t's sort of funny when two worlds collide unexpectedly, especially when one comes to the aid of the other. Take for example my recent search for the perfect milk alternative. I don't dislike good ol' cow's milk, nor am I allergic to it. But as an observant Jew, I often find myself at odds with the fridge staple, usually after I've just enjoyed a delicious turkey sandwich. I am what some would call a Fleish-a-phobe: I rarely eat meat if I can avoid it out of dread for the five hours and one minute to follow, when I will be barred from my favorite treats: ice cream, chocolate, cheese, milk-based pie, the list goes on.

And so I've spent some time searching for that perfect alternative, that wondrous, dairy-free concoction that will replace milk in my cookie recipe and help me whip up the perfect pareve pumpkin pie. Recently, my best friend and I (with both health and Halacha in mind) unofficially took it upon ourselves to taste-test every non-milk available to us, from various brands of soymilk to the less orthodox (and rarely Kosher) hemp milk, with varying results.

Soymilk is chock full of protein and readily available (call me crazy, but I don't think the taste is that bad, either), but it's also full of added sugar and contains estrogen. You know what they say about too much female hormone... Rice milk was the best tasting, but full of empty carbs and calories. Almond milk was pleasant and nutty, but was (as all nut products) high in fat. (Plus, as this website states, although almonds are among the most healthful nuts out there, the amount used in the milk is so small "you're better off just eating the nuts"). I like to point out that real milk isn't without its problems (hello, cholesterol), but two foodies can dream, can't they?

A fourth, hemp milk seemed the healthiest: filled with Omega 3 fatty acids, high on the protein, but it proved near impossible to find Kosher. On the day I finally saw that the strange mark on one box was a legitimate Teudah Kashrut, I snatched it off the shelf, never mind the eight dollars a carton.

We found it quite good, definitely a few steps up from the starchy powder my friend had been mixing into his drinks for a protein boost (he'd once remarked to me that it tasted like sawdust), and I happily realized that it had virtually no aftertaste: it was just like rice milk! And one look at the ingredients told us why. The second ingredient was rice milk, and it had brought so many empty calories with it. So much for the cannabis smoothie.

Aside from our dilemma, we grappled with the idea that we may just seem a little, well... nuts to be searching so seriously. I got a few stares from my family when I announced that I'd found hemp milk Kosher. Why did I care so much? Use plain soymilk in baking and be done. Who likes the taste of that stuff anyway? (I countered with something like "I shamelessly enjoy the taste of soymilk, and this argument has been milked to death anyway," pun totally intended.)

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I am a huge fan of all things Bravo, but as a diehard foodie I cannot resist Top Chef. For its first couple of seasons, I sat on the couch in my parents' Kosher home and imagined how buttery scallops probably tasted and how decadent a slice of kobe beef must be for one who gets to savor each bite alongside a creamy risotto. I pretended to understand the slimy texture of an oyster and fabricated a childhood Hawaiian vacation to relate to Padma's insistence that the back of her throat itched due to uncooked taro in Season Two. I blindly chose chefs to root for and never took the judges' words with a grain of salt. Not knowing what most of the ingredients tasted like with an upbringing of cholent and bagel brunches, I watched in awe as none of the contestants acted like using monkfish, alligator, or bull's testicles in their cuisine was an oddity. In fact, Padma proudly admitted to having tried bull's testicles a couple of episodes ago - nobody was surprised.

Talk at the dining table turned to nether regions once again this past Wednesday night when Natalie Portman joined the cast as a guest judge for this week's elimination challenge. The chefs were told that they would be cooking for an elite table of eaters at Chef Tom Collichio's Craft Steak. Then, Tom dropped the inevitable twist - the chefs would be cooking for Natalie and her friends with her dietary restrictions in mind, parameters which the chefs treated like a gastronomical catastrophe. No she is not lactose-intolerant nor is she a celiac - Natalie Portman is a vegetarian. Yes, kosher Jews - Natalie is just like you, my parents and almost thirty million other Americans; when she goes out to eat she spends more time searching the menu for an item she can eat rather than enjoying her meal. As a viewer, I thoroughly enjoyed the judges and Natalie's herbivore-inspired dinner complete with phallic references, common ingredients and downrightgirl talk. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the majority of the Top Chef contestants had never encountered vegetarianism before as most of them struggled to cook sans meat. In fact, the chef who claimed he knew the most about vegetarian dining was the one sent home for his insistence that a leek could imitate the consistency of a scallop.

Some, like kosher-keeping JDub Records CEO Aaron Bisman, questioned why the chefs chose to focus mostly on vegetables rather than utilizing more hearty grains and soy proteins like seitan and tempeh in their dishes. I assumed there was more to this than the fact that the first elimination this season was due to the use of seitan in a dish. I consulted food blogger and Top Chef connoisseur Erin Phraner of FoodnFemininity.blogspot.com to understand the episode's lack of tofu. She explained that part of the challenge was to cook using only what was in the Craft Steak kitchen; in other words, what would soy be doing in a steakhouse?! This may also be the reason behind why contestant Eli, the show's resident Jew, was the only one to get close to using meaty veggies in his use of lentils. Erin was dead on - the Craft Steak menu features a variety of vegetables but barely any grain dishes and no soy products, Eli may have been the first to find and finish the lentils which left the challenge loser, Mike Isabella, and runner-up Jennifer some leeks and baby eggplants to work with.

Natalie's visit to the Top Chef kitchen may have been a feat in honor of veggies across the nation, but it definitely was for kosher viewers who could identify every ingredient and imagine the taste of every plate for the first time in the show's history. Being Jewish herself, Natalie Portman was the first to succeed in getting the chefs to compete in a challenge analogous to the Project Runway unconventional material challenges. Thanks, Natalie - while designers on Project Runway have forever been constructing dresses out of car parts and cornhusks, we needed you to get acclaimed chefs to leave their shellfish in the kitchen and serve up some dishes that any mashgiach would deem parve.

I like food.  A lot.  Since my son's initial appearance, my wife Amanda has been watching an intense amount of Food Network (great to watch in short bursts, when you don't have the time or energy for a full show commitment) so I've been exposed to Chopped, Paula Deen, Ace of Cakes, UnWrapped, and The Next Food Network Star. It's taken quite awhile for me to appreciate watching food as much as I enjoy eating it, but thanks to Top Chef: Masters, I think I am finally there.

The fitting label for these shows is Food Porn.  For me, though, its not just Porn; it's Food Voyeurism.  As a keeper of kashrut pretty much my whole life, I have never tasted a scallop or a lobster tail.  I can only imagine a cheeseburger, let alone one with bacon, fried in chorizo fat.  And i find it hard even to fathom the consistency or taste of sea urchin.  And yet I am captivated by these shows and the food in large part because of how they peak my imagination (and test my OCD-like commitment) for hitherto unknown flavors.

