"There's a commercial now. We have something in common. I'm dying for lack of an intellectual person to talk to. Sometimes the best person is ex-religious. When you're ex-religious, religion still has a formative impact on your life. Sometimes the best person to talk to is someone who knows what religion is but he got turned off to it by all the idiots and wanted to be more rational.

"You go to Bnai David. I don't care if someone is Modern Orthodox or Reform either. I just need intellectual people. You know Sam Harris? I prefer him to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I saw all three of them at the library."

David Saperstein, a high-profile Reform rabbi from Washington, D.C., will address some 70,000 spectators at Denver's stadium, just before Obama is scheduled to speak.

Mark Schneier, a highly-regarded Orthodox rabbi from New York and founding director of the Jewish-Muslim Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, will also take part in the opening ceremony, alongside Amy Schwartzman, a Reform rabbi from Virginia.

"The Democrats have always been, are, and will continue to be people of faith, and the convention will demonstrate that in an unprecedented way," Convention CEO Leah Daughtry said.

A gutsy op-ed in The New York Times has sharpened the debate over the Agriprocessors kosher meat factory scandal – and perhaps pointed the way toward rapprochement between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews.

Written by an Orthodox rabbi, Washington's Shmuel Herzfeld, it calls on the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, bastions of mainstream Orthodox Judaism, to appoint an independent commission "that would make sure the plant upholds basic standards of kashrut and worker and animal treatment – and that it is in full compliance with the laws of the United States."

It's the conflation of two ideas – "standards of kashrut" and "worker and animal treatment" – that makes Herzfeld's essay controversial in the world of kosher supervision. As for workers' rights and humane treatment of animals – that's the purview of government agencies, says the OU.

Herzfeld isn't the first rabbi to call for an ethical dimension for kosher certification. Conservative rabbis, led by Minnesota's Morris Allen, are pushing for a hechsher tzedek – a righteous certification – that would do just that.

AGRIPROCESSORS FOUGHT back this week, distributing a rebuttal to Herzfeld written by one of its attorneys, Nathan Lewin, a legend in Washington for his defense of Jewish religious freedoms. The rebuttal is remarkable for its focus not on the allegations against the plant, which Lewin largely ignores, but for its attack on Herzfeld's premise that a plant's kosher certification should be linked to its business ethics.

Lewin does this by trying to discredit the validity of Herzfeld's reference to Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883), the pillar of the ethics movement known as Mussar. According to Herzfeld, Salanter "refused to certify a matza factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly." Lewin can't find a solid scholarly reference to the Salanter story, and calls it "fallacious." Imagine the credit it would bring to Torah-observant Jews were leaders to immediately draw up their own set of labor and animal welfare standards. NON-ORTHODOX RABBIS like Allen have been way out front on this one. I grew up in a Reform synagogue and was taught why classical Reform chose to reject kashrut. That too many institutions and individuals – and that includes many Conservative Jews – have failed to take up this challenge is a loss for Judaism, and Jews.

I understand why a temple would bristle at adopting standards set by Orthodox supervisors. Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews have grown distant over the years, and the mutual recriminations over Agriprocessors won't help.

Q All my teachers tell me that swordfish is not kosher, but my grandfather insists that his family ate it when he was a kid. Can you explain this?

- S.F., Tel Aviv

A I first heard about the controversy over the kashrut of swordfish as a college student, when a local Orthodox rabbi told me that the Conservative movement might be correct that it should be kosher. I forgot about the remark, since I was never a big fish consumer (I only started eating tuna a few years ago). Yet a recently acquired taste for fish (aliya will do that to you), plus a fascinating article by Ari Zivotofsky of Bar-Ilan University (B.D.D. 19), from which this column will heavily draw, has resparked my interest.

While the Torah specifies that kosher fish require both scales and fins (Leviticus 11:9-10), an ancient tradition codified by Halacha asserts that all fish with scales necessarily have fins (Nida 51b, YD 83:3). As such, much halachic literature focused on defining halachic scales, a complex project since these coverings vary greatly in different fish. Among other criteria, kosher fish must contain scales attached to their body which can be peeled without damaging the fish's skin (Rama YD 83:1). Scales that shed when fish mature or leave the water, or alternatively, that develop only later in life, were also deemed acceptable.

