Eco-Kosher Movement Aims To Heed Tradition, Conscience

"We're not trying to muscle ourselves into the business that others have developed" of certifying kosher foods, Allen said. "We do believe that most Jews, if given a choice between 'This item is kosher' and 'This item is kosher and also was produced by a company that respects its workers and the environment,' that most Jews will choose the latter."

Only about 15 percent of the nation's roughly 5.2 million Jews keep kosher. Yet their buying power, plus the appeal of kosher items to some other consumers, has resulted in a huge market. Kosher certification now appears on 100,000 food products, made by 10,500 companies, worth $225 billion a year, according to Menachem Lubinsky, editor of the trade publication KosherToday.

In consumer surveys, less than a quarter of the shoppers who deliberately choose kosher products are observant Jews, Lubinsky said. That statistic is not lost on Conservative rabbis, who acknowledge that their new certification could appeal to both Jews and non-Jews.

Kimelman-Block, who is married to a Conservative rabbi, recalled feeling ashamed after reading articles last year in the Jewish newspaper the Forward about the treatment of workers and cattle at a large kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa.

"I know that [the Iowa plant] is probably no worse than the other U.S. food processors, but they're doing it in the name of Judaism, in the name of holiness," she said. "That's the thing about kashrut -- it's supposed to be ethical, and it . . . has this dark side that either people don't know about, or if they know about, they think it's irrelevant."

Allen voiced similar feelings after he and other Conservative rabbis inspected the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, in March 2006 and found labor practices that they suspect are also common in non-kosher plants.

"We found people arriving from the mountainsides of Guatemala on a Tuesday and being on the front of the production line on Wednesday," Allen said. "We saw people who could barely read Spanish getting training in English and having no idea what was said to them."

Agriprocessors says the allegations were false or overblown and have been resolved, and Orthodox inspectors have reiterated that the plant's output is strictly kosher. But Allen said his visit to the slaughterhouse changed his thinking.

"Having promoted kashrut for 21 years and made it a central part of my rabbinate, all of a sudden it made sense to me: How could I be satisfied if the ritual aspects of kashrut were being followed, but the way the workers were treated was degrading and contrary to Jewish ethical norms?" he asked.

As the movement catches on, the number of products certified as both kosher and organic is rising fast. The Jew and the Carrot Web site has spawned 10 community-supported agricultural cooperatives, in which Jews around the country have bought shares in local farmers' organic harvests.

One of them is Kimelman-Block's group of about 25 families at Tifereth Israel Congregation on 16th Street in Northwest Washington. Three years ago, they began obtaining fruits and vegetables from a farm in Brandywine. This year, they arranged for free-range kosher chickens and grass-fed kosher beef as well.

"I'm very interested in my children having a relationship with where their food comes from," said Kimelman-Block, 36, who has two daughters and a son, ages 2 to 7. "I just think it's an important part of what I'm teaching them that we go out to this farm and we know the farmer and we help plant the potatoes and help pick the strawberries."

Since many eco-kosher Jews are reducing or eliminating meat from their diet, Kimelman-Block is faintly embarrassed to be moving in the other direction. But after 14 years of mostly vegetarian eating, with occasional fish for protein, she is excited about consuming small quantities of beef and chicken -- as long as she knows its origin.

"Environmental issues used to depress me. It was just bleak," she said. "Doing something makes me feel much more positive."