Trust Us, It’s Kosher!
Most of the rules for kosher foods stem from a few passages in the Old Testament that prohibit the eating of shellfish and pork and cooking a baby goat in its mothers’ milk. From those few sentences, the ultra-orthodox have created an industry for approving products. However, there is no one “Pope” of what’s kosher!
I remember my father telling me that he saw a pair of Hasidim in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he was teaching an electronics course. He asked them what they were doing . They said they were supervising a tuna processing plant to make sure it was kosher!
There are many different kosher certification agencies and symbols available in the United States. According to the Jewish newspaper The Forward, there are approximately 1,500 kosher certifiers worldwide and around three hundred in the United States. Each agency typically uses its own unique symbol or “hechsher,” and some have more than one symbol for various levels of certification or types of products. Many don’t recognize the other, and Haredim in one state will not trust another hechsher when they visit.
In Saint Louis we have the Vaad Hoeir, or City Council, which I refer to as the “Kosher Nostra” for its stranglehold on certifications. It’s driven restaurants and bakeries out of business by its fees and demands. For instance, it won’t certify bread baked on the sabbath. Previously it allowed a bakery to stay open then, as long as it distinguished Sabbath baked bread with different twist ties on the package. Then it changed its tune and stopped allowing any bakery that operated on the Sabbath to be certified, even with separate packaging. That ruling drove a client of mine out of business, which then sold its fixtures to a gentile who was allowed to operate on Sabbath under some strange rule.
About a decade ago the Vaad Hoeir ruled that the local Jewish community center could no longer sell Gatorade because it was not kosher for some reason, but Powerade was kosher! I can just imagine the Israelites thirsting for water after receiving the Ten Commandments from Charlton Heston, and coming across a camel load of Gatorade but refusing to drink it!
The certifying agencies send a “mashgiach” to make sure stuff meets its standards, and charges a pretty penny. A friend of mine had a kosher wedding ceremony to satisfy the groom’s parents, and almost threw out the Vaad when it claimed that nuts from New York with a different hechsher could not be served.
To help solve the problem with our local Kosher Nostra, I am today announcing the establishment of my own kosher certification hechsher, the “Vaad Kadima” or Forward Council, with a motto of “Trust Us, It's Kosher.” There will be no staff of supervisors or bribes to pay. Simply a suggested $50 yearly fee and a pledge not to cook kids with mother’s milk, or serve shellfish or pork. Now everyone can be kosher!
