From Iowa to Otisville to Brooklyn, Mishpacha accompanied the Rubashkins from their days of darkness to their personal redemption

Back in the summer of 2009, Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin was gathering the inner strength to face the impending collapse of the shtetl he’d built amid the cornfields of Iowa — a place that Yerushalmi shochtim and searching American teens could call home. Mishpacha’s Yisroel Besser heard about the Rubashkin family’s business, community, fears, and unflinching hope (Photos Yossi Fler, Menachem Kozlovsky, Flash90, Shalom Diamond, JDN , Mishpacha archives)

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t 3:21 p.m. on 2 Teves, December 20, 2017, the last e-mail was sent.

The writer, tapping furiously on the keyboard without regard to grammar and punctuation because computer use is limited in prison, still managed a cute icon to convey his excitement in the day:

Zois Chanukah \ \ \ \ | / / / / THIS is Chanukah 🙂

Sholom Uvrocho 🙂 HAPPY CHANUKAH 🙂

BARUCH HASHEM We are Holding By the 8th day of Chanukah, Called “ZOIS CHANUKAH” THIS IS CHANUKAH 🙂

BARUCH HASHEM we were able to light the Chanukah Menoirah with Shemen Zayis in a Mehudar way and also to light it on time.

The Menoirah Needs to be lit, when the sun Sets, which is approx 4:28!

Since they Lock everyone in the Cells from 3:30-4:30 Plus! it wouldn’t be possible to light on time!

so i asked the Chaplain if he could make it so they count us in the Chapel, instead of the Cells!

This was a request to do it for ALL of Chanukah and initially it sounded like Higher than Sechel to ask for that,

BUT, we need to serve HASHEM with Higher than the Limitations of Sechel, so i Persisted and said this is what it says we need to do, so what if it will be for so many days! BARUCH HASHEM since it is the Proper Time to Light the Menoirah,

He Agreed and BARUCH HASHEM we were able to Fulfill the Mitzvoh PROPERLY! the Way a Yid needs to do it 🙂

So, we see again, Davkah thru Serving HASHEM with Higher Than Sechel are we able to serve HASHEM properly :)….

A FRAILICHEN CHANUKAH 🙂 A LICTIKER CHANUKAH 🙂

UZI AILECHO AZAMAIROH, KEE ELOIKIM MISGABEE, ELOIKAI CHASDI 🙂

PODOH BESHOLOM NAFSHI, BESUROIS TOIVOIS DIDAN NOTZACH 🙂

sholom mordechai Halevi Ben Rivkoh Sheyichye 🙂

GEULOH NOW!

It was typical of the e-mails he’d been sending for years: exuberance, originality, that mix of upper case and lower case and exclamation point unique to him.

Just over an hour later, a warden threw open the cell door and barked out, “Rubashkin, come with me.” Unsure where he was being summoned to, Inmate 10755029 reached for his tallis and tefillin. He’d been sent to solitary before, and years in prison had taught him to be prepared.

The next day, I was seated in Crown Heights studying my friend, Sholom Mordechai. He looked ecstatic, and the black frock and hat were more respectable than green prison garb, but, to be honest, it was the exact same smile I’d seen over years of visits to Otisville. He was humming, “Al nisecha, v’al nifle’osecha, v’al yeshuasecha.”

The room grew quiet as someone brought in Sholom Mordechai’s Chovos Halevavos and placed the thin sefer gently on the table laden with fruit platters and cake and empty paper cups. One of the Rubashkin boys looked at the sefer and asked me if I remember the article.

A few years ago, Reb Sholom Mordechai wrote a piece for this magazine depicting his last day in prison, how he would walk out for the last time:

I will rush into Cell 307 and gather together my few precious belongings, my tallis and tefillin, my precious seforim. I will, b’ezras Hashem, hold tightly to my sefer Chovos Halevavos, which came with me through all the different levels of Gehinnom and carry it close as I walk out, free.

Turns out he kept his word.

He generally doesn’t keep seforim in his tallis bag, but he’d been learning Chovos Halevavos a few days earlier and stuffed the sefer into his tallis bag, so when he walked down the hall for the last time, with just his tallis bag in his arm, he had the sefer as well.

He once told me about his personal history with the sefer, which goes back to the jail in Dubuque, Iowa, where he was first imprisoned. “I remember picking it up on Asarah B’Teves and reading through the whole Shaar Habitachon. If there was a turning point for me, it was that day, when I felt the Ribbono shel Olam wrap His arms around me, and that’s how it’s been ever since.”

Postville, Iowa. Where once upon a time, a large, rambling house with rooms upon rooms sat at the end of a road, a home with an ever-expanding table and space for the stream of guests and bochurim who came to the Postville yeshivah. Most came to learn — but some came simply to be, to find their way back into the system after having struggled, confident that at Rubashkin’s, they would find work, stability, respect, and the atmosphere of warmth they craved.

