HELLO, MY NAME IS EARTH. HAVE WE MET???

There we were in our favorite kosher take-out store (A and A Gourmet) in Queens, NY. Some fellow we have never met gave a brilliant lecture on several topics of kosher interest. According to him, the fellow had A) info no one else had and B) the true inside scoop and C) privileged information.

He then proceeded to give vent to a bunch of nonsense the likes of which we have not heard in ages. We were actually offended by his chutzpah and stupidity. Not only that, but it was very off putting to hear so much falsehood, rechilus and lashon harah DURING THE TEN DAYS OF REPENTANCE! We had just spent countless hours in shul repenting, and this guy gives vent to a load of horse manure.

We have said it before and we say it again: in the realm of kashruth, the phrase “everybody knows” is almost always a dead giveaway that the speaker is about to give you false information.

This fellow had false information about the Half Moon K, the Triangle K, the story of the closure of a store in the Five Towns, and a bit of other misheggas. We told him, among other things that the Half Moon K had merged into the OU. He told us we were wrong. We were not wrong- it had not yet been announced. We met with the attorney of the store that was shut down and learned much of the story. The story we heard from the attorney, granted very much a one sided story, in no way matched the story that man told us. His story contained some outrageously false information as well as scurrilous hearsay.

So, what’s the moral of the story? The moral of the story is that we constantly have to be on the lookout for people spreading lashon harah and rechilus. The second moral of the story is beware of people who tell you that they have the inside, true, never-before-heard truth. They almost never do.