I promise to stop writing about Agriprocessors just as soon as there’s nothing noteworthy to say anymore. (Previous post here). Criminal charges have been filed against Agriprocessors, and the OU has said it will drop it’s kosher supervision if new management is not in place very soon! This is big. Not just because it means that Herzfeld was right, but because the OU has just set a big precedent. I like the decision, although to be honest if I were the OU, I’m not sure I would have had the guts to make it myself. The OU has also been careful not to say or imply that the meat is treif - this is strictly a business decision. In fact they’ve said that if new management is in place they won’t drop their certification. Essentially what they’re saying is that this is a business decision – they, as an organization, have no interest in being associated with these particular individuals anymore.

I was in the grocery store yesterday and had some baby food for Aliza among my purchases.  The friendly cashier asked me how old my child ones and we chatted for a little bit.  Then the conversation turned awkward:

Cashier: So your daughter must be drinking juice now too.
Me: Well, actually we aren’t giving her juice, just milk and a little water.
Cashier (obviously a juice fan): Why not?
Me: Juice is really mostly sugar with very little nutritional content, all kids need is milk and a little water.
Cashier (clearly thinking I’m being ridiculous): Oh no, I mean the Gerber juices, for babies.
Me: I know, they’re better than fruit punch, but not by much.
Cashier (wondering why I hate my baby so much): Have you tried them? They’re much less sweet then adult juices.  I’ve tasted them.

At this point I thought about pulling out my trump card (“I’m a pediatrician and you’re wrong!”) but decided that would not be a good way to make friends.  Plus I figured the people waiting behind me in line didn’t want to hear about how juice contributes to babies’ sweet tooth, childhood obesity and bottle caries.  One thing I did find very interesting is how much stronger an objection I got to the idea that juice is bad from this woman than I get from my patients in clinic.  It makes me wonder if they all feel as strongly as she does, and just are not telling me to my face, because I have the stethoscope.

Many of the family’s I see in clinic get nutritional help from Women, Infants, and Children (a great program that supplies food and formula for low-income women from pregnancy to postpartum and for their babies to the age of 5 years).  One source of resistance I often meet to my juice schpeil is that WIC supplies juice, so it must be good for babies.  I brought this up with a WIC nutritionist recently during a site visit, and she reassured me that WIC is currently revising it’s grocery list to include less juice and thus hopefully discourage usage a little more.  Of course, the govenment does not exactly have an A+ record of encouraging good nutrition.

Prepare for a tempest in a teapot everyone – The NY Post is reporting that YU has hired a transgendered professor. Well, not exactly ‘hired’. Two years ago English professor Jay Ladin (biologically a male), announced he was getting a sex change to become a woman. YU placed him on leave, although ultimately YU allowed prof Ladin’s return for “legally motivated” reasons. This semester Joy Ladin returned to YU to continue teaching.

As can be expected, this has gotten a lot of people very worked up. (YU is even worried about alumni donations dropping). What I can’t understand is why. Why are we (20th century American Orthodox Jews) so incapable of discussing these issues? Every time I’ve seen an American Orthodox rabbi asked a serious question about this they usually try to simply dismiss the issue as either irrelevant or in impossible confrontation with Judaism, and therefore not even worth discussing. The talmud clearly has no problem discussing issues related to non-standard sex and gender. There are countless discussions of people of non-standard sex/gender, anal sex, and even technique. (See nedarim 20 for a small sample). On the other side of the pond, none other than the Tzitz Eliezer himself has ruled that a sex change is halakhically valid since it’s the external organs which determine sex from a halakhic perspective. On this side of the pond we get categorical dismissal of the entire situation by simply saying that Prof. Ladin is “a woman with enlarged breasts”. Trying to dismiss or ignore the issue may work in the short term, but in the long term it just doesn’t work.

As a side note, Reform Jews have a prayer for getting a sex change.