And what better place than Postville? Sholom Rubashkin knew that to create the ideal shlacht-hoiz, he needed the best shochtim, and a steady stream of Yerushalmi Yidden — Breslov and Toldos Aharon and Karlin — along with genuine Litvaks and spirited Sephardim came to take advantage of the opportunity. There was plenty of work in Postville, ample housing, and the finest little community.

Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, more head counselor than boss of this kehillah, was proud of the chassidishe community with the cheder and mikveh and yeshivah, but nothing gave him more joy than the shul, called Ahavas Yisroel, because it was there that the vision was realized. They davened nusach Ari, but he insisted that the minhag of every mispallel be accommodated and respected.

“We said Akdamus on Shavuos, and while the chassidim recited yotzros on Yom Tov, we sat quietly,” Sholom remembers. “We were going to create a place of achdus, where every Yid could be himself, yet still part of the whole. It worked.”

Then came the raid.

In 2008, the clear blue sky over tiny Postville grew dark with helicopters as a swarm of agents descended on the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant, the largest workplace raid in American history. The charges flew: bank fraud and worker abuse and immigration violations.

The production line at Agriprocessors slowly ground to a halt — the trucks stopped rolling, the company ceased slaughtering, and then filed for bankruptcy. The Postville economy faltered, sputtered, and died.

With America’s largest kosher meat producer effectively brought to its knees, there was a vacuum in the kosher food industry. The government-appointed trustees were seeking buyers, although much later it would be learned that rather than let the Rubashkins sell the company for its true value — more than $60 million — the government worked to drive down the price, refusing several suitable offers. (The ramifications would be significant — the more the company was devalued, the more the alleged fraud and the longer the prison sentence.) In time, a respected frum businessman and major philanthropist purchased the company for less than $10 million, and at the time, I interviewed him regarding his plans for the company.

But then, in the summer of 2009, a friend, Chanoch Nelken, called me with a challenge. How could I report on the new ownership with such a cavalier, matter-of-fact treatment of the old owners? Had I taken the time to learn about the background of Agri? Or had I simply accepted the stories of Rubashkin guilt without hearing their side of the story?

Two flights and a long drive through cornfields later, I arrived in Postville.

I saw the house of the “magnate” — spacious, to be sure (it also served as an unofficial yeshivah dormitory) but simple in furnishings and dיcor. I met the locals — nearly all of them former employees and fiercely loyal to their old boss. Traffic on Postville’s one-lane main road stopped as Rubashkin crossed the street, the non-Jews in all directions calling out greetings and regards. They told me he treated them in a way they’d never been treated before — besides paying them fairly, he was the type of boss who would lend them money in a pinch, help out in a medical emergency, and ensure that every employee took home a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving.

As I met this couple who wore their smiles like armor, determined to deal with the crushing loss their business and life’s work with dignity and faith, Mrs. Leah Rubashkin told me of her early dreams of shlichus, how they’d started off in Atlanta teaching Torah until her father-in-law, Reb Avraham Aharon Rubashkin, had asked his sons to join him in this new business venture. And now, the business was gone. Maybe they could go back on shlichus after all.

“We have to live with ‘alef, beis, gimmel,’ which stand for emunah, bitachon and geulah. That’s my mantra, my raft in this stormy sea,” she said then, telling me how after the raid, her husband had been imprisoned, and then suddenly freed on bail. “And now,” she says today, “we realized that the days of the decision and release were Alef, Beis, and Gimmel Shevat — because emunah and bitachon bring geulah.”

I was very taken by this couple and their children, each one reflecting the dynamism and warmth of their parents. I met Moishy, who’s autistic — and who’d suffered terribly in his father’s absence. At the time, he sat nearby as his parents spoke, reaching for his father’s arm every few moments.

There was another trial scheduled, they said, but they were confident. The immigration violation charges had been  dropped, and they were acquitted on the child labor charges. The remaining trial was for bank fraud, the prosecution seeking a 25-year sentence.

Later, newspaper publisher and author Conrad Black would write in the Huffington Post:

It was at this point that the rabid dementia so pandemic among American prosecutors began to erupt. There were an unheard-of seven superseding indictments, including the first-ever prosecution under the 90-year-old Packers and Stockyards Act, for paying a cattle dealer eleven days late. The financial case against Mr. Rubashkin was based on allegations that when business became difficult, he forged some invoices to exaggerate receivables, and sent some incoming cash to cover trade payables in preference to paying down the lender. There was no suggestion that he pocketed a cent for himself, but he was apparently guilty of a relatively minor commercial fraud which did not in itself cost the lender and assisted in keeping the business going. However, prosecutiamania now possessed the local authorities, and the financial prosecution was reinforced by the second half of the pincers operation, a preposterous 9,311 counts of child labor. This helped sink the business and put almost everyone out of work, but almost all the charges were dropped on the eve of trial and the rest were thrown out by the jurors. This entire onslaught on the subject of child labor was completely spurious.

