Aron Rubashkin, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky on the “Forward 50”

BROOKLYN, NY [CHI] — Presidential elections, politics and the immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville led to Reb Aron Rubashkin along with Rabbi Menachem Genack to be added to the list of the Forwards 50 most influential jews this past year. Also on the list is Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky for his dedication to outreach as the vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch.

Excerpts from the list in the Extended Article!

Moshe Kotlarsky

As vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the education arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky oversees what amounts to a fourth main wing of Judaism, with some 5,000 Hasidic rabbis ministering to a vast, loosely affiliated flock of mostly nonobservant Jews. His network includes about 4,000 institutions in 70 countries — synagogues, community centers, parochial schools and preschools from Albuquerque to Zaire, plus prison chaplaincies and a few drug rehab clinics. It’s estimated that a Chabad facility opens up somewhere every week. Kotlarsky, 59, runs the empire with a firm but affable hand, approving new locations, selecting field rabbis (shluchim) and, most important, doling out millions to the field from a donor-funded foundation he controls. He also heads the fast-growing Chabad on Campus Foundation, operating at more than 100 colleges. One of Chabad’s most visible public faces, he travels tirelessly to address gatherings worldwide and presides genially over the massive annual shluchim convention in New York. Outsiders sometimes question Chabad’s aggressive way of moving into small communities, especially in Eastern Europe, and some fret about the free liquor that often seems to help boost attendance. In 2008, Chabad traditionalists attacked Kotlarsky over the movement’s visible presence at the Beijing Olympics. Chabad’s late leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, considered the Olympics idolatrous because they originated as a religious tribute to pagan Greek gods. Still, few argue with success.

Aaron Rubashkin

It is safe to say that Aaron Rubashkin did not want to become famous this year. Rubashkin was happy to labor behind the scenes for the last few decades, turning his family business, Agriprocessors, into the largest producer of kosher meat in the country. His children have run the operations on the ground, but the octogenarian Rubashkin has been back in Brooklyn making the big decisions. Those decisions helped the company grow, but they also led it down the path to trouble. Agriprocessors’ hiring and pay policies resulted in a federal immigration raid on its plant in Postville, Iowa, earlier this year. Since then, Rubashkin and his family have faced a number of criminal charges that eventually led the company to declare bankruptcy. The company’s problems have sparked a protest movement and, in turn, changed the way people think about kosher food. None of this would have happened without Rubashkin. While the final judgment about him will be rendered in the courts, his trial in the media has already changed minds.

Menachem Genack

As the kosher meat industry nearly fell apart over the last year, it was Rabbi Menachem Genack who was trusted to hold things together. As the CEO of the country’s largest kosher supervisor, O.U. Kosher, Genack, 60, was sought out by people inside and outside the industry after America’s largest kosher meat producer, Agriprocessors, was hit with an immigration raid, criminal charges and eventually bankruptcy. The sequence of events had the potential to cripple the supply of meat to observant Jews across the country, but Genack avoided showing any signs of panic. At the beginning, his slow and steady leadership disappointed many liberal voices in the Jewish community, who wanted him to take more forceful action against Agriprocessors. Later on, when the weight of evidence piled up against the company, Genack was willing to disappoint many in the Orthodox community by demanding that Agriprocessors change its leadership. This approach has not been enough to stop the implosion of Agriprocessors — and the human and animal suffering that came along with it — but Genack has supplied a modicum of sanity to an industry in crisis.

Lipa Schmeltzer

In the cloistered world of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, Hasidic singer Lipa Schmeltzer is a superstar. Mixing Hasidic musical traditions and contemporary pop sounds, the 30-year-old Skverer Hasid has become something of a sensation — though not an uncontroversial one. In March, Schmeltzer was set to headline a charity benefit at Madison Square Garden’s WaMu Theater. A little more than two weeks before the concert, some of American ultra-Orthodoxy’s leading rabbinic authorities issued an edict banning attendance. They warned that the event would cause “ribaldry and lightheadedness.” Out of respect for rabbinic authority, Schmeltzer deferred to the decree and the concert was canceled. But the ban generated a fierce backlash. Some people suggested that fanatics had misled the rabbis about the nature of the concert, which, consistent with communal norms, was to have separate seating for men and women. Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the Hasidic stronghold of Boro Park, told The New York Times: “In all my 26 years of representing this community, I can’t remember anything that has so shaken the people.” Schmeltzer, for his part, has continued making music — and drawing appreciative crowds at public appearances. The title of his latest album can be seen as a rejoinder to critics who regard his pop-inflected songs and burgeoning popularity as threats to traditional Jewish values. It is called “A Poshiter Yid” — Yiddish for “A Simple Jew.”

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