THE SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS IN KASHRUTH

We keep kosher and are very strict about it. We do it for one reason only- because God commanded us to do so. We do it with a deeply abiding sense of faith in both the rightness and reliability of those who guard our food.

As all adults know, the realm of kosher supervision, to quote a well known rabbi, is a cesspool. There often is little evidence of basic morality exhibited in the field. Agencies struggle to take accounts away from other agencies. Often times an agency will not tell you if something is kosher if it is under a competing supervision.

Then there have been the attempts to steal a company’s good name and reputation away from them. For a recent example, just look back two years ago to the Queen’s Vaad (NYC) and the Vaad of the Five Towns (Nassau County, NY) attempt to ruin Streit’s matzah just before Pesach.

Recently, we read an article that told of “kashruth officials” meeting to coordinate common standards across the board. While that may be a good idea in theory, in practice it is a disaster.

When one agency puts a “D” on products made in a dairy pot, but intrinsically pareve, they have gone over the halachic line as delineated in the Shulchan Aruch. When multiple agencies get together and conspire to do this, they are guilty of gneivat hadaat on a large scale.

Recently we were in a kosher market that displayed a sign saying, All salads and puddings here displayed are to be considered as fleishiq as they were cooked in meat pots. Really? Once again, go read the Shulchan Aruch. Pareve is pareve is pareve. There are some limitations, but pareve puddings cooked in a meat pot remains pareve.

So whose standards will be adopted? Far too much of what passes for kosher rules today is based on what certain rabbis want the law to be rather than what the halacha says it is.

We were in a kosher take away store once before Pesach. The mashgiach in charge of making the place kosher for Passover was there. We heard him tell the owners that they could not make the microwave kosher for Passover due to the fact that it had plastic seals on the door. When pressed for a source, he had none other than this is our standard.

In another store, we asked the mashgiach why he insisted on covering the shelves in the cold case. When told it was halacha, we challenged him and cited relevant material from the Misheh Brurah that proved him wrong. We have no argument with what he wanted to do, but the lack of honesty was grating.

So once again, we ask- what will those “kashruth officials” do when they put their yarmulkas together?? What new, non halachically based rules will they push upon all of us?

In Israel, specifically in Jerusalem, stores are rejecting kosher approval from the hareidi controlled chief rabbinate. Why? The standards imposed under the guise of halacha by the hareidi establishment are based on loose notions of “Daas Toirah.” It seems that in the hareidiworld, sacred rabbis are the source of infallibly correct knowledge. Forget sacred text- only those rabbis can divine the Divine rules as recorded in the Dual Canon. As a result, they impose standards never dreamed of in the Dual Canon nor in the Codes.

So, what will those self appointed “kashruth officials” come up with next?