At the trial, Judge Linda Reade ignored the prosecution’s request for a 25-year sentence — she felt a 27-year sentence was in order.

There was a moment of silence, total disbelief.

The defendant sat there motionless, then recited Shehechyanu on this new mitzvah of emunah that had come his way. He penned a short note to his wife before being surrounded by bailiffs and handcuffed and hauled away. Please stay strong through this ordeal. Tell the bochurim that I really loved learning with them and Hashem should save me even at this time and who really knows. Just tell everyone I am unshaken in my faith in Hashem. A person goes through life and we are only avadim of Hashem. And so I am an eved of Hashem and accept what comes. Sholom Mordechai haLevi.

And he was led away.

Only after the trial ended did it come to light that the judge, Linda R. Reade, had cooperated completely with, and was effectively an important member of, the prosecution team.

On the night of June 22, 2010, in a scene that couldn’t have been more similar or more different than the scene in Boro Park last Wednesday night, thousands of Jews gathered in the streets of Brooklyn. It was an impromptu, unplanned show of support, empathy, and outrage.

There was Tehillim and then some speeches. Among the speakers was Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz, editor and publisher of Yated Ne’eman.

The tall man with the instinctive feel for a winning cause had traveled his own journey to the story. After the initial reports of Rubashkin’s wrongdoing, Rabbi Pesach Lerner had urged Rabbi Lipschutz to travel to Postville and see the situation for himself. At the time, Sholom Mordechai, under the terms of his bail, wasn’t allowed to speak with his visitor and could only wave. But Pinny Lipschutz spoke with enough employees to draw his own conclusions.

The newspaper of the yeshivah world — not exactly mouthpiece of the Chabad movement — was the driver on a wagon of voices raised in support of the Lubavitcher chassid, eventually pulling it virtually alone as many others grew tired of the ride.

On the night of the sentence, Rabbi Lipschutz addressed the spontaneous rally and, though there wasn’t much to say, he issued one resounding statement. “Reb Sholom Mordche,” he called out, “we’re here to tell you ‘zorgts zich nisht,’ don’t worry, it will be good.”

More than a platitude, it would become a mission statement. From that night until Zos Chanukah of this year, there wasn’t an issue of Yated without some sort of update or new information on the Rubashkin case. Rabbi Lipschutz’s vision and the diligent, tenacious reporting of Mrs. Debbie Maimon were pivotal — not just in exposing the corruption and bringing politicians and judicial experts on board, but more importantly, in keeping Sholom Mordechai’s name alive in people’s hearts and in their tefillos — the ultimate catalyst for his release.

(Even with the sympathy for Rubashkin after the inexplicably cruel sentence, screaming “injustice” wasn’t the most popular position to take. Pinny refused to be dissuaded by the naysayers and hand-wringers, though. Eventually, every one of his claims of judicial misconduct would be confirmed.)

In time, Sholom Mordechai would be transferred to the federal prison in Otisville, New York, and his wife and children would settle in Monsey, about an hour away. Pinny and Chani Lipschutz would become family — Mrs. Leah Rubashkin, who would smile to the world for the next seven years, also needed encouragement, and they would be the ones cheering her on.

There was a long summer of rallies. Lakewood went first. Thousands gathered to say Tehillim and to donate to the newly formed Klal Yisroel Fund for Sholom Mordechai’s defense. They heard from former congressman Bob Barr, who’d been a federal prosecutor — the first in a flood of legal experts who would call out the prosecutorial misconduct and harshness of sentence.

(On Sholom Mordechai’s first full day of freedom last week, he very much wanted to visit Lakewood to say thank you for the community’s consistent support, and especially for the visits of the rosh yeshivah, Rav Yeruchem Olshin. The Lakewood event ended up being postponed for technical reasons.)

Rabbi Lipschutz, chairman of the fund, remembers those early days. “We knew then the yeshuah would come from the people, the tefillos of the women baking challah, the children with their brachos parties. We felt the zechus harabim.”

He would sit down on Thursday nights with a group of Satmar chassidim to eat cholent and plot strategy for the Lubavitcher chassid.

I recall sitting in his office and seeing him shake out envelopes addressed to the Klal Yisroel Fund, quarters and nickels from children. There was a woman who pawned her jewelry to be able to help. What was it that captured the hearts of the people, and what was it that caused such euphoria when the happy ending finally arrived?

I didn’t know Sholom Mordechai well enough before he went in to what he would refer to as “a place called prison,” but I doubt his assertion that he was just a “plain butcher.”

Meir Simcha Rubashkin once told me that a few weeks before the sentencing, his parents went for a walk in the park. “They headed off in to the woods together. They came back after an hour and a half or so, looking calm, as if they had discussed how it was now time to take all their life’s spiritual ideals and implement them, how it was time to make all the talk of bitachon practical. There was a sense that they had prepared themselves for the journey ahead, and that they were ready.”

