Benny Volunteers for Sholom

By COLlive reporter

The new Sholom Across America campaign, unveiled first in Crown Heights last week, is working to garner support for Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, imprisoned former manager of Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Iowa.

Singer Benny Friedman, a friend of the Rubashkin family, has joined the efforts, volunteering for the campaign started by Sholom Mordechai’s son Meir Simcha Rubashkin and his friends.

Volunteers have visited hundreds of Crown Heights homes, raising almost $12,000, bringing the Crown Heights total to more than $30,000 in small donations since Lag B’Omer.

The efforts to bring Rubashkin’s plight to to the public eye has caught the attention of many prominent politicians, including Reps. Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn McCarthy, Edolphus Towns, Carolyn Maloney, Steve Israel and Yvette Clarke, who have lobbied for a review of his case.

Clarke said Orthodox Jewish constituents in her Brooklyn district raised concerns that “the punishment did not fit the crime here.”

A group of volunteers have taken a video camera along with them on their visits, and have been filming their experiences and talking to people on the street about the campaign, Sholom Rubashkin and Jewish unity.

The group plans to put together a video about the self sacrifice many have had for a fellow Jew in distress, who most of them have never met.

Sholom Across America aims to eventually visit 16 major Jewish communities across the United States and Canada.