An emergency committee of the Kashruth Association led by Rabbi Nachman Ebin met yesterday with Arthur Simon, Health Department investigator in charge of kashruth enforcement to formulate plans for the reorganization of the Association.
The conference was called after a heated parley by the Association at the Hotel Pennsylvania Monday night which lasted until early yesterday morning.
Debate and recriminations marked the meeting. At one point, the meeting became so disorderly that Simon and Louis Lande, representing the City of New York, threatened to walk out and withdraw the City’s support from the Association.
Simon told the 150 assembled members, for the most part orthodox rabbis, that the Association must be completely reorganized to obviate, such wrangling as marked that meeting. Failing that, Simon said that the Association would not be allowed to control rabbinical supervision of poultry markets in New York as was previously planned by Judge Otto Rosalsky, the Mayor’s mediator in the poultry market difficulties.
“This conference is called by the order of Judge Rosalsky,” Rabbi Ebin, chairman, said in opening it. “Judge Rosalsky told me that he wants to hear the views of the Kashruth Association before announcing his decision in the poultry situation.”
Rabbi Ebin and other speakers attacked the Rabbinical Advisory Council of Fifty recently appointed by Aldermanic President Bernard S. Deutsch to advise the City on Kashruth problems.
“The committee spent its time dealing in trifles,” Rabbi Ebin declared.
Rabbi Ebin quoted Judge Rosalsky as saying, “I won’t give a decision unless it is backed by the unified rabbinate.”
The Judge was not present at the meeting.
“Not one rabbi in New York will be ignored in the plans for rabbinical supervision,” Simon told the rabbis.
A resolution was adopted backing the stand of the shochtim that they cannot slaughter more than 12,000 pounds of poultry per week and guarantee that it is kosher.
Resolutions thanking Judge Rosalsky, Simon, Mayor LaGuardia, Deutsch, and Lande for their aid to the cause of Kashruth in New York City were passed by acclaim.
The Association resolved that one-half cent per pound of poultry must be allocated for rabbinical supervision and one-half cent for slaughtering.
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