I have an e-mail saved, one this father of ten wrote after the Sedorim on his first Pesach in prison (punctuation and grammar corrected):

Dear Kinderlach,

…As much as I wanted to be home with you, Hashem obviously wanted me to have my Seder here in Otisville… Let me share with you a few of the insights we had at this very unusual Seder.

When it came time for Hallel, those of us who knew it sang it together slowly. I closed my eyes and pictured myself in shul davening together with a roomful of Yidden. What power the imagination has. The words of Hallel, so full of longing, carried me far away. I was lost in these exhilarating thoughts, miles away from everything in the prison. Suddenly I opened my eyes. There I was, back in Otisville, with a bunch of people staring at me in silence…

I swallowed my emotion and started arranging the matzos on the ke’arah with all the other items, as questions flew around the table. Why three matzos? Why those strange foods? Why the four cups of grape juice? Besides one Yid, no one knew about a ke’arah… One guy from Massachusetts said his childhood Seder was basically a rush to get to the dinner and the brisket they had for the main course….

…When we came to maror, someone asked why the maror is at the center of the plate. Is “bitterness” the essence of life? Is that what it all comes down to? There was the kind of silence you “hear” when people really want an answer. I talked about the bitterness of our own situation, each of us suffering in his own way. I said some people here deal the pain by covering it up with a fake show of high spirits. This creates a numbness that keeps them from feeling anything. If you can’t feel anything, you don’t feel completely human.

As we were talking, the idea seemed to settle in that it’s better to let yourself feel bitterness, but not to let that become the focus. The point is what you do with it. I talked about how the purpose is to open up our hearts to show Hashem the bitterness of our plight and plead with Him for His help. This more than anything has the power to arouse His mercy….

…Two of the inmates at our Seder are from Eretz Yisrael. One is a son of Holocaust survivors who is nebach in jail for 21 years! Another is a Sephardic Yid who grew up in a kosher home. He’s been in jail for about nine years. So there at our Seder table in Otisville, this feeling of slavery being “forever and ever” was very much the mood at first. But that slowly started to change as we read the Haggadah and related the message of the matzah, how the redemption came so quickly that there was no time even for the dough to rise. During the meal, I gave a brachah for cheirus and we all drank l’chayim with a heartfelt bakashah to Hashem that we be granted our personal cheirus….

Normally, I would get mocking looks if I tried to give such a brachah. “Ah, what are you yapping about. Leave me alone with your brachos,” they would say. But now it was different. You could see that inside, there is a child who wants to know he has a Father in Heaven Who cares for him. If you can give a Yid the gift of knowing and believing this, it’s like giving him life.

B’ahavah,

Tatty

Hopes rose later in the year when Rubashkin’s lawyers filed for an appeal. They had evidence of excessive collaboration between Judge Reade and the prosecution, and their petition was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union. Surely justice would be served and he would be sent home.

In September 2011, the motion was denied. That night, Mrs. Leah Rubashkin sent an e-mail to a close circle of friends.

Gut voch!

B”H Sholom Mordechai and I are in a very good place. We are in HaKadosh Boruch Hu’s hands and know we will be reunited.

Words cannot express our appreciation for all that you have done and continue to do. You have all gone above and beyond and done ALL you possibly could b’gashmiyus and b’ruchniyus and we know we had the best keli. This is all milmaylah and apparently the ratzon of Hashem.

Stay strong. We WILL see the yeshuah!

Leah

And so it would go. Every few weeks a new ray of hope, further proof of misconduct, another glimpse into the secret government scheme to devalue the company, new grounds to file for a mistrial — but then Rubashkin would be rebuffed again.

I saw optimistic askanim lose their drive, confident lawyers falter. And along with the faith and resilience, I also got glimpses of the suffering Sholom Mordechai and his wife tried to conceal. I remember being in the visitor’s lobby at Otisville when Moishy came for a visit. The special-needs young man bounded over to his father and embraced him. Sholom Mordechai kissed his son, then kissed him again.

“Rubashkin!” shouted the guard from his perch, overseeing the visiting area, “One kiss. Just one. You’re not allowed more than that.”

Sholom Mordechai shrugged and smiled, his eyes wet with pain for his son’s hurt.

I have an e-mail saved from Succos 2013, his trademark mix of acceptance, humor, and intense dveikus.

