost. This is not a siman that the Klal should accept a non-meat lifestyle. anymore than the Chubanwas. Afterall , before the Churban Yiden ate plenty of meat. Chazal in fact banned the restrictions of not eating meat afterthe churban.

    Let’s not make this into something it isn’t. the US has anti-trust laws so that in no industry there is a monopoly. AND THIS IS THE REASON WHY– SO WHEN THE MONOPOLY ACTS ILLEGALLY AND CLOSES DOWN, THE CITIAENS ARE PROTECTED!

    So who is at fault here? WE ARE. Everyone who stopped going to their local neighborhood butcher and started buying the “cheap” meat at the grocery store. Everyone who would go to a self-service butcher and chhose the cheaper Iowa chicken over the vinveland or Empire. AND EVERYONE WHO THINKS THAT “CHASSIDISHE SHECHITAH” IS BETTER THAT “REGULAR GLATT”. The reason the small shlacht hoisen went out of business is that WE stopped buying their products and WE are suffering because of it.

    five56

21. Funny, this letter is not backed up by statistics. It’s just one person’s opinion, or view, and it means in reality nothing. Yet everyone reacts like it’s true. Where has the truth gone? Anyone know?

22. Where has the truth gone?
    HASHEM is EMES

23. Folks, her post was about gratitude. Focus on what is good in your life (ie, easy access to kosher to meat) and you’ll be a happier person.