This week's Top Chef Masters finale was a celebration of food and the chef's preparing it.  No nasty curveballs, nothing tricky, simply a chance for the 3 finalists to showcase their skills, passion, and food.  It was exciting and moreso than when watching past shows, I found myself wondering: what does that taste like?  Where can I eat THAT?  Why DON'T I eat sea urchin?  Mexican chef Rick Bayless‘ winning 27-ingredient Mole dish brought me to the height of food jealousy.  It wasn't even really unkosher. (ingredient-wise. At least I don't think is was.  He's keeping the recipe a secret.)

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Out here in Chicago we're marking the passing of a venerable local institution: Best's Kosher is no more. Its parent company, Sara Lee, has closed up its South Side meat-processing facility and will sell off the company, putting 185 employees out of work.

There's some real history here. Best's opened for business in Chicago in 1925, founded by Isaac Oscherwitz (whose father nearly went into business with Rabbi Dov Behr Manischewitz a generation earlier).

Oscherwitz's granddaughter Susan Berger recently wrote a wonderful and poignant eulogy in the Tribune, in which she mourns the end of an era:

This is a loss not only for my family, but for the millions of Jews who keep kosher and the many millions who don't but learned to love my family's hot dogs...

Oh, the memories. There was my summer on the switchboard. I almost got fired for answering the phone, "Best's Kosher, what's your beef?"  One of my favorite stories is when there had been a lot of stealing in the factory, detectives were hired and immediately caught the culprit. It was my Grandfather Phil, who apparently left each night with bags of meat.

The employees at the factory stayed for years. It was common before a Jewish holiday to hear African-American, Hispanic, Polish or Asian workers greet each other and say, "Hey man, tomorrow's Tu Bishvat!"

Speaking personally, I can only say it just won't be the same taking in a game at Wrigley without my ritual pilgrimage to the Best's stand. Zichrono Livracha...

We've all made those jokes, spinning out the thread of ever-increasing absurdity, layering hypothetical violation on top of hypothetical violation, all to determine: What is the least kosher meal you could possibly eat?

Are we talkin' shrimp wrapped in prosciutto and dipped in butter sauce? (I'm sure Paula Deen is, if no one else. Scratch that, Paula will just take the butter sauce).  Perhaps a pork-and-cheese sandwich with chopped lobster on top.  Maybe just eat a whole freakin' pig with some creme fraiche. At a certain level, it's hard to refine the criteria.

Until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, the universe has spoken, through two guys named Jason Day and Aaron Chronister, professional barbecue experts from Roeland Park, KS. They have created (drumroll please): The Bacon Explosion.

This contraption involves stuffing meat into meat, basically the treyfiest turducken you can imagine. Lattice-work bacon, layered (lard-erd?) with sausage, topped with already-cooked bacon, rolled and then smoked for about one hour per inch of thickness (that's what s/he said.)

Followed by porkgasmic gorging, presumably followed by arterial failure of some kind.

The New York Times piece on these guys and their creation even quotes a Jewish guy ('cause hey, it wouldn't be a Times story if they didn't. Gotta make it relevant to their readership) saying "It wasn’t planned as a send-off for me to Israel, but with all of the pork involved it sure seemed like it."

There, there, Jew. Surely the Holy Land will be rewarding in ways more fulfilling than anti-heckshered gluttony. Or, um, not. Good luck with that. In the meantime, I have to go throw out all my fake bacon and contemplate what the hell is wrong with me that I won't eat this beautiful manifestation of God's creation, both of pigs and human ingeniousness.

Rubashkins: not winning any prizes anytime soonSince the raid on the Agriprocessors plant on May 12th, bashing the kosher meat giant has become something of a sport. Everyone from the New York Times to failed messiah to yours truly has taken a few shots (some cheap, some well-deserved) at the Rubashkin family and the business they run out of Postville, Iowa.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Rubashkin family. In fact, I called for a boycott of their meat in January, months before Uri L’Tzedek was on the case. But I’m getting a little frustrated with the way the scandal is being dealt with by liberal-minded people like me.

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The Kosher/Legal Thing Is A Good Point: but I don't think Chabadniks care much what Jesus would doLast we heard, Agriprocessor’s PR firm had been caught trying to smear the reputation of Rabbi Morris Allen and Uri L’Tzedek, but there have been several developments since then.

• Failed Messiah broke the news that the May 12th raid also uncovered more than 100 fake and fraudulent identity documents from the AgriProcessors Human Services department. It also seems that workers knew they could come to the Human Services department to get fake documents. So you can add forging official documents to the list of AgriProcessor’s evils.

• The New York Times has an in depth look at labor violations in the AgriProcessors plant, including child labor violations. There were kids as young as 13 working there, despite regulations that prohibit anyone under 18 from working on the floor of the meatpacking plant because of the danger involved. One of the kids who worked there tells the Times he felt like he was a slave.

• Harsh!: but not uncalled forCBS reports that many workers have been docked pay that they earned before the raid.

• The Jew and the Carrot has an interview with Uri L’Tzedek co-director Ari Hart about whether the AgriProcessors boycott was called off too quickly.

• Jewschool has an amazing post about the recent rally in Postville to support the workers. The pictures are especially fantastic.

• Want to get familiar with the crooks and creeps of Agriprocessors? Check out our Most Wanted.
  

On May 12, 2008, 900 federal and state law enforcement personnel raided Agriprocessors, the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. They arrested almost 400 illegal alien workers and had outstanding warrants for hundreds more. On the day of the raid, more than two thirds of Agriprocessors’ workforce was illegal.

Reports of horrific worker abuse by Agriprocessors quickly surfaced, and a federal official present during the raid called conditions at Agriprocessors “medieval.”

It was the largest single-site immigration raid in US history, but the raid was not the first time Agriprocessors or its owners, the Rubashkin family of Chabad hasidim, have been in trouble with the law.

These are your kosher butchers:

Name: Abraham Aaron Rubashkin Age: Early 80s Last Seen: Denying guilt

Aaron Rubashkin, a Russian-born Brooklyn butcher and Chabad-Lubavitch hasid with widespread business interests, founded Agriprocessors in 1987 after buying an abandoned slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. In order to keep the plant open while paying what many regard as the industry’s lowest wages, Aaron Rubashkin turned to illegal, undocumented workers, first relying on Eastern Europeans funneled to Postville from Rubashkin’s Brooklyn butcher shop, as Stephen G. Bloom documented in his 2000 book Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. When securing enough Eastern European illegal workers became difficult, Rubashkin turned to illegal workers from Mexico and Central America, reportedly paying them below the minimum wage and forcing them to work 14 to 17-hour shifts with unpaid overtime. Agriprocessors allegedly supplied illegals with forged identity papers and other documents. Over the years, Rubashkin bought up much of Postville’s available real estate, renting homes and apartments to illegals at what many consider to be inflated rates. Among the charges hurled at Rubashkin after the ICE raid was his alleged tying of property rental to employment, with illegals told that they should rent from Rubashkin in order to secure a job at Agriprocessors. Those workers then were trapped in an allegedly exploitative rental agreement that saw their rents raised monthly. Renting elsewhere meant loss of employment, transfer to an undesirable job within the plant or to an undesirable shift. Rubashkin was cited by the National Labor Relations Board for collecting union dues from workers at another business he owned, Cherry Hill Textiles (this with son Moshe – see below) but keeping the collected dues for his family. The National Labor Relations Board found the Rubashkins had a “proclivity” for violating the National Labor Relations Act and mandated repayment of all money collected, with interest. He was also implicated in the Allou Healthcare bankruptcy scandal. Although not charged, Rubashkin was found to have accepted $3.2 million dollars in payments from Allou, for which the government could find nothing Allou received in return. Speaking for Agriprocessors, Rubashkin’s son Sholom M. Rubashkin (see below) at first claimed nothing was given to Allou. Later, he amended his statement to claim Allou – in the healthcare equipment and pharmaceutical business – purchased $3.2 million dollars worth of kosher meat. No trace of that meat has ever been found and Rubashkin claimed the Agriprocessors executive responsible for the Allou transactions died at his desk in 2004, taking all details of the “sale” to his grave. Rubashkin was forced to pay $1.4 million dollars to help replay Allou’s creditors. Allou’s owners, Satmar hasidim, are now serving jail terms for fraud.

Name: Rabbi Sholom M. Rubashkin, Agriprocessors VP and CEO Age: Late 40s Last Seen: Dodging Immigration Agents

Ordained by Chabad, Sholom M. Rubashkin pursued a career as a Chabad House rabbi. In 1987, he was compelled by his father to leave the rabbinate and take over the on-site operations of Agriprocessors in Postville. Agriprocessors’ battles with the town of Postville, the EPA, the USDA, PETA, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union have all been led by Sholom M. Rubashkin. Under his watch, slaughterers used meat hooks to rip out the throats of still conscious animals and kicked blood in the eyes of dying animals. Agriprocessors so polluted the environment that the the company was sued by the EPA. The Rubashkins eventually settled with the EPA, paying a $600,000 fine. Additionally, turkeys produced by Agriprocessors were found to have sodium levels far in excess of stated amounts. Along with his sister’s husband, Rabbi Milton Yehoshua Balkany (see below) Sholom M. Rubashkin is a frequent and generous donor to Republican political campaigns, giving tens of thousands of dollars to favored candidates including Catherine Harris, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, Iowa Congressman Tom Lathum, and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. The family’s contributions to Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge’s campaign for governor at a time she was responsible for regulating Agriprocessors also raised ethical issues. The family’s bundled contributions given to Grassley, Specter, and Harris – $20,000 each – along with lesser contributions to Lathum drew PETA’s ire in 2005, when PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich noted: “A federal legislator should not be taking money from a company that is being sued by one federal agency [the EPA – Rubashkin settled] and that is under investigation by another [the USDA – Rubashkin was found to have violated Humane Slaughter Law but the Bush Department of Justice declined to prosecute]—that just screams conflict of interest.”

Name: Rabbi Milton Yehoshua Balkany Age: 62 Last Seen: Playing Tony Soprano

The husband of Abraham Aaron Rubashkin’s daughter Sarah, Balkany is notorious for his practice of bundling campaign contributions to skirt federal campaign finance law, handing envelopes full of checks from various Balkany-Rubashkin family members to politicians. Balkany’s largess largely benefits Republican candidates, and his bundled contributions give him – and his father-in-law – aggregated influence. In 2003, Balkany was detained on charges he misused $700,000 in HUD grant money intended for handicapped toddlers. Most of the money had been transferred by Balkany into bank accounts controlled by his children, including at least one in Israel. Balkany also used this grant money to pay his personal credit card bills and to pad his personal bank accounts. In a deal with the US Attorney’s office, Balkany – who claimed his actions were sloppy accounting practices, not theft – agreed to make restitution and to refrain from seeking any more federal grants. He was never prosecuted. Balkany has been implicated in other scandals involving government funds and is now barred from lobbying Bureau of Prisons officials after allegations of bribe-taking surfaced. Balkany also tried to have a Jewish aide to then-US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan excommunicated after the aide wrote memos detailing Balkany’s strong-arm attempts to force the Israeli government to use US aid money for Balkany’s pet projects in Israel. In an attempt to end Orthodox justice group Uri L’Tzedek’s boycott of Agriprocessors, while officially representing Agriprocessors and his father-in-law at a meeting in mid-June, Balkany reportedly threatened the Orthodox justice group’s leadership in a manner eerily reminiscent of Tony Soprano.

Name: Moshe Rubashkin Age: 50 Last Seen: Pleading guilty

The elder son of Abraham Aaron Rubashkin has a criminal record stretching back twenty-five years. He was arrested in 1983 for felony assault and rioting (he later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges). As noted above, in 1995 he and his father were caught collecting union dues from their Cherry Hill Textiles employees but keeping the money for themselves. The National Labor relations Board forced the Rubashkins to repay the money taken with interest, and banned their attorney from practicing before the NLRB for six months. In 2002, Moshe Rubashkin was arrested for bank fraud. He pleaded guilty and served almost two years in Fort Dix Federal Prison. Just months after his release, Moshe Rubashkin was elected president of the Chabad-Lubavitch-controlled Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, which annually receives and administers millions of dollars in government funds. Late last year, Moshe and his son Sholom (the nephew of Agriprocessors’ CEO/VP Sholom M. Rubashkin) were indicted on federal charges related to the family’s abandoned textile mill in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which burned in a series of suspicious fires. Although the family engaged in a convoluted cover up meant to hide ownership of the property and defraud the EPA and the city of Allentown, Moshe Rubashkin was only charged with illegal storage of hazardous waste. His son was charged with knowingly making a false statement to federal authorities. Both charges are felonies. Originally due to be sentenced on July 16, the government agreed to postpone sentencing until November 3 to allow Moshe Rubashkin and his son more time to repay the $450,000 they owe the EPA. The rub? The money for this repayment appears to be coming from other Rubashkin family members who themselves draw their income from Agriprocessors and related companies, not from Moshe Rubashkin himself. When pressed, an official close to the case could not explain the need to allow Moshe Rubashkin and son to remain free to facilitate this repayment.