Dear Kinderlach Sheyichyu 🙂

BARUCH HASHEM There was a Sukkoh in a Place called Prison…

…Let me First Share with you SOME of Sukkos in a place called Prison,

And Starting from the Night of Hoshana Raba… which Began with Eating and Dancing in the Sukkah… and Saying of “Mishneh Torah” and it was Real Happy, but 8:30 it was Back to the Barrack and approx 9:40 Being Locked in cell number 217, The Time when the Overwhelming Deafening Noise Constantly Heard in the Barrack fades, And Changes into a Cemetery Like Quiet, With Each Human Placed in his “Living Coffin”, two by two…

The Quiet is later Suddenly Broken By the Loud Barks and Shouts of the Guards,

Yelling as they Go From Cell to Cell to “Count” the Prisoners that they should be Standing,

And Then the Sounds of Loud Banging with their Heavy Boots on the Metal Cell doors,

to Shock Awaken the poor Tired fellow who Fell Asleep while waiting for them to come and count…

BARUCH HASHEM i block out all of this Distraction and I am Not in a place called Prison,

Rather, i am in Shul With All of You, Hearing the Delicious Sounds of Yidden Learning and Davening, And BARUCH HASHEM for the Understanding and Respect from The Person Sharing Cell Number 217, So that even Though the Hour Becomes “early” 🙂

I am Able to continue Saying The Whole Mishne Torah and to Assure us of A Gmar Chasimoh Toivoh. And There is some time for Learning until Chatzois,

The Time when i was able to Say the Whole Tehillim slowly, and With Much Kavanah and Simcha BARUCH HASHEM My Spirit was On a High and a Good “Hachanah” for Shmini Atzeres and Simchas Torah….

I LOVE YOU

Tatty 🙂

Sholom Mordechai made a chasunah while in prison, for his daughter Mushka. But the father of the kallah could only send a letter:

Reb Mendel Futerfas would tell of a Russian musician, called the Katrinah, who made a living from showing up in town and starting to play. People would gather around after the concert and place coins on his plate. This Katrinah had a helper, usually an orphan who would receive food, clothing, and shelter from Katrinah, whose job was to clap and bang along with the music and cry out, ‘“FRAILICHER, FRAILICHER, FRALICHER!”

Once, the helper nodded off and wasn’t clapping along with the leader. The musician grew angry and he reached out and slapped the helper across the face. The young man’s feelings were hurt — along with physical pain, he was humiliated in front of the crowd, and he was still forced to continue, to clap with all his might and shout out, “FRAILICHER, FRAILICHER, FRAILICHER!”

And so humbled and in pain, wounded and embarrassed, he continued to clap with all his might according to the plan, forcing himself to smile and laugh, and call out with a loud voice, “FRAILICHER FRAILICHER FRAILICHER!” At first glance it would seem to be that his remaining in position of his Job, and his clapping and calling out in a loud voice, was done only in an external way, solely for those around him, but his heart wasn’t in it.

But when one looks into the depth of matter, the truth is different. It is true that at that specific moment he was hurt and pained, but he also realized that his essence is connected to his leader, his true existence depends on this job: The slap was temporary and the pain will pass, so even at that moment he is truly able to shout FRAILICHER! FRAILICHER! FRAILICHER! because he knows that davka this work — this peulah — will give him life!

New lawyers came on board and at one point, things were so bleak that the lone avenue of hope for Rubashkin seemed to be online White House petitions. Yet when there were no more solutions, that’s when things began to slowly fall into place.

It’s never wise to list names, because there were so many who worked with quiet dedication and each of their efforts would prove significant. Every signature, every op-ed and statement, would end up influencing the president that this was a true bipartisan push for justice.

But aside from the many anonymous emissaries, there were a few heroes who stood out.

If Pinny Lipschutz had turned around to look, he might have seen that he was often alone on the path. But he didn’t look. Instead, inspired by Sholom Mordechai — with whom he learned regularly on the telephone — he never stopped believing.

Roza Hindy Weiss, Sholom Mordechai’s oldest daughter, has been ending phone conversations with the words, “waiting for the neis” for the last nine years. (She’s not the only one — on his recent album, Yaakov Shwekey dedicated his song, “Ma’amin B’nissim,” to Sholom Mordechai.)

She didn’t just say it. She would strap her babies into her minivan and drive from Albany, where she is a shluchah, to Brooklyn or the Catskills to raise funds or meet those who could help.

The Aleph Institute, founded by Rabbi Sholom Lipskar at the behest of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to provide support to thousands of men and women who are incarcerated and to their families left behind, worked with both the Rubashkin family and Rabbi Lipschutz not just to improve conditions for the prisoner, but to make sure he’d be a prisoner no longer.

There were many Lubavitcher shluchim who reached out their local politicians for help, yet many of the prime askanim came from the Satmar community. The man who thrived on achdus back in Postville was creating achdus from the place called prison.

And when things seemed most bleak, along came California lawyer Gary Apfel, a brilliant corporate attorney who decided to represent Rubashkin pro bono since 2013. Sholom Mordechai, who insisted on calling Apfel “Chaim Yosef,” would always smile when talking about his lawyer, who’d previously led the team of 500 attorneys restructuring General Motors, and also served as the corporate monitor for Bristol Myers. Each conversation between them started with the recitation of Tehillim and a dvar Torah. “He’s a Kopyczynitzer chassid,” Sholom Mordechai would often tell me, “and he’s a real oheiv Yisrael.” (On Sholom Mordechai’s first Shabbos of freedom, he kept an old deal with his lawyer — they davened one tefillah in Kopyczynitz, in Boro Park, and the other in Lubavitch.)