Nonetheless, it remains difficult to identify which fish possess the biological traits that match these halachic criteria. For starters, there are myriads of fish which must be carefully examined by competent authorities.

The homeless, elderly and poor of the Pico-Robertson district — 100 of them — held up white registration cards as they shuffled through the doors of B'nai David-Judea.

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, a man of 44 more prone to blue jeans than black suits, greeted each by name. One by one, he handed out $15 Ralphs gift cards to everyone except four newcomers who hadn't registered.

They swarmed him outside the synagogue after he finished with the others.

"Sir, I would like a gift card," said a man in a hooded sweat shirt.

"I'm sorry," Kanefsky answered.

"Sir, why can't you go back in there and get me a gift card?"

Kanefsky stood firm. "I can't do that," he said softly.

Like Jewish leaders elsewhere, this Modern Orthodox rabbi has long exhorted his congregants to give tzedakah, or charity.

Providing for the poor, he says, is not only a mitzvah — a good deed — but a holy act and a religious obligation. The message frames the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, when worshipers are reminded that charity is among the deeds that can avert an evil decree in the year to come.

But Kanefsky, who figures he has handed out $75,000 worth of Ralphs cards to the needy of his Westside neighborhood over the last 11 1/2 years, has found himself wrestling lately with the limits of goodwill.

How much, he wonders, is he helping when the demand only keeps outstripping his resources? And how does he continue to help the poor without turning his synagogue into a sanctuary for the homeless — possibly unsettling some of his parishioners?

"We have to have boundaries," said Kanefsky, who introduced the sign-up procedure after 200 people appeared one morning last fall, leading to pushing and shoving. "Otherwise, we have chaos."

Unfortunately, these new friends did not include the other rabbis in Pico/Robertson.

Rabbi Muskin at Young Israel of Century City (YICC) felt like Rabbi Weil did not give him sufficient kovod (honor) as the senior Modern Orthodox rabbi of the neighborhood.

Rabbi Weil began referring to Rabbi Muskin in uncomplimentary terms, words that I can’t use on a family-friendly blog such as this one.

This absence of a loving relationship particularly gnawed on Rabbi Muskin who often confided to his congregants how much it hurt him that Rabbi Weil didn’t seek him out.

Rabbi Weil didn’t give a flip.

At a meeting with Christian Zionists a couple of months ago, Rabbi Weil said something that caused a fellow rabbi in the ‘hood to walk out.

Rabbi Weil does not have warm relations with any other synagogue rabbi in Pico/Robertson.

Rabbi Muskin is an intense man who likes to run things. His shul does not need an executive director. Rabbi Muskin does that job. Rabbi Muskin runs his shul, not the shul’s board of directors. Rabbi Muskin runs the simchas (celebrations) of his congregants. They get in big trouble if they try to hold a simcha outside the shul. Rabbi Muskin has a particular vision for his community — a community that I loved during my year there — and he enforces it.

YICC and Bnai David-Judea have excellent relations. Even though Bnai David is too liberal for Rabbi Muskin’s tastes, his criticisms are muted at best.

Members of the three Modern Orthodox shuls in Pico/Robertson often hang out with each other, as do members of the two chareidi non-Hasidic shuls — Aish HaTorah and Anshe Emet.

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, the likely next rabbi of Beth Jacob (which has about 800 member families, many on paper only, and a budget twice that of the other Modern Orthodox shuls in the hood), has excellent relations with the rabbis at Bnai David and YICC.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Weil will run the Orthodox Union. I predict he’ll do a great job. He’s the CEO type more than the pastoral care type. He delegated the visiting the sick type stuff to Rabbi Marc Mandel.

Rabbi Weil has an MBA. He loves to run things by delegating. He prefers to concentrate on the big picture and the big donors.

Beth Jacob now has four minyans on Shabbat. A year ago, Young Israel of Century City added a young professionals minyan and a few months later Beth Jacob followed suit. For a while it had an age limit (35 or something), but that’s been dropped. Beth Jacob is going to hire an assistant rabbi to cater to this minyan.

Most of the young single women go to the Happy Minyan or Bnai David (and a few at Aish, almost none to Beth Jacob and YICC).