(no subject)

[seekingferret]

brainwane asked for me to talk about "The extent to which various grocery stores and restaurants do or do not cater to your food restrictions."

So I should stipulate that I do not have any food allergies, and so in this context 'food restrictions' means "The extent to which I keep kosher". And for the clarity of those who don't know much about the laws of kashrut, that this is not quite the same as just saying "I keep kosher." There are many different ways to keep kosher. There are a few reasons for this:

1)The modern food system is complicated.
2)Jews like making things complicated.
3)Not all Jews agree on the specific details of the laws of kashrut.
4)Not all Jews trust all other Jews, or all other people in general.
5)Some Jews take extra precautions in their eating practices that are not strictly required by Jewish law, in order to be extra certain that they don't accidentally violate the laws of kashrut.

These things are interconnected. In a sense, kashrut is pretty simple and straightforward. There aren't really that many main concepts. I think I can cover pretty much all of them in a few lines:

1)Only certain animals and parts of animals can be eaten, and those animals must be killed and processed according to certain ritual procedures.
2)Anything grown in the earth can be eaten, but if it was grown in Israel certain percentages must be committed to Temple use and cannot be eaten.
3)Unkosher foods ritually contaminate the vessels they are contained in under certain conditions.
4)Dairy and meat cannot be mixed.

There, that is all of kashrut while standing on one foot. As I said, in a sense it's pretty straightforward. But the modern food system is complicated. If you're just buying vegetables straight out of the ground, there's no question of what's in it: Dirt and insects and pesticides and vegetable matter, and that's it. You clean off the dirt and insects and pesticides and you make sure there weren't any tithes involved and you're fine to eat. But so much of the food we eat is processed, and there are so many ingredients involved and so many different kinds of cooking vessels involved. To determine whether unkosher animal byproducts have been introduced could be a difficult challenge.

Could, I say! Doesn't have to. Theoretically, there's a principle in kashrut called bitul, which is a little technically involved but says that if a nonkosher ingredient is less than a sixtieth of the total volume of a food mixture, it's nullified by the vast bulk of kosher food. Some people take this approach to the kashrut of processed goods- if there isn't something obviously unkosher on the ingredients list, they'll eat it and assume if there was anything unkosher it's nullified by bitul. Orthodox Judaism in the post-war era, generally speaking, does not take this understanding of bitul, though. Their sense is that bitul requires that the unkosher ingredient be added by accident, and so in the case of industrial processes with each ingredient carefully added, nothing can be nullified. As a result, a huge and complicated industry has grown up of kosher certification. Ingredient lists are scrutinized, industrial processes are supervised by trained workers, and in theory if there is kosher certification on a food item it means that somebody with Rabbinical training is keeping an eye on the whole process to make sure the food is legitimately kosher according to Orthodox standards.

But which certifications a given Orthodox Jew holds by comes down to items 2, 3, 4, and 5 on my list. Some Jews won't eat food certified by certain certification organizations because those organizations observe a less stringent interpretation of certain kashrut rules. Some Jews won't eat food certified by certain certification organizations even though they observe the same kashrut rules, because they don't trust the certification organization to be honest and thorough. As a result, there are hundreds of different certification authorities and if you really want to dig into it, you have to educate yourself on the differences between them. To make matters more confusing, outside of New York State there are virtually no secular legal structures imposed on the labeling of kosher products, so anyone can stamp a K on food and declare it kosher without any supervision. (The community tries to pass warnings along when this happens, but transmission is not always perfect)

Personally, my general approach is to say that for my purposes, the purpose of kashrut certification is to keep the food providers honest. As long as someone is willing to sign their name to assert that the food has been supervised according to Jewish law, I will eat it. I mostly don't even bother keeping track of the various kashrut organizations, except in a general way, as I feel that the presence of a certification stamp is sufficient. The only exception is of a few certification authorities that I know will cause problems if I serve their food to other Orthodox Jews: Virtually no Orthodox Jews will eat Hebrew National food, because it is not glatt, an added stringency in the examination of slaughtered animals to find defects, and because some of them don't trust the Rabbi doing the certification. I have no problem with eating Hebrew National food myself, but I don't buy it because it would be inconvenient when hosting others.