Name: Nathan Lewin Age: About 70 Last Seen: Defending Agriprocessors

The noted constitutional attorney has long served as legal counsel for Agriprocessors, and Lewin is also closely connected to Agudath Israel of America, the ultra-Orthodox advocacy organization. As I first reported in late 2004, on October 23, 2003, Agudath Israel officials, and, I’m told, Lewin, along with rabbis from various kosher supervisions, met with senior USDA staff in Washington. My sources tell me that Lewin did not disclose his connection to Agriprocessors. The subject of that meeting was a USDA directive that outlawed “sawing” during religious slaughter. Agudath Israel claimed the directive’s current language could easily be misinterpreted by USDA inspectors and would, they feared, be used incorrectly to stop kosher slaughter. The USDA agreed to change the language and relied heavily on Agudath Israel – and, it seems, Nathan Lewin – to write a new directive. What made its way into that new directive? Approval of a second cut to “facilitate bleeding” – the basis for Agriprocessors’ meat hook throat-ripping exposed by PETA. During the furor surrounding exposure of that throat-ripping, Lewin played the Holocaust card, comparing PETA to Nazis and alleging PETA’s true aim was to end shechita. In the days immediately preceding the release of PETA’s undercover video, Lewin told a sympathetic reporter for the New York Sun that he, as Agriprocessors counsel, had offered to discuss with PETA and, if necessary, resolve any problems at Agriprocessors. PETA, Lewin claimed, never responded to him. The actual letter Lewin sent to PETA – now posted on PETA’s website – shows that Lewin misrepresented the tone of his letter and that Lewin and Agriprocessors did not offer to meet PETA. At the close of Agudath Israel’s national convention in November 2004, on the eve of the release of PETA’s exposé, Agudath Israel leader Rabbi Chaim David Zwiebel asked the convention for a unanimous vote condemning PETA and supporting Agriprocessors. He got that vote – even though no one voting except for Lewin had seen PETA’s evidence. The USDA, in response to PETA’s video and other documentation, conducted its own investigation and found that Agriprocessors violated the Humane Slaughter Act. It also found its inspectors took illegal gifts from Agriprocessors and often slept or played computer games on the job. The USDA kept that decision secret for almost one year, while the US Attorney for Northern Iowa declined to prosecute. PETA forced release of the damning USDA findings by filing and actively pursuing Freedom of Information Act requests against the agency.

Name: Menachem Lubinsky Age: Unknown Last Seen: Spinning

Head of Lubicom, a kosher industry marketing and PR firm, Lubinsky is a former Agudath Israel of America VP and a current member of its board of trustees, as well as a longtime paid consultant and flack for Agriprocessors. Yet, in his role as editor of the industry trade journal Kosher Today, and as a sought after expert for media reports on kosher food, Lubinsky commented on various Agriprocessors scandals without identifying himself as a paid consultant of Agriprocessors. Like Lewin, Lubinsky played the Holocaust card, comparing PETA to Nazis and alleging PETA’s true aim was to end shechita.

Name: 5W Public Relations Age: 5 Last Seen: Impersonating Competent PR professionals

America’s “fastest growing” PR firm counts Agriprocessors, Paris Hilton, "Girls Gone Wild" producer Joe Francis, a handful of Israeli politicians, Pastor John Hagee, and various hip hop artists among its clients. Headed by CEO (and former Betar-USA head) Ronn Torossian and SVP Juda Engelmayer (owner of the Lower East Side icon Kossor’s Bialys), 5W was caught impersonating critics of Agriprocessors online. 5WPR at first denied the impersonations, and then blamed them on an unnamed “intern.” The problems for 5WPR multiplied when it became clear the “intern did it” excuse was not credible. In the wake of the massive immigration raid that crippled it, Agriprocessors promised to comply with the law and to begin a new era of ethical business. Despite those promises, Agriprocessors continues to retain 5WPR.

Since federal agents conducted an immigration raid on the Postville, IA, AgriProcessors meatpacking plant on May 12th, the Jewish community has been in a furor over everything from worker’s rights, to accusations of sexual harassment, to the possibility of a kosher meat shortage if AgriProcessors is forced to close.AgriProcessors: disconnected and unprofessional? In the last week there have been a fair number of developments:

• The Jew & The Carrot has an interview with Zalman Rothschild, a former mashkiach (kosher supervisor) at AgriProcessors. Rothschild says there was a nice rapport between the rabbis and the Mexicans who worked at the plant (except with the women, ahem) when he was there, but calls AgriProcessors “unprofessional” and “disconnected” from the day-to-day operations.

• Ben Harris at JTA went to Postville and spoke with Sholom Rubashkin, now former CEO of AgriProcessors. Though Rubashkin insisted he was “clean as a baby” and offered to give Harris a tour of the plant, the offer was eventually reneged, and Harris was referred to the company spokesperson, who refused to discuss the allegations the workers are making about hiring minors, forcing workers to take 14 and 15 hour shifts, and an environment of sexual harassment. Harris also went to Brooklyn to speak with Aaron Rubashkin, who started his business in 1953, the same year he emigrated from Russia. The elder Rubashkin was more forthcoming than his son, and flat out denies every allegation made. He comes across as scattered and affable, but uninformed. Included in the article is a lengthy audio clip of the interview.

• The Chicago Tribune reports that the State of Iowa is easing up on many of the fines that it initially imposed on AgriProcessors. After AgriProcessors “promised to improve safety for its workers” the fines were reduced from $182,000 to $42,750. Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley is concerned about the reduction in fines, and has spoken to the AP, explaining that he understands the reasoning behind the shrinking fines, and hopes AgriProcessors can live up to their promise to improve conditions for workers.

Aaron Rubashkin and his son Moshe: a tad evasive

• AgriProcessors frequently shipped meat to smaller communities, where other kosher meat and poultry options weren’t available. These communities are now feeling the pinch as AgriProcessors struggles to fill orders, and many are left without any kosher meat, reports the New York Jewish Week.

• The Forward reports that demand for AgriProcessors meat (which sells under the brand names Aaron’s Best, Rubashkin’s, Shor Habor, Iowa’s Best Beef and Supreme Kosher) has not slowed since the immigration raid on May 12th, and if anything they’re struggling to fill orders with the reduced output from Postville.

Getting kosher food in prison has been a pain in the ass for a while now. There’s the child-molester who wanted a yarmulke and some matzah ball soup in Georgia, and the former Neo-Nazi and statutory rapist in Missouri who was jonesin’ for some kugel. The obvious take home message here is that if you can’t do time in a facility that won’t provide you with kosher food, then you really shouldn’t do the crime. That said, both the child-molester and the statutory rapist won lawsuits suing for kosher food in prison. And in California, after a different child-molester took the state to court for not providing him with kosher meals in 2003, the state promised to make good faith efforts to get kosher food available to all California inmates by 2006.
Kosher Prison Food: yummier than Halal?
This article in the Forward explains some of the unexpected results of what’s called the Jewish Kosher Diet Plan.

As a direct result of the lawsuit, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been scrambling in recent years, in conjunction with the Northern and Southern California boards of rabbis, to install a Jewish chaplain at every prison in order to oversee the preparation of kosher food.

…

The work extends far beyond merely vetting jailhouse kosher cuisine. According to one longtime Jewish chaplain, his niche is as close as a rabbi can come to performing missionary work.

“We work with the underbelly of society, the spiritually void, the morally empty,” said Rabbi Lon Moskowitz, the Jewish chaplain at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. “It’s important to have chaplains so we can facilitate the Jewish Kosher Diet Plan statewide, but it’s a requirement so that the spiritual needs of incarcerated Jews are met.”

