There’s something almost poetic in watching the Forward’s Nathaniel Popper — who two years ago broke the story of, as he puts it now, the "questionable way" in which Agriprocessors dealt with its employees — returning to the Brooklyn butcher shop of the company founder, Aaron Rubashkin, for a reflective interview about the company’s rise and fall.
With the company having declared bankruptcy last month, federal agents now pursuing the seizure of Agri’s property in Iowa, and Sholom Rubashkin — Aaron’s son and the former manager of the Postville, Iowa packing plant — languishing in jail, Popper isn’t the only one who thought it an appropriate moment for a post-mortem (see here).
But while the Agri saga may — finally, mercifully — be drawing to a close, for the residents of Postville, Jewish and Gentile alike, it is anything but.
