LONG READS Issue 1091 · December 17, 2025

Eight Years In, Eight Years Out

Eight years later, Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’spersonal Chanukah miracle is still lighting up the darkest nights

Eight Years In, Eight Years Out
Photos: Ariel Ochanah, Mishpacha archives

But how did it happen? Two decades ago, Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, who’d created a flourishing kehillah in Postville, Iowa, where he was vice president of Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the US, was known as a larger-than-life baal chesed, someone everyone turned to, even his hundreds of non-Jewish employees. But how did he evolve from that into one of the biggest spiritual mashpiim on the Jewish landscape?

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