That’s all well and good, but to meet someone’s spiritual needs you need to get him to walk in the door, and it’s the kosher meat, more often than not, that does that job:

When the kosher diet plan was first introduced two years ago, [Rabbi Mendel] Slavin said, non-Jewish inmates began attending his services and claiming to be Jewish in order to get on the meal plan. “With the kosher diet, it became fashionable to be Jewish,” he said. He had worked to explain to the non-Jews that eating kosher was not a privilege, but rather a requirement for those who truly were observant Jews.

 

Isn’t it funny that kosher food is getting prisoners to explore their spiritual lives, and at the same time kosher food is getting a lot of Hasidic rabbis and businessmen in trouble as their shady meatpacking plant is turned inside out?

Kosher prison food: like kosher plane food, but worse? A former neo-Nazi in Missouri has won a case requesting kosher food in prison. Prison officials don't want to deal with the cost or hassle (kosher food is twice as expensive and might cause pushing and shoving in the meal lines, apparently), and doubt exactly how serious Norman Lee Toler—serving a 10-year sentence for statutory rape—really is about his Judaism. On the one hand he has several white supremacist tattoos, including one that says SS, and has been caught with pictures of Hitler and white supremacist pamphlets in the past. On the other hand, he's said to regularly read Torah and maintain contact with rabbis, and he has a reputation among the inmates for being Jewish. For now, Toler has to make do with treyf food, but the prison is under court order to look into its options.

Other neo-Nazis and white supremacists turned (friend of the) Jews who have made recent news include Pinchads Zlotosvksky and Tim Zaal.

Related: We commented on a similar case in Georgia last year, but in that instance it wasn’t a neo-Nazi requesting kosher food—it was a child molester/murderer.

Jon Stewart: doesn't trust the pigsForget whether or not Jon Stewart believes in God: To some, he actually is God, which makes it all the more interesting that he questions the well-known law of kashrut that prohibits Jews from eating pork. The "TV personality, comedian, political gadfly, insightful commentator and all-around raconteur" (as his humble parishioners describe him) seems to think the rule is hogwash. If the following quote is any indication, Jon Stewart will start keeping kosher when pigs fly.

"Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Don't eat pork. I'm sorry, what was that last one? Don't eat pork? Is that the word of God, or is that pigs trying to outsmart everybody?"

Previous: Michael Showalter on God, spiritual salvation, and corduroy pants.

I remembered this afternoon that I had a dream about Faithhacker. In the dream, I was sitting with Tamar Fox and we were talking about making a "Product of the Week" post. This evening, I was thinking about this dream, and if such a weekly post did exist, how long, I wondered, would take for me to run flat out of things to write about?

As I was considering this, just a bit ago, I got a pretty respectable (and entirely unrelated) headache and, thus, got sidetracked from thinking about Jewy-related products, and thinking instead about a great buckwheat pillow I used to have that felt fabulous to rest an aching head upon. So, I Googl'd, to see if such a thing still existed, and look at the way things come together:

It's not a pillow: It's a kosher, organic, buckwheat pillow. Not only do buckwheat pillows still exist, and in fact, might even be more popular now than they were a decade ago when I had one, but they exist in organic and kosher form. But not only as pillows, but also as mattress rolls. Who knew? Okay, probably a lot of you, whatever. Point being, not only do I not have to live without this fabulous pillow any longer, but I don't have to worry about sleeping in a pile of pesticide-ridden treyf, either.

To find out what on earth would be so great about sleeping on buckwheat (the kernels, not the guy), read this.

 

Happy Chanukah!: Latke soda and vodka, anyone? Bleh.Uh, just in time for the various winter holidays, Jones Soda Co. is introducing Christmas and Chanukah multi-packs of soda. The Chanukah pack boasts the four soda flavors of latke, sufganyiot, apple sauce and chocolate gelt. While I enjoy all four food quite a bit, the thought of drinking latke-flavored soda on ice makes me want to gag. But, I will try it with an open mind. Hang on, though, it get so much creepier. We can pick up a Christmas four-pack for our Christmas-celebrating friends with Sugar Plum (maybe), Egg Nog (hmm), Christmas Tree (pardon?) and Christmas Ham (come again?). Wait, wait, it gets even better. All the flavors are kosher. All kosher. Even the Christmas Ham. Oy. Ugh. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the rabbinic inspection the day the Christmas Ham flavor was launched?  Oy. Anyway, I think my favorite part of the entire line is that the Chanukah package "includes one completely functional dreidel".

I will give Jones a point for creativity, though, certainly. I mean, this is the company who brought us the Thanksgiving packs in years past with flavors like "wild herb stuffing", "Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto" and "turkey and gravy". Correction. Turkey and Gravy soda is available this year, if that's your bag.

Or, if you're feeling particularly inspired, maybe we can all put our heads together and suggest a flavor. Hammentaschen? Carrot tzimmes? Challah? Potato kugel? Matzoh ball soda? Bleh. Okay, perhaps not.

 

An observant friend of mine celebrates Purim every year with a ‘trayf night -” the one night a year he willingly – even actively – eats non-kosher food. Purim, he figures, is all about shaking things up and turning daily realities upside down (well, that and getting wasted). What better night to indulge in all the delicious trayf foods he abstains from the rest of the year?

Whether you’re a total trayf abstainer, an occasional trayfer, or an everyday trayf eater – here is a list of the unkosher foods that Jews love to hate.

Shrimp Cocktail – Shrimp started the Reform movement – no really! According to Wikipedia, “On July 11, 1883, a dinner was held in Cincinnati celebrating the ordination of the Reform Jewish seminary's first class of rabbis. It was a sumptuous feast of Little Neck clams on the half shell, soft-shell crab and shrimp salad, along with beef fillet and ice cream. The meal quickly gained notoriety for abrogating every rule of kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, except the prohibition against pork.” Judaism never tasted so good!

Bacon Cheeseburger – What other food offers not one, but three different opportunities (milk and meat, unkosher beef, and sweet, sweet bacon) to trayf it up in one, delicious bite? All the melty, porky goodness…the thought even makes this vegetarian a little weak in the knees.

 

 

Lobster – Remember that beautiful blond girl who sat in your English Lit class at Princeton? You know the one. She ate lobster – she ate it on beautiful china at the family country club, delicately cracking open the claws and dipping the meat in a rich buttery sauce? Keep dreaming yid kids - lobster may be fancy and sophisticated, but it’s trayfer than the day is long.

 

Clam Chowder – Whether you prefer the creamy white kind from New England, or the tomato-tinged version from Manhattan, there’s no denying that a bowl of warm clam chowder dotted with salty oyster crackers holds a special place on a cold, rainy day. Unless you don’t eat clam, in which case, pass the matzah balls!

