Comments (0)Hechsher Tzedek Gets $100,000 Grant
December 11, 2008New York
JTA Wire Service
The Conservative movement’s ethical kashrut initiative received a $100,000 grant.
Organizers of the initiative, known as Hechsher Tzedek, hope to use the grant money from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to kick-start the project. Specifically they hope to award the hechsher, a certification identifying kosher foods as having been ethically produced, to at least three companies by September 2009 and at least 15 by the middle of 2010.
Hechsher Tzedek was spearheaded by Minnesota Rabbi Morris Allen largely in response to allegations that surfaced about the treatment of workers at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The initiative aims to certify kosher food producers who meet certain criteria relating to their treatment of workers and environmental sensitivity, among other factors.
According to its mission statement, the Nathan Cummings Foundation seeks “to build a socially and economically just society that values nature and protects the ecological balance for future generations; promotes humane health care; and fosters arts and culture that enriches communities.”
Obama: Iranian Threats Against Israel ‘Unacceptable’
President-elect Barack Obama said Iran’s “threats against Israel are contrary to everything that we believe in and what the international community should accept.”
On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Obama told host Tom Brokaw that the United States needs to “ratchet up tough but direct diplomacy with Iran” and make it clear to the Iranians that their development of nuclear weapons and their funding of terrorist organizations “like Hamas and Hezbollah,” and threats against Israel are “unacceptable.”
The president-elect suggested a “carrots and sticks” approach to changing the way Iran operates, including using economic incentives and sanctions.
Iran recently announced that it has 5,000 working centrifuges enriching uranium that much of the Western world believes will be used to create nuclear weapons to target the United States and Israel.
Presidents Conference calls for Pollard Pardon
A major Jewish umbrella group asked President Bush to pardon Jonathan Pollard. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the foreign policy umbrella body for U.S. Jewish groups, approved the plea in a conference call, its executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein, told JTA.
“It’s time that he be released,” Hoenlein said of Pollard, a former U.S. Navy analyst who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for spying for Israel. “He has expressed remorse.”
The plea, which will be sent Friday, is to release Pollard on humanitarian grounds. Hoenlein said other interventions are also planned.
Pollard’s pardon is opposed by the U.S. intelligence community; however, presidents on the brink of retirement often feel freer to take up controversial pardons.
Bush Extends Jerusalem Waiver
President Bush extended his waiver of a law mandating the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The order, sent Dec. 4 to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and published Tuesday, cites the “national security interests of the United States” in waiving the Jerusalem Embassy Act for six months.
Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, have waived the act routinely since its passage in 1995, citing the dangers that Muslim outrage over such an act would pose to U.S. interests in the Middle East.
Clinton and Bush also have favored delaying such a move until Jerusalem’s status is settled in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
With Bush leaving office in January, this will be the last time he waives the law.
Bush Taps Former RJC Chair for U.N. Post
President Bush nominated a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition to a United Nations post.
Bush picked Cheryl Halpern to be an alternate U.N. representative. Alternate representatives present U.S. views in a number of smaller forums, including at committee meetings and at ancillary U.N. bodies.
The nomination was sent Monday to the U.S. Senate.
Halpern, who formerly chaired the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, would serve in the position through September, when the U.N. General Assembly’s 63rd session ends.
Bush made Halpern a delegate to the 2003 Organization for Security and Cooperation Conference on Anti-Semitism.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.