Gary, for his part, deflects the credit. “I never had a client like Sholom Mordechai. Besides the fact that he’s a walking Shaar Habitachon and he gave me such inspiration to forge on, he’s got a sharp legal mind and he made it easy to work with him.”

Rabbi Zvi Boyarsky of Aleph Institute points out some of the other shluchim. “There was Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who jumped at the chance to help and made this a personal mission. Howard Tzvi Friedman opened many high-level doors and was instrumental in securing critical political support, and Larry Thompson, a former deputy attorney general, gave his heart and soul to help.”

Two brilliant public relations experts, Brad Goldstein and Mike Sitrick, worked pro bono and were tremendously helpful as well.

“Charles Renfrew, a retired judge and deputy attorney general, whom Aleph reached on a cold call, made this a personal cause once he heard about the case,” says Rabbi Boyarsky.

“He helped champion the letter that was sent to President Trump by more than hundred former judges and prosecutors, which the White House ultimately released along with the clemency decision. He flew across the country — and was always available — to help Sholom Rubashkin. He refused to take payment. I remember how we once presented him with a beautiful plaque, and he said, ‘Thanks, but Sholom Mordechai isn’t out yet. What are you thanking me for?’ ”

Rabbi Boyarsky pauses. “Charles Renfrew passed away several days before Sholom was released. May this merit stand by him in Heaven.”

Yet just as there were those who seized the moment to do something great, there were those who missed the opportunity.

Like Senator Chuck Schumer.

Two years ago, a prominent political leader was all ready to come out in defense of Sholom Mordechai, and as a courtesy, he checked with the Jewish senator from New York, whom — he reasoned — would be familiar with the case of the Jewish meat magnate from Iowa.

No, said Schumer, don’t touch it.

Schumer, who likes to refer to himself as a “shomer Yisrael,” was poised to become Senate majority leader after the inevitable Hillary win, and the Rubashkin case didn’t do anything for him. He didn’t want to help — and he made sure no one else did, either. Two years later, Sholom Mordechai is out of prison, and Chuck Schumer isn’t Senate majority leader.

Over the last few months, momentum gathered. The president, along with several Jewish advisors and friends, was familiar with the case. Prominent Democratic politicians added their names to the cause, creating a push that transcended party lines.

But the true hero of the last half year is Professor Alan Dershowitz.

“There are no words to describe what a mensch Alan is. No matter how busy he is, he always finds the time to help, and his help has always been 100 percent pro bono,” says Rabbi Boyarsky. “He was a messenger from Hashem to bring Sholom home to his children.”

Just a few weeks ago, Dershowitz was in the Oval Office, discussing the Mideast with the president. The law professor brought up Rubashkin, presenting an angle he knew would resonate with Mr. Trump. He told the president how the family had built up a successful company through hard work and persistence, and that following the raid, even though most of the charges were proven false, the company’s value had plummeted, driven down by the government.

The president listened.

Six weeks ago, the day of the Chabad Kinus Hashluchim, a friend phoned Gary Apfel, who happened to be in New York, and invited him to come see the banquet. “I’d like to come,” said the lawyer, “but I’m going to wait until next year, when I can come together with Sholom Mordechai.”

Just a few days before the release, Leah Rubashkin penned a piece for the Hebrew-language Mishpacha in a symposium on women waiting for their personal geulah. She wrote how “each day is filled with the belief that this will be our last day of suffering,” although just a week before, she had no idea how prophetic her words would be.

“The hardship is felt every day, every minute; pain is our constant companion. But we know that we must believe, and we live with emunah each and every moment. When a person undergoes a test or a challenge, his only hope for survival is to live one day at a time, at times, one moment at a time — and mainly, to strengthen one’s faith, because Hashem can change the situation in the blink of an eye.

“People feel that this is their own story and regularly inquire as to our situation. We are grateful that even after eight long years, Am Yisrael stands by us, pushing us to the finish line. We live the miracle each day, because from the very first day, we’ve felt how Hashem has been sending us rays of light throughout this ordeal. This is our longest megillah, and when the suffering is over, we’ll be able to look back and connect the dots…”

Gary Apfel got the call from the White House on Wednesday afternoon, but he couldn’t say anything until the official press release went out. He could only dance alone in his office and say Tehillim.

“Because at the end of the day, this is simply a neis,” he says. “It’s an open miracle. You can only bow down in awe before HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Who justifies the faith of those who look to Him.”

Leah Rubashkin got the call a few minutes later, as her husband was being summoned to the warden’s office. She got into the car and headed off to Otisville. She arrived with a change of clothing for her husband, but the guard said no, he couldn’t change on the premises — one last display of power on the part of the warden’s office.