 

 

Pepperoni Pizza – When Subway went kosher, the cheese got sacked – because if you have to pick between meat and cheese, the choice for most Jews is painfully clear. Not so with pizza. Since the dawn of the first pizza, Jews have had to suffer through milchig-only pies.

On Monday Amy and I had coffee in Chicago, and we also met up with an old writing friend of mine who currently works for a bread company supervising the line at a factory where they make rolls. Several types of rolls are made at the factory, and among other things, the rolls are certified kosher. A rabbi stops by to check things in the factory every once in a while, and my friend shook his head while explaining that the rabbi was generally bribed with both money, and baked goods. The plant is plenty kosher, but without a hefty donation and some doughnuts, the rabbi won’t give his stamp of approval.
Not Kosher Enough?: Just add this
Part of me would like to do some research and report this particular rabbi to the kashrut organization to which he belongs. But I’m not sure anything would happen then. And I wonder if the company would lose it’s hasgacha as a result, thus rendering its products unkosher to a large community of Orthodox Jews in the area. That seems morally iffy, though of course I think the rabbi in question is on much less stable ground than I am.

I honestly don’t know who should be in charge of investigating this kind of thing, (you’d think the Chicago Jewish News would be a good place to start, but it’s about the worst Jewish paper I’ve ever read) and I can’t figure out what the potential fall out—both good and bad—would be if I made things public.

This kind of kashrut dilemma is not uncommon. Check out the great post about the kashrut business at UnOrthodox Jew, and some discussion over at Orthomom, too. There’s also A Mashgiach Speaks Out, but he sometimes gets a little too shrill for my taste.

Anyway, I’m interested to hear what you guys think I should do.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome recently banned bottled water from all city offices and functions (Yishar Koa’ch!). A recent documentary film and book, Thirst, by Deborah Kaufman (founder of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) and Alan Snitow asks whether water is a public resource or a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. From political debates over pollution, to controversies over public control vs. privatization, to the very personal dilemmas of whether you should carry bottled water, there is truly “water, water, everywhere.”

How should the Jewish community respond to these global and local water crises?

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Recanati wine is desperately trying to pass for gentile.

First off, there's the name. Nothing about "Recanati" sounds particularly Jewish. In fact, it sounds vaguely Italian. (Which doesn't hurt a wine.) Then there's the fact that the front label is extremely simple—there is nary a Hebrew letter in sight, only the brand, the vintage, the grape and the region. You have to take a close look at the back to find the kosher stamp. And if you were to call the PR department at Recanati, they would admit that no, they're not really advertising the fact that they're kosher.

"We've been encouraging wine shops to start an Israeli section," says Michael Wolff, the senior brand manager for the Israeli wine, which is produced in the Galilee. The idea is to get away from the "kosher" label and all its connotations.

Funny, it doesn't look Jewish: Good luck finding the kosher symbol on this bottle of Recanati wineRecanati is hardly the only Israeli wine hiding the inconvenient fact that, yes, they're also kosher. "We don't really talk about the kosher aspect of our wines," says Marsha Palanci, who does marketing for the Israeli brand Yarden. "We market it as an international wine."

The reasons behind this are of the "duh" variety. Long before brand giant Manischewitz even existed, the words "wretched" and "kosher" were synonyms when it came to wine: Jews have proven themselves utterly maladroit winemakers for literally thousands of years. Not that it was always their fault: Jews rarely had access to grapes, and they oftentimes weren't allowed to own land. And when the Jews arrived in America, the only grape they had access to was the Concord, which needed to be diluted with sugar—making wines like Manischewitz so sickly sweet.

But there is nothing in the rules of kashrut that makes bad wine inevitable. For a wine to be kosher it needs to either be flash-pasteurized—heated to 90 degrees Celsius—or it needs to be made by Sabbath-observant Jews. Wine experts disagree about whether flash-pasteurization has negative effects on taste (though most believe it does), but regardless, nothing about shomer Shabbat vintners makes for crappy wine.

And given that we're living in the age of gourmet, where food and drink is as much about status as it is about nourishment and chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud are celebrities known by their first name, it's only fitting and proper that the moment is ripe for an excellent, upscale kosher wine. Why should Jews be left out? Let the gourmet kosher wine revolution begin.

Not a gentile in sight: Wine is kosher as long as it's made by Shabbat-observant JewsThe last decade has seen signs of just that sort of uprising. Israel, France and California have all been churning out top-notch labels at extremely high prices. California-based Covenant, for example, retails for $110 and can be found on the wine lists at Per Se and French Laundry. Other kosher wines, like Recanati, are as shy about their kosher status but considerably less expensive. To see the revolution in progress, I canvassed a number of wine stores and wine experts and came up with a list of the best wines the kosher world has to offer. Then, for the sake of research, I sampled all of them with a friend.

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If It Tastes Good: it's probably not a kosher airline mealA friend of a friend recently shared this story with me via email. Here it is, word for word:

After my wife, Lisa, and I moved to Reno from Cleveland, we found ourselves traveling back to the Midwest on a regular basis. My entire family lives east of the Cuyahoga River, otherwise recognized as the great cultural and geographical divide in that city. Reno, although surrounded by scenic beauties, lacked the indulgences needed by a lifelong urbanite: brown mustard, professional sports, and enunciation coupled with non-twanged accents.

Flights became the necessary evil. And, I'm afraid to fly. Actually, I'm afraid of airports, if they'd just pick me up at home, I'd be alright.

I discovered that the online air travel service I was using at the time provided a virtual cornucopia of in-flight meal options. To break up the monotony of flying, I decided to try every meal option offered. It would take a year or more to get through the Vegetarian, Asian, Children's, and Kosher selections. But, hey, I consider myself a somewhat adventurous eater, and there's something exotic about a Hindi meal at 30,000 feet, even if it it's over Nebraska.

Vegetarian came first, on a newly emerged from bankruptcy TWA. Same meal as my wife's regular in-flight service, minus the meat. No need to repeat that one.

Kosher came next. TWA to Cleveland, mid-August, 2003, departing 6:30 A.M. Perfect flying weather, not a cloud in the sky and no wind. When you're aviophobic, you tend to notice these things.

Seated in the very last row, Lisa and I took our seats as usual and the plane quickly filled to capacity. I was calm knowing we were about to leave on-time, and visions of latkes, matzo ball soup, and a mile-high corn beef soon distracted my attention away from the fear.

Then, we sat. And, sat some more. No announcement from the cabin. No apparent reason to be at the gate when we should be nearing Salt Lake City. The flight attendant approached my seat, bent down and spoke to me in a whisper:

"Mr. Mauceri, sorry, but we couldn't find a rabbi this morning to certify your meal. We've been looking for an hour."

Suddenly, it seemed every baby on board was crying. All eyes were upon me. I defined impatience. I was the cause of the delay. What did I do to cause such a problem? Had stepping from my world to the world of flavors unknown, from the Goy to the Jew, somehow broken some law of physics or electro-optics? Ah, the guilt!

