NON ORTHODOX HASHGACHOT

Kashrus Magazine has a web site that lists non Orthodox hashgachot. We get it- we really do. Yet, on another level, we are bothered by the notion. Labels are very convenient and serve useful purposes. But labels can also be used to obfuscate.

It seems to us that the purpose of listing non Orthodox supervision is to imply that the supervision is not “up to snuff” or not rigorous enough. We suspect that the thinking is that if you belong to a non halachic movement, you do not have the ne’emanut to do hashgacha. There are two problems with this line of thought, however.

The first problem is that it tars all those rabbis with the same brush without knowing anything about them as individuals. The second problem is that it shows no awareness of the certifying rabbi’s standards.

At the same time, it would seem to us that a fair inference would be that the magazine believes that ALL Orthodox certifications are acceptable. We dispute that sentiment, and in fact there are so-called Orthodox hashgachot that the UTJ and the Kosher Nexus do not accept. A few years ago, the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly sent their members a note saying that a certain Orthodox supervision was not acceptable due to the very low standards of the agency.

More than twenty years ago, there was a rabbi who served in a shul with both mixed and separate seating. The rabbi asked to be admitted to the local vaad. He was rejected because of his shul. As it turned out, there were only two rabbis in that community who were certified in nikur (removing the forbidden veins), and he was one of them. The vaad rabbi who served in a local butcher shop had no idea where and how to look to see if the meat had been properly deveined. Oh, and by the way, the rabbi who asked to join the vaad had his certification from a chief rabbi of Jerusalem (of blessed memory).

Over the years, there have been many more scandals involving Orthodox supervision than any other kind. True, there are more Orthodox supervisions than any other kind. However, except for the famous Long Island challenge to the State of New York’s kosher laws which involved the standards of a Conservative rabbi, we can’t think of any scandals that were not Orthodox.

A well known rabbi who did hashgacha was once contacted by an Orthodox rabbi representing his agency. The rabbi asked the other rabbi if he would rep his agency as a mashgiach at a certain hotel for Pesach. The rabbi asked the agency rabbi a few questions. When he found out that the agency rabbi did NOT require the hotel to change their dishes for Pesach, he declined. Folks, this was a well known Orthodox rabbi making the request. How do we know the story? The rabbi who was asked if he wanted the job was so upset he phoned us to vent a bit. Sad, no?

Again, we get it. We really do. But to give a blanket implication that if it is not Orthodox it is not kosher is not proper.

Are we over thinking this? We do not think so. We think the implication and the agenda are both abundantly clear. We have no truck with non Orthodox rabbis, but before we say no, we check out the rabbi and his standards. Labels, as we said above, can also obfuscate. We showed the web site and a comment in a recent issue of the magazine to a number of people, and they all had the same reaction we did. Oh, and by the way, they were all Orthodox Jews.