A Post in the Key of Random

The AgriProcessors Scandal: Coming to a Theater Near You
Colorado playwright Don Fried is working on a play based on the ongoing AgriProcessors saga. The Colorado Independent reports:

“What I wanted the play to be about is change,” he said. “Change is inevitable. Change hurts. People, often when they are in pain, react in ways that often turn out to be not the right way, but often there is nobody at fault. If you can learn to live [with change], you’ll learn to reach a new position where things are different, but you’ll get over it.”

Fried is currently toying with the idea of having one of the play’s discontented locals, a character who has not been happy about Jewish people coming to town and building a kosher meatpacking plant there, tip off the federal authorities and spark the immigration raid.

“But then, as the town starts to crater, that person and all the others begin to wonder what has been done — they’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said.

(Hat Tip: JTA's The Telegraph)

Rabbi Gellman Speaks Up for Animals
Rabbi Marc Gellman, a Reform rabbi in my hometown of Melville, N.Y., often includes animal-friendly messages in his articles for Newsday and other publications. (Click here to read my 2007 post about his Newsweek piece about zoos.) It was nice to see that he included animals in his January 3 Newsday article wishing season's greetings to many groups of people (and nonhumans):

I also pray for the thousands of pets living in cages, waiting to be adopted at shelters across America. They are all innocent creatures just waiting for unconditional love. If you can make room in your home and in your heart, please consider rescuing a homeless animal in this cold season of struggle. If there is room in your heart but not your home, make a donation to your local ... shelter. Pets waiting for someone to open their cages are G-d's creatures, too.

Hazon Positions Available
Last month, I mentioned that The Jew & The Carrot is looking for a variety of new personnel and that this could be a great opportunity for a vegetarian or vegan to contribute to the great Jewish food debate. Please note that the new application deadline is this Friday at 4 p.m. Click here to learn more about the open positions.

Welcome to The Jungle
I'm currently reading Upton Sinclair's muckraking classic The Jungle, which was published in 1906. More than a century later, the novel's eye-opening accounts of life for slaughterhouse workers is still relevant and important. I was impressed to see the animals' side of things included even in a 1906 book:

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it, and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and out of memory.

One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some were young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it—it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.