"That's alright, I'll take a non-Kosher meal so we can leave now," I uttered. I couldn't admit that this was all some gastronomic experiment gone horribly haywire. Without saying a word, the flight attendant turned from me, picked up the wall phone to signal the pilot, and off we went. Sunk as low as possible in my seat, I nibbled away at an overripe apple and a stale Subway sandwich, the apparent prize for misguided dining.

I would have guessed that those kosher airline meals arrived at the airport pre-certified, and I'm amazed that they'd hold a flight for lack of a Rabbi.

Have you ever embarrassed yourself (or gotten away) with something similar? I'm wracking my brain for comparable experiences that people may have had in sampling others' religious rituals and rules. The best I can come up with is taking Communion at a wedding, but my guess is that some of you can trump that.

Recently a lapsed Catholic friend confessed a serious case of religion envy—for the religion I happened to be born into. “I’ve always had a strong admiration for Judaism,” he told me. “If I had to choose any religion, it would be yours.” Ironically, I had a similar confession to make: I’d always felt the same way about the Catholic Church.

In an age when schoolchildren in the most goyish suburbs learn to sing “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” alongside “Silent Night,” when churches and synagogues engage in interfaith outreach, and where politicians regularly lump sharply contrasting belief systems together under the category of “faith,” it shouldn’t be surprising that religions can seem interchangeable. Especially when your own religion feels a bit lacking. Don’t like fasting on Yom Kippur? Why not try on Catholicism for size? Unhappy with the latest Pope? Drop by your neighborhood synagogue or mosque. But religious values aren’t a Chinese menu, where we can pick two from Column A and three from Column B to suit ourselves. In fact, the better metaphor here would be a delicately balanced house of cards; pull out one from the middle, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

Making Catholics want to be Jews since 1909: Isaiah BerlinAs my friend explained his high regard for Judaism, I realized that he was attracted to certain Jewish cultural traditions but didn’t realize how they fit into a larger philosophical framework. He had two reasons for his high regard for Judaism, beginning with our people’s famous penchant for heterodoxy. Unlike Catholicism, we have no Vatican that issues The Final Word which all Jews must follow. He also admired our tradition of scholarly debate: rabbis carrying on heated discussions long into the night, not to mention Jewish writers and intellectuals like Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt carrying on that tradition in the secular culture. My friend found this refreshing compared with Catholicism, in which the word of God goes directly through the church to its adherents, with no room for questioning.

I found it difficult to recognize the religion he was describing. True, we lack a central authority, and our rabbis don’t hector us from the pulpit like stereotypically stern Irish priests. But then our rabbis don’t need to hector us, as the Jewish laity has more than ably fulfilled that role. Judaism emphasizes faith performed in the context of a community (which is why, in order to pray, you need the presence of ten adult males.) Step outside its accepted norms and you’ve got two choices: subject yourself to an earful about it from family, friends, and strangers, or walk away from the community.

And while there is a lot of debate in religious circles, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it all as intellectual since it focuses mostly on matters of ritual rather than philosophy. (What’s so intellectual about a debate over whether it’s permissible to put sugar into tea or tea into sugar on Shabbat?) This reflects Judaism’s emphasis on practice over intent—the here-and-now over the metaphysical. Our leaders often find themselves absorbed in such profundities as the proper way to slit the throat of a chicken. In fact, most of our greatest intellectuals (Spinoza, Marx, Freud) were reacting against the grain of our religion, not with it. Compare this to Catholicism, which inspired St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante.

Beat that, Judaism: Notre Dame in ParisAnd that’s why, as I told my friend, I’ve long had a secret case of religion envy for Catholicism, with its emphasis on the soul, not rituals. Catholics have the freedom to live their daily lives as they see fit, because Catholicism has few rules governing the banalities of what to eat or what clothes to wear. Also, especially in contrast with Jews, Catholics have a much better knack for pageantry and decoration. Walk into any Catholic cathedral and then a Jewish synagogue; which space is more likely to inspire a state of awe and meditation conducive to prayer? Perhaps the chief source of my Catholic religion envy, though, is the ritual of confession. Imagine it, free therapy! For a Jew, what could be a bigger wet dream?

But as my friend quickly pointed out, Catholicism’s fetishization of the soul can become meaninglessly ritualistic in itself. Catholics can eat shrimp to their heart’s content, but their penalty for breaking the faith’s few key rules is rather extreme: an eternity in hell or a slightly shorter time in purgatory. As for Catholicism’s theatrical pageantry, it’s fun to look at occasionally, but after a while, it can all get a bit tacky, even gruesome. The point is not to inspire individual meditation, but mass conformance to Catholic dogma. And Confession isn’t a bit like therapy. The priests aren’t there to sympathize but merely to help you atone—all in all, a ritual as empty as the rabbi of a synagogue with over a thousand members shaking a congregant’s hand on Shabbat.

That’s when it hit me: Understanding someone else’s religion is like learning a language. You can’t just translate the words one-to-one. Rather, you have to begin by tackling the logic of the whole supporting system underneath.

100% halal: A kosher symbol on a soda bottleIt’s not just a question of Judaism and Catholicism, either. I find it lovely that many Muslims search for the kashrut symbol on non-meat products in American grocery stores because a kosher product is often also halal. Keeping kosher and eating halal, however, are hardly the same thing. In fact, one of the reasons kosher meat is not considered halal is that kashrut is based on the Jewish principles of cleanliness and the ethical treatment of animals. Halal rules incorporate these principles, but they privilege the uniquely Islamic value of submission to God’s will, which is why a prayer affirming the greatness of Allah must be uttered immediately preceding the animal’s slaughter.

Why do we feel the desire to mold unfamiliar religions to fit our own wishes and ideals? Maybe in an era of terrorism and armed conflict in the name of God, we want to comfort ourselves by affirming the notion that deep down we really are all the same. (We are, but our religions aren’t). For some of us, religion envy may be a symptom of a consumer society in which almost every product can be customized to fit each customer’s specific tastes. “Would you like your sandwich on whole wheat, foccacia, rye, white, country Tuscan, country Tuscan whole wheat, or country Tuscan whole wheat low-carb?” “Would you like your religion belief-centered, practice-centered, monotheistic, pantheistic, ritual-heavy, or ritual-lite?”

The more I hashed the matter out with my Catholic friend, the more it became clear that our religion envy came out of sadness, even regret. Just as children idealize their friends’ parents when their own parents seem not to understand them, we too idealized each other’s faiths (and denigrated our own) because of our desire to correct what we saw as the flaws of the religions we’d been born into. Religion envy is a band-aid, but it doesn’t quite fit over the wound.

Inscribed "I had a blast at Benjy's Bar Mitzvah": The pope's kippahFor example, my friend stumped me with the following un-Jewish question about Judaism: “What happens if you don’t go to synagogue? Is that a sin? Does that mean you’re going to hell?” He’d been turned off from Catholicism after being told that skipping church on Sundays was a mortal sin.