And as they’ve been doing all along, the Rubashkins shrugged and smiled.

I wondered how she’d had the presence of mind to grab a change of clothing after having received the most exhilarating phone call of her life.

“I didn’t,” Mrs. Rubashkin answered. “I’ve been driving around with that change of clothing in my car for the last eight years.”

As husband and wife sat together in the car, driving off to freedom, they looked at each other and remarked, “Alef, beis, gimmel. Here we are again, leaving after an order decided on Alef Teves, signed on Beis; released on Gimmel. Emunah, bitachon, geulah.”

Monsey Tours sponsored the bus that transported the Rubashkin family to Brooklyn. Sholom Mordechai wanted to visit his parents, and then his rebbe.

On the bus, the Rubashkin sons got into a heated discussion — some of them felt that it was too much, the excitement and crowds and noise — after all, their father had just spent eight years cut off from society. Some of the others thought that the commotion would soon subside, so why not enjoy the festivities?

Sholom Mordechai overheard his children, and he gathered them around him, as in happier times. When he’d left the prison, he confided, they’d warned him about readapting to society, and suggested he seek professional help with the process. Then the man who hadn’t looked at a television screen over eight years in prison smiled and said, “But the thing is, that’s for someone who was in prison and gets out. I was never in there in first place! Don’t worry about me.”

Inside the home at the corner of Boro Park’s 55th Street and 15th Avenue, the crowds kept growing. Shomrim realized that they would have to lock the door of Reb Aharon Rubashkin’s home, but somehow, more people were coming in. They realized that Rivka Rubashkin had opened a side door to the outside, explaining, “We’re Rubashkin. We don’t close the door on another Yid.”

Sholom Mordechai arrived. Reb Aharon beheld his father’s beaming face — a radiance that Reb Aharon Rubashkin hasn’t worn in years — and said quietly, “My father is back.”

Then he approached his elderly, ailing mother and embraced her. “Nu, Mamme,” he said, “G-tt iz gut, eh?”

He was paraphrasing a pasuk, a centerpiece of Chabad thought. Ta’amu u’re’u ki tov Hashem.

He didn’t finish the pasuk, because he didn’t have to. He’s been crying it out loud for the last eight years: Ashrei hagever yecheseh bo.

Surrounded by his children and children-in-law and grandchildren, with his wife, who still has dreams of shlichus, standing at his side, the voices of happy, grateful Jews rising from the street below, Sholom Mordechai leaned over and kissed his mother.

G-tt iz gut. —

An Injustice Rectified

behind the scenes with the legal team

By Binyamin Rose

Right after Judge Linda Reade sentenced Sholom Rubashkin to 27 years in prison back in June 2010, I called Paul Cassell, a former US District Court judge who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Two months earlier, before the sentencing, Cassell had sent a letter to Judge Reade urging her to impose a sentence in the range of six years.

Comparing Rubashkin’s sentence to some of the lighter ones handed down to violent criminals, Cassell told me: “I wonder if victims of crime can have respect for a justice system that treats their pain and suffering much lighter than questionable loans to some banking institution.”

Man plans and G-d laughs.

The seven and a half years that Sholom Rubashkin ultimately served came far closer to Cassell’s recommendation than Reade’s draconian decree.

There are many heroes in this story, but only one explanation.

“I have no doubt in my mind that this was a miracle,” says Gary Apfel, an attorney with Pepper Hamilton LLP who represented Rubashkin pro bono (free) since 2013. “The reason this happened is that this issue unified Bnei Yisrael, beyond all the different factions we have.”

While some Jewish media outlets have reported President Trump’s commutation order in a divisive manner, pitting Orthodox supporters against Conservative and Reform detractors, Apfel said in his experience, support for Sholom crossed all party lines.

A year ago, Apfel was leafing through his legal papers in the waiting room of the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, where Rubashkin was serving his sentence. A woman who appeared to be a non-Jewish American entered the waiting room and sat down, and after a while asked him whom he came to visit.

“Sholom Rubashkin,” replied Apfel.

“Sholom Rubashkin!” the woman exclaimed. “Ani mitpallelet ba’ado kol yom [I pray for him every day].”

Building Support

Apfel and I spoke a few minutes before Shabbos began in Jerusalem. He had arrived in New York the day before to celebrate Sholom’s freedom with him, in person.

“I haven’t slept very much the last few nights,” said Apfel, who was the first to receive the glad tidings directly from the Office of the White House Counsel.

“They called me and said, ‘You can’t tell anyone at this point — not the family, not even the other attorneys — because we’re issuing a press release first,’ ” Apfel said. “I was sitting on top of this news and I couldn’t say a word, so I just pulled out a Tehillim and kept reading from it until they called me back and told me I could tell others.”

Support for Rubashkin had been building since 2010, when members of Congress from both sides of the aisle wrote letters to then attorney general Eric Holder urging the Justice Department to investigate the harsh sentence.

