Send Sholom Rubashkin to South Park: A Modest Proposal

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are known for their often crude but spot-on parodies of public figures and the news of the day. Yesterday, with the input of a friend, I started to hash out an idea for what I think could make for an excellent episode, the Sholom Rubashkin case.

Like most of America, the town of South Park is in the grip of the economic downturn. To their rescue comes Sholom Rubashkin as the music man in a black hat and jacket. Hearing of South Park's famous cows, Rubashkin wishes to build a kosher slaughterhouse in town. The prospect of the new jobs sends the people of South Park into jubilation. They see that Rubashkin is such a moral person; he has a special needs son. Kyle goes to work training to be a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. Cartman and Kenny get jobs at the plant after telling Rubashkin that they are eighteen. The sight of so much meat makes Cartman temporarily take back everything nasty he has ever said about Jews, particularly after Rubashkin gives him control of a giant meat-hook crane and fails to notice how Cartman is using it to rip the lungs out of cows. Kenny falls into a meat grinder and becomes a kosher Kenny dog. Meanwhile, Stan, suspicious of some oddities he witnesses around the plant, begins to investigate. He sneaks in on a secret conversation and discovers that Rubashkin is an Elder of Zion James Bond villain planning to ship in unsuspecting illegal immigrant workers and slaughter them for cheap meat. Sneaking away, Stan finds Kyle and Cartman, the latter needing little convincing, and the three friends confront Rubashkin. Rubashkin is insulted: "How dare you accuse me of being an anti-Semitic caricature." To which Stan responds: "You are an anti-Semitic caricature." A chase ensues through the plant, but the children escape Rubashkin and his hench–Jews and inform the entire town. Kyle's father is outraged and immediately offers to defend Rubashkin pro bono. Kyle addresses his father and the town, telling them that it is fine to have religious ideals and to be careful with what you eat, but these ideals should be matched with a concern with the ethics involved in producing the food. The episode ends with Rubashkin in prison with his hench-Jews, carrying him around in a chair so he does not have to walk four cubits without tzitzit.

As this episode would in no way depict Mohammed nor offend Muslims there is no reason for Comedy Central to censure it.

Jewish Justice for Sholom Rubashkin

As with many people in the Orthodox community, I have recently been getting inundated with emails asking for aid for Sholom Rubashkin. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Rubashkin is the former head of the infamous Rubashkin slaughtering plant in Postville Iowa. Last year it was subject to a major federal raid over the use of illegal immigrants. Now Rubashkin is up on charges of fraud and, apparently, the prosecution is trying to put him away for life. Rubashkin certainly makes for a funny cause célèbre for the Orthodox community to get behind, particularly as there does not seem to be much question that he is guilty of at least some of the charges. The response to this seems to boil down to saying "what Rubashkin did was wrong, but the punishment he faces does not fit the crime." Added to this are the insinuations that Rubashkin is the victim of an anti-Semitic legal system willing to go to any lengths to discredit the practice of kosher food. Thus Rubashkin enters the company of that other great Jewish "hero," Jonathan Pollard.

Not that I understand the full details of the case, but life does sound extreme to me. The thing is that I have a hard time getting worked up about or feeling sorry for Rubashkin. For years now Rubashkin has been a running disgrace of God's name and to Orthodox Jews. I lost any sympathy for him once the scandal of the video of the cow getting its lungs ripped out hit the web. By the time the government decided to raid the plant, I could only wonder why this did not happen sooner. There is no law in American jurisprudence against making Jews look bad. Judaism itself, while it exhorts its members to sanctify God's name, does not have any specific punishment for desecrating it. That being said there are Jewish sources, such as the biblical case of Phineas, that support the extra-judicial execution of those who bring disgrace to God's name. Furthermore, there are sources, such as the biblical case of King Saul, to justify suicide in order to avoid the desecration of God's name.

I am not suggesting that anyone harm Rubashkin. As American citizens, we are bound to respect American law and do our utmost to ensure that he receives American justice. Rubashkin's crimes are against the United States and the United States government's right to punish him comes before any theoretical Jewish justice. Furthermore, as a committed law and order person, I fear the prospect of vigilante justice as a path toward chaos.  But if I had Rubashkin to myself in a place in a place where no government authority applied (say in certain parts of Africa or Antarctica), I would take a leaf from Japanese honor culture, hand him a knife and ask him to do the right thing. If he refused then I would take out a gun and pull the trigger.

While I will have to hold off on any Jewish justice fantasies with Rubashkin, I am free not to feel bad for Rubashkin. Furthermore, I am free to actively rejoice at the prospect that he will get at least a fraction of what he deserves. We Jews should not be berating the prosecution for their supposed anti-Semitism. On the contrary, we should be thanking them for carrying out God's will and saving us from the legal and moral quagmire of Jewish justice.