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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Orthodox Jews flock to SD, support leader on trial 

In the musty conference room of a South Dakota hotel, Sholom Rubashkin helps a disheveled man in a hooded sweat shirt wrap black bands around his left arm and head. Attached to each is a black box containing inscriptions from the Torah.

"It's on your arm close to your heart, on your head close to your thoughts," Rubashkin, a leader in the Orthodox Jewish community, tells Robert Graham in a thick Brooklyn accent. Graham nods.

For the 50-year-old Rubashkin, and the dozens of Orthodox Jewish men who arrive almost daily from across the country to support him, such spiritual guidance is partly why God led him to his federal trial in Sioux Falls.

The former manager of Iowa kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors Inc. is accused of defrauding a St. Louis bank and, if convicted, could spend the rest of his life in prison. But for now, he's spreading his spiritual message to people like Graham, a South Dakota Jewish man who was only remotely familiar with the broadest outlines of his religion's traditions.

That devotion and respect for the Rubashkin family is what draws the men to support a fellow member of their Hasidim, a branch of Judaism that translates to "the pious." Its members are easily identifiable in long black coats, fedoras and beards. They know Rubashkin more as the former teacher at an Atlanta Jewish school explaining his faith to young pupils.

"They have a solemn faith it's going to go the way it should," said Graham, a bus driver from Sioux Falls. "Even if it comes back guilty, they would say that's what God wanted."

While they pray in the hotel conference room, a jury of seven women and five men discuss in a courthouse five blocks away whether Rubashkin is guilty of 91 counts including bank, wire and mail fraud. They carry a combined maximum prison sentence of more than 1,000 years.

Rubashkin also will face a second federal trial on 72 immigration charges.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5impfJWbG5fmzCzpp6tXUlHeDJntQD9BT8RGO0

Comments:
Wonderful chillul hashem. Equating breaking state law with being a good Jew.

 

If anyone is a chilul hashem here it's you. what do you or don't you know about him.

all you know of is all the filth the government smeared on him.

Why don't you at least give him the benefit of the doubt?!

 

Ok, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Tell me another explanation to believe for each of the charges the government has.

 

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