Now, to return to brainwane's question, virtually nobody running a grocery store knows any of this, so it's pretty much on the Jewish consumer to know the meaning of labels and how to handle purchasing accordingly. And that's fine, that's just how it is. Reading the language of kosher certification symbols is something Jewish children are taught very young, because young kids need to have it explained to them many times why they can't just eat anything off the shelf.

The bigger issue when it comes to grocery stores is stock availability. I have it fairly easy in Central Jersey, with its large Jewish population. Several major supermarkets in towns with particularly large Jewish populations have, in the past decade, built out larger kosher sections. Shop Rite calls its special kosher section in some of its stores "The Kosher Experience". There are also dedicated kosher grocery stores- I'm lucky enough right now to live in walking distance to one. But even the supermarkets in my area that don't particularly cater to Jews at least tend to have a small kosher aisle. It's actually jarring when I'm on vacation to go grocery shopping and realize that's not the norm everywhere, and to find a greater fraction of even the not-specifically-marketing-to-kosher-people brands do not have any certification. But even in Central Jersey, I often have to do a cycle of several supermarkets to find all the kosher products I want. I don't think that's a particularly Jewish phenomenon, though- most people I know have that weird item they like that they only stock at the slightly further/more expensive grocery store, necessitating a rotation of grocery store visits.

Feelings about things like the Kosher Experience are a little mixed in the community. On the one hand, it brings supermarket convenience to us, and supermarket pricing. On the other hand, this works against local smaller Jewish businesses like kosher butchers- There basically aren't any around anymore. So, you know, globalization as usual. I'm generally pretty pro-globalization, but it's undeniable that it has costs. Something like three quarters of kosher meat for the country was produced at a facility in Iowa, and when that facility was shut down for labor violations and tax fraud, it was a massive disruption in the availability of kosher meat.

Also, slowly taking the place of local kosher butchers and specialized kosher food stores is the Internet. I haven't really much taken advantage of this, but I know people who order meat from online kosher meat providers that specialize in odd cuts or types of meat that don't make the cut at the new supermarket kosher sections. It is definitely a thing and I'm sure will become more of a thing over time.


brainwane, was that anything like the answer you were expecting?

Comments

Thank you!

[brainwane]

Some of this was stuff I already knew, and some was not -- for instance, I hadn't known about the Iowa Discontinuity, or about the larger kosher sections at certain supermarkets. So, thanks! I was also curious about your particular approach and how particular you are in trusting or distrusting particular certification authorities. I think kosher labelling is an example of a semi-distributed trust and signalling institution that I want to learn lessons from.

If you feel like writing an additional post or comment about restaurants I'd welcome that! My parents immigrated from India to the US and preferred to eat at fast-food chain restaurants (like Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Subway) not just because they were cheap but because they were reliable; you knew that every single one would have the same vegetarian options and they would taste the same. I was wondering whether there's a similar preference for you, preferring to (on balance) eat at chain restaurants because those are more likely the ones that have made the effort to get kosher certifications...

Re: Thank you!

[seekingferret]

Yeah, I don't generally eat in restaurants that don't have a certification, and that generally means no chains whatsoever. There are some Dunkin Donuts and Dairy Queen franchises that can get certification, but that's about it. I didn't say much about restaurants accommodating me because I don't have as much to say- kosher restaurants are kind of a beast unto themselves.

Re: Thank you!

[seekingferret]

Or okay, a little more clarification. The main problem with fast food chains like Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc.. from a kashrut point of view is the third item on my list of the simplified rules of kashrut: the cooking vessels. A vegetarian pizza at pizza hut might or might not reliably have no non-kosher ingredients (although cheese commonly has animal-based curing agents that are potentially a problem), but it is still cooked in an oven that has absorbed the tumah (ritual impurity) from the meat pizzas that were also cooked in that oven.

Re: Thank you!

[brainwane]

THE VESSELS. Of course. I should have thought of that. Grateful that I asked. Thank you!

Re: Thank you!

[seekingferret]

Basically a kosher restaurant needs to be a place that only has kosher ingredients and that either only cooks meat meals with no dairy, only cooks dairy meals with no meat, or only cooks pareve (no meat or dairy) food, to be certain there is no contamination. And that place then needs to get a Rabbinical certification saying that someone trained is watching to be sure it meets these standards, which is an additional expense.