The successful final push began just five weeks after President Trump took office.

In a letter dated February 23, 2017, more than 100 members of the legal community, including former attorneys general, federal judges, and law professors wrote the president urging him “to use your executive clemency power to commute the patently unjust and draconian 27-year sentence imposed upon Sholom Rubashkin — a first-time, nonviolent offender and father of 10, including an acutely autistic child.”

While their letter emphasized the humanitarian aspect, Apfel said that the legal argument was very straightforward: “We had incontrovertible evidence that this sentence was not just unjust, but illegal. The justice system had failed here, and the only remedy was executive clemency.”

It took years for the full story to come out, but allegations have been leveled against both the sentencing judge for alleged conflicts of interest, and the federal prosecutors for zealous overreach.

Judge Linda Reade, who presided in the bank fraud case against Rubashkin, had also held planning sessions with federal prosecutors some ten months before they conducted a 2008 raid on Agriprocessors, Rubashkin’s kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. The prosecutors were seeking evidence that the company had illegally hired underage immigrants — charges that were ultimately dismissed. It was later discovered that Judge Reade’s husband had invested in companies that manage private prisons — just days before Judge Reade ordered another major raid that could have sent many of those arrested to those very prisons.

In addition, Rubashkin might have been able to avoid a prison term entirely, had he been able to sell his business for its full value and repay his bank debt. However, federal prosecutors allegedly intimidated potential buyers, warning them that they might seize the company’s assets following any sale, a move that knocked down the value of the company from $68 million to $8.5 million — far less than the estimated $35 million Rubashkin had borrowed. (At his original trial, lawyers for Rubashkin argued the actual losses to the bank were less than $5 million.)

Compassion, Not Politics

This is where Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and one of America’s most eminent legal scholars, stepped in.

“I was one who had an opportunity to speak to the president directly and make a very strong case based on business considerations,” Dershowitz said in a phone conversation on Thursday night. “The focus of my conversation was that the prosecution frightened away potential buyers of the company, thereby reducing the sales price, and when the sales price went down, they were able to manipulate the sentence because the losses were greater. That’s an argument that resonated with the president because of his business acumen.”

Some media outlets speculated that special White House advisor Jared Kushner, or perhaps his father, Charles — whose family foundation has supported Chabad charities — may have played an important role behind the scenes to help free Rubashkin, a Chabad chassid. Apfel, however, told Mishpacha he only discussed the case with Jared Kushner once, and that was before the election.

“The Kushners were not involved in this latest effort at all,” said Apfel. “The one who led this last effort was Alan Dershowitz. There isn’t a superlative strong enough to describe the effort Alan Dershowitz made here.”

“It was a team effort,” said Dershowitz.

While previous presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, had been stingy with their presidential commutations and pardons, President Trump has now already issued two high-profile acts of clemency during his first year in office. (The first was a presidential pardon for Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of criminal contempt related to his tough law enforcement tactics against undocumented immigrants.)

But Dershowitz contends there was nothing political about Trump’s decision. “I think President Trump showed more compassion than President Obama.”

The president’s commutation might have freed Rubashkin from serving the remainder of his prison sentence, but it is not a pardon. It does not vacate the conviction, and it leaves in place a term of supervised release and a substantial restitution obligation, which were both also part of the original sentence. Apfel said that while he didn’t know (as of press time) what restrictions the parole board might impose, the fact that Sholom is out of prison is reason to be cheerful.

“I danced with him at a wedding last night. He’s back with his family,” Apfel said. “There will be some restrictions, and we must continue to daven that the restrictions will be ones he will be able to cope with, without great difficulty.”

I asked Apfel and Dershowitz if they thought the commutation would lead to soul-searching in the US justice system, and bring reform to federal sentencing guidelines and to the rules governing when judges should recuse themselves from cases.

Gary Apfel: “My late father zichrono livrachah, who is one of my two inspirations for everything I do, used to tell me, ‘You are not G-d’s policeman.’ My motivation for being involved here was a very simple one. There was a very terrible injustice done to a very special human being who was sitting in prison, I believe, for all of us, and I wanted to help get him out of there. The other senior [legal] officials were [similarly] outraged. Whether they go out and take this to the next level, I can’t speak for them.”

Alan Dershowitz: “I don’t think so. This was a one-off case. It was a unique case where a combination of a harsh sentence, the potential smell of anti-Semitism, and a combination of many factors led to the president’s conclusion. But the pressures against reform are too great. I’ve been writing about the need for reforms in the criminal justice system for 50 years. I would like to see reforms, but this was a case of one commutation, for one person, based on a perfect storm of negatives.”

Asked if he saw any parallels between the Rubashkin case and that of Jonathan Pollard, with the president at some point possibly lifting the parole restrictions on Pollard so that he could move to Israel, Dershowitz said: “I do. I see some parallels, I think, in the whiff of anti-Semitism, and in the excessive sentencing.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 691)