But Judaism addresses the subject of hell only in passing, with scant detail. For all Judaism’s rules, our emphasis is not on doing right to receive a reward or avoid a punishment, but on doing right for its own sake. Perhaps the best answer I could come up with was, in true Jewish form, another question: “Does the Pope wear a yarmulke?”

Similarly, in all my questions about Catholicism’s emphasis on spirituality the name “Jesus Christ” never came up. In fact, I was surprised when my friend explained that you can’t be a good Catholic without affirming your belief in Christ as the Son of God who once walked on Earth and died for our sins. “But what if, even if you’re not sure Jesus was divine, you follow all of his teachings to the letter?” I asked. Nope, not good enough. For Catholics, faith in Jesus’ godly status is a prerequisite. I’d been unable see this dogmatic aspect of Catholicism because I was too busy admiring the religion’s spirituality as an antidote for Jewish dogma.

If we must accept the notion that different faiths are indeed fundamentally different, where does that leave those of us who’d like to promote interfaith understanding, particularly now, when we’re so frightened of people who passionately believe things that are antithetical to our own belief systems? A false understanding of how other religions work is just as bad as no understanding. Instead of promoting untruths like “we all believe in the same God, just with different names,” we should approach the faith of the Other with a completely open, almost childlike sense of wonder and bewilderment. In other words, we should be adult enough to say something as juvenile as, “Wow, your god used to think if you eat meat on Fridays you’d go to hell? Interesting, but I don’t understand that at all. Tell me more.”

In Nashville, people are always asking me if I’m kosher. And even though I know it’s unhelpful and overly smartass to say, “No, humans are treyf,” I’m always tempted. So let’s get a few things straight about what it can mean to keep kosher, and how to ask someone what their policy is without pissing her off.

As I mentioned yesterday, asking someone if he keeps kosher is kind of meaningless, because there’s a broad spectrum that falls under the yes answer. Here are some of the most common ways people keep kosher, from the least to the most extreme:
Variety is the Spice of Life: but is it hechshered?
1. Avoiding eating nonkosher animals of any kind, such as pork and shellfish, and not eating milk and meat together—though not necessarily waiting any specific number of hours before switching from meat to milk. Owning one set of dishes, and eating meat regardless of its origins.

2. Only eating kosher meat, owning one set of dishes.

3. Owning two sets of dishes, and only eating kosher meat. Eating at restaurants that aren’t certified as kosher, ordering only dairy/vegetarian meals.

4. Same as 3, but only eating cold dairy dishes out (i.e. nothing cooked)

5. Owning two sets of dishes, and buying things that are kosher “by ingredients” meaning that they don’t contain any explicitly nonkosher ingredients such as gelatin, but aren’t certified as kosher. Eating hot dairy out.

6. Same as 5, but only eating cold dairy out.

7. Two sets of dishes, only buying products that are certified as kosher, but eating hot dairy at restaurants.

8. Same as 7 but only eating cold dairy out.

9. Two sets of dishes, only buying products that are certified as kosher, only eating at restaurants that are certified as kosher.

10. Only eating food that upholds strict standards of kashrut. Only eating Glatt meat, for instance, or only buying products with a specific certification on them, such as OU or CRC.

 

A person who observes any one of these levels would likely say that yes, he or she keeps kosher, even though the next person down on the line might disagree.

Besides creating lots of political divisions in terms of whose hechsher you hold by and whose you don’t, keeping kosher can be problematic when you are invited to someone else’s place and asked to bring something, or when you’re having people over. How do you tactfully ask if your standards are high enough for them? Or if theirs are high enough for you? Here are a few pointers:

If you’re asked to bring dessert you can ask if it needs to be from a kosher bakery. If your host says yes, and your kitchen is ingredients kosher versus certified kosher, you can assume you’ll need to pick something up from a kosher bakery.

Offer up your own info from the start by saying something like, “We just have one set of dishes—is it still okay for us to bring something cooked, or would you rather we brought wine?”

Ask something along the lines of, “Do you mind if I ask about your kashrut policy?” And then—this part is key—don’t judge. Or at least, judge silently. If someone isn’t up to your standards, ask about maybe meeting them at a kosher restaurant sometime, or ask if you can have them over instead. Saying, “that’s not good enough” is a quick way to make enemies.

Just to complicate things further, check out this article over the Washington Post about the Conservative movement’s tzedek hechsher, coming next year.

Trayf?: Only if you made it with a pork buttForgive me if I really don't understand this, but what's kosher about a cell phone?

Apparently, we've now got a hechsher for technology.  And I find this more than a little bewildering:

Advertisements placed recently in Der Yid and Der Blatt, two of the Satmar community’s Yiddish newspapers, made clear in strong and unequivocal language that only certain cell phones were acceptable: those that bore the rabbinic endorsement, the hekhsher, of the Vaad Harabanim Le Inyenei Tikshoret, the Rabbinic Commission on Communications. And what kind of cell phones might those be? Those that eliminate many of the features of the “third-generation” phone. On the rabbinically approved phone, there’s no Internet, no camera, no text-messaging options. A “kosher cell phone” is one that resembles nothing so much as, well, a phone. What’s more, calls are limited to those within the network of other “kosher cell phone” users who, as it happens, are readily identifiable by the sequencing of their phone numbers.

I don't mean to say that I don't see a reason for restricting technology.  We live in a world, as the Forward points out, with increasingly ellusive boundaries.  So, for a population desperate to keep the boundaries in place, I understand the need for limitations. 

But applying kashrut to technology (or almost anything but food) freaks me out.  It seems false.

When observant Jews don't like immodest clothing, they don't require a hechsher for modest clothes, do they?  When they dislike a book they might ban it... but it doesn't mean that ALL other books must be kosher to be read.

See, my objection is about what we rule out, and what we rule in. 

 When we rule something OUT, we limit only that thing. The rest of the world is still, in theory, okay. Innocent until proven guilty.  When we rule something IN, we assert that the world is so terrible we are going to avoid everything BUT the things we've accepted.  That's nuts.

It seems to me a frightened way to live in the world, and a dangerous one.   A slippery slope.  It seems to me to suggest that in all of God's creation, we can only trust like, 172 things.  Out of gazillions. 

Finally, it seems a barrier to increased observance (and I see this a lot lately) among the non-orthodox.  Is this what they want? A divider? A general tightening of the fence?   Us and them?  I have to assume so...

As someone who is, myself, moving toward observing the mitzvot, I find this decision crazy. Lanatic.  While I've just begun shopping at a Kosher grocery store, and limiting the meat I eat.... even thinking about keeping strictly kosher... I'm suddenly forced to redefine what I think of the people in charge of  the hechsher. 

I mean, I'll let them them monitor what's in my kitchen, but if they want to monitor what's in my brain... I'm afraid I'll go back to my trayf ways.