[ambyr]

I went to a friend's house in the suburbs last weekend for a holiday party and was pleasantly surprised to stumble over both a kosher grocery store and a kosher restaurant on my way. DC proper is so utterly lacking in kosher options (we are apparently capable of supporting exactly one kosher restaurant at a time; when the last one closed, a new one opened) I sometimes forget that, hey, yes, there _are_ Orthodox neighborhoods around here; they're just not in the city. Useful to know for the needs of guests.

[lannamichaels]

The supermarket near me has a small kosher section, with inconsistent stocking of their meat (they bring in meal mart, but don't always have it, or have certain types). Thankfully there's a deli near me that has meat. I can get chicken at Trader Joe's, but their kosher meat that they advertize is Triangle-K. Ah, the fun stuff with all the different certifications. :P I bought rugelach once for a meal that had so many certifications, I was joking it included Lubavich shechita. Then we found a really really frum one on it. So, in a sense, that dessert did have lubavich shechita. :P

The real problem in finding things can be non-dairy stuff. I think people keep actual lists of stores that have non-dairy chocolate chips, for instance.

[seekingferret]

My nonobservant uncle brought over this box of rugelach on Pesach this year. It had SO MANY HEKSHERS ON IT. Except none of them were kosher l'pesach. He was so crushed when we pointed this out, because he'd tried to hard to find something we'd find acceptable.

[lannamichaels]

Sometimes this is done dickishly on the packaging, too. One year there was a box of (egg) matza that said Kosher For Pesach in English, but in Hebrew said "for children and sick people".

[brainwane]

Now that is just utterly bogus! What the!

[seekingferret]

It's just an example of what Geoff Pullum calls nerdview, I think. Most Jews who keep kosher on Passover probably know the laws of egg matza: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1163475/jewish/Is-Egg-Matzah-Kosher-For-Passover.htm So whether they are kosher for Passover depends on more than just whether you are a child or a sick person, it depends on family heritage and family custom. It's not something you can just issue a generic ruling about on a box. So the box is not unclear to Jews who keep kosher, but it is unclear to people who don't keep kosher but are trying to buy something for people who do.

[(Anonymous)]

Who collects the tithes on Israel-grown food these days?

MK

[seekingferret]

Here's a decent blogpost from the OU on modern agricultural tithing halacha: https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/separating-terumah-and-maaser/

[batdina]

This is fascinating to me. Out here on the left coast it's very difficult to be machmir about kashrut. That triangle (is that United Synagogue?) and/or OU, are often the only hechshers we get. Kosher chicken at Trader Joes (empire, of course) is about all we can get in terms of meat without going to a specialty store. Of those there are three or four, depending on where you live. When I was in LA for a few years I got spoilt because there's a large enough observant community to serve that you could get almost anything you'd want. Up here in the north, organization is key. Knowing in advance what you'll need so you can order it, things like that.

I'm intrigued by the internet stores. I found one last year because my father wanted Sour Tomatoes and the only ones we could find were shipped from NY or NJ. It was, however, incredibly expensive. Until that changes it's not viable for us as a regular thing.

And don't get me started on restaurants. We had one really good one in Berkeley, but it's long closed and the only one I know of now is on the Peninsula (Palo Alto/Mountain View). Eating out has been a sikh restaurant where there is absolutely no meat on the menu or ever in the kitchen. No hecksher per se, but good enough given where we live. I miss eating out something fierce.

Anyway, thanks for the overview; I may snag your five points as a way to explain to others how it works if that's okay with you.

[seekingferret]

Glad you liked the post. Feel free to borrow any of it you want. And yeah, I know that I'm very lucky to live where I am in terms of how easy it makes kashrut comparatively.

Berkeley

[brainwane]

I used to live in Berkeley -- I'm curious whether the restaurant that closed is one that I knew... what was its name?

Re: Berkeley

[batdina]

I actually don't remember the name; it was owned and run by Noah Alper (Noah's Bagel guy) and I think it was on Center Street, just one block toward campus from the downtown BART station. It closed about eight years ago now.