Copyright 2000 Journal Sentinel Inc. (Wisconsin)
October 10, 2000 Tuesday ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: CUE; Pg. 02E
LENGTH: 830 words
HEADLINE: No promised land for Jews, Iowans
BYLINE: CURT SCHLEIER Special to the Journal Sentinel
BODY:
In 1987, Aaron Rubashkin, a butcher from Brooklyn and a member of the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher sect, opened a kosher slaughterhouse in the unlikely outpost of Postville, Iowa.
Postville had been a community in decline. Local manufacturing had largely evaporated, leaving few opportunities for young people. Not surprisingly, the community welcomed the Jews. At first.
What's not to like? They brought money, and they brought jobs. Real estate values went up, and the entire area became more prosperous. By 1996, the slaughter house employed 350 people, a considerable number in a community of only 1,478.
But opposition to the Lubavitchers began to grow.
By 1997, it was sufficiently strong that a referendum was placed on the ballot to allow Postville to annex land surrounding the community, including the land the slaughterhouse was on. Ostensibly, it was intended to put a measure of control over Rubashkin's operations.
"What the annexation really meant was an opportunity to tell the Hasidic Jews to leave the God-fearing city of Postville," Stephen G. Bloom writes in his excellent and evenly balanced account of the travails.
Was it anti-Semitism at work? Another example of jealousy of Jewish success, as the Hasidim suggested? Or was it, as the locals contended, that the Lubavitchers were lousy neighbors and dishonorable people? The truth, as always, apparently lay somewhere in the middle.
Bloom, a largely secular Jew who frequently frames his relationship to his faith in terms of Jewish food, came to Iowa from San Francisco to teach journalism at the state university. At first, Bloom, his wife and their young son loved their new home.
But by their third year there, the blush had begun to fade.
"We were lonely. We didn't fit into the local social order. . . . We missed people like us."
Soon Bloom begins to see "them" everywhere. Two female American Gothic types stare at the Bloom family in a restaurant, and as the Blooms leave ask "in an Almira Gulch tone, 'You're not from around here.' " Bloom took this to mean "what they were driving at wasn't where we were from, but who we were, what we were: city folks, Jews. . . ."
The Blooms are asked to host the neighborhood's annual watermelon social, an event that typically attracts 80 people. Perhaps a half dozen showed up. Why? The headline in the Cedar Rapids Press one Christmas: "He Has Risen." Mazel tov.
When Bloom heard about the Postville Jews he was drawn to them. He "realized the Hasidim in Postville were as close to family as Iris and I could muster." So he arranged to visit Postville. "Perhaps I'd find someone like my grandmother Rose, who used to stand in her cluttered kitchen in New York, then Miami Beach, to mix matzo ball, egg yolks and a dollop of schmaltz for her superb matzo ball soup."
What he found when he got there was a town torn asunder. Certainly there was some blatant anti-Semitism. One local told Bloom "they'll take whatever they can get. The Jews, as long as they have their hands in someone else's pocket, then they'll stay."
The Hasidim had some supporters, too, though many of them seem to be people who directly benefited from their arrival.
But the crux of the problem seemed to revolve around three major issues. The Hasidim were very aloof. They treated the locals as though they were diseased. "If they mix with us they think we'll contaminate them," someone told Bloom.
More disturbing to Bloom was that the Lubavitchers were dishonorable in their business dealings. They'd buy something and not pay for it or pay or withhold payment for a long time.
"I get bills and throw them away," one bragged to him. "The more bills I get, the faster I throw them away. If they want to get paid that badly, they'll send me another notice and then another. When I'm ready to pay them, I pay them."
That kind of behavior is not tolerated by the Torah, which has specific rules not only about religious behavior, but personal and business dealings as well.
Finally, the community got upset when there was no response from the Hasidic community when two Lubavitcher youths committed an armed robbery during which a local woman was shot and seriously wounded.
I contacted a Lubavitcher rabbi and described the book to him. He knew of the Rubashkin family, and said it was well respected within Lubavitcher circles and known for its charity. But then he sighed. Of course, not every one who is religious on the outside is religious inside.
Bloom had a love-hate relationship with the Hasidim. But ultimately he was repelled by their irreligious behavior and in the book comes down squarely on the side of the Iowa town folk.
Bloom has produced an honest, balanced and remarkable piece of journalism. It's an interesting, readable story, too.
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Curt Schleier, a regular contributor to the Journal Sentinel book page, is author of "How to Think Like the World's Great Masters of M&A," which McGraw-Hill will publish in November.