Is Israel's National bird the Hoopoe - Duchifat - Hud Hud Kosher?

No, in fact Israel's National bird, the Hoopoe - Duchifat - Hud Hud, is not kosher. It is "an unclean animal that may not be eaten."

The Times had an editorial in June 2008 that talked about the newly designated Israeli National bird, the Hoopoe - Duchifat (Hebrew) - Hud Hud (Arabic). The writer proposed that this decision on the bird would help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors.

In June 2008 Stephen Colbert quipped caustically that the bird is not a valiant eagle, "May you (Israel) emulate the noble long-billed hoopoe by squirting fecal matter at intruders."

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Here is the Times op-ed from 2008.

Will Peace Take Flight?
By JONATHAN ROSEN

LATE last month, Israel announced that it had named the hoopoe as its national bird. The long-billed hoopoe, which has a punky orange crest tipped black, is barely mentioned in the Bible (as an unclean animal that may not be eaten) but it plays a role in rabbinic literature and in Islamic lore as well. It is celebrated, among other things, as the messenger that shuttles between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It is in other words well suited to the symbolic burden the country has placed on it.

The idea that birds can be emissaries to a battered world — like the dove and raven sent out by Noah — motivated Israel’s decision to adopt a national bird as part of its commemoration of 60 years of statehood. In Hebrew the name of the bird is duchifat. In Arabic it is hud hud. And in English hoopoe is a word that sounds, as Emily Dickinson noted about all feathered creatures, strangely like hope.

The news was announced at the official residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, who in the late 1940s changed his name from Persky to Peres because he saw a giant lammergeier, or bearded vulture (in Hebrew, a “peres”), circling overhead. Legend has it that the lammergeier, which no longer breeds in Israel, killed the Greek tragedian Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on his head. Birds can be dangerous, which is precisely why the United States chose the bald eagle, though Benjamin Franklin complained, in a letter to his daughter, that the eagle was a cowardly bully while the turkey was nobler and feistier and therefore a more apt symbol for America.

In Franklin’s time, a young democracy wanted a warrior bird; in the 21st century other considerations carry the day. The cross-section of Israelis who did the voting to choose a national bird — including schoolchildren, soldiers, academics and Knesset members — rejected the possibility of a raptor (specifically, the much-loved, and endangered, griffon vulture) as sending the wrong signal for the country. They also rejected the night owl, which Arabs believe to be an evil omen.

I first saw a hoopoe in 2000, the year the Oslo Accords officially fell apart. I had known about the bird since childhood, when I learned that King Solomon — who, with his storied ability to understand the speech of animals is the Dr. Doolittle of Judaism — had sought out the hoopoe in order to build the Temple. It had not occurred to me, until I began bird-watching, that the bird was real.

But there I was, in a small bird observatory in Jerusalem, with a soldier whose job it was to net migrating birds, weigh them and then toss them back into the air. “Filthy birds,” he said, pointing out one that was heading for a hole in a wall and then adding that they reeked of excrement. So much for the bird who helped the king build a house for God. It was, however, a lesson worthy of Solomon, seeing this lofty bird that smells of mortality. It is the nature of birds to embody multiple elements, shuttling as they do between earth and sky, between ancient and modern, between wild and tame. They are emblems of our heavenly aspirations and yet they are the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs.

The search for a national bird was organized by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and led by an Israeli ornithologist, Yossi Leshem. Dr. Leshem has created the International Center for Bird Migration in Latrun, the site of some very bloody battles in Israel’s War of Independence and home to a vast war memorial. The center’s hopeful slogan, printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English, is “Migrating birds know no boundaries,” in contrast to the people on the ground, for whom boundaries are everything. This gives birdlife an added poignancy in Israel.

Israel is a surprisingly good place for bird-watching (half a billion birds fly through the country during migration, converging from Africa, Asia and Europe). Jeremiah noted that “the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times” and she still does — every year, 85 percent of the world’s white stork population migrates over Israel, despite the general upheaval of the world below.

A hoopoe is the hero of the Persian poet Farid al-Din Attar’s “Conference of the Birds,” a medieval allegory in which a group of birds sets out to find the king of the birds. The hoopoe is their leader, artfully persuading all the reluctant birds to come on the quest. In the end, they manage to find the king of the birds, who turns out to be God. The birds that have made it into the bird king’s presence are filled with radiant insight but they are consumed — they discover they are part of God and they are obliterated in the divine effulgence. This is a happy ending if you are a mystic but it is chilling if you are not.

Attar, a Sufi, believed that all religions are a path to God. It is part of the endless irony of history that the place where Attar once lived (and that in fact expelled him for heresy) today threatens with obliteration those nations, most especially the Jewish state, that it deems an abomination. Whether even the wisdom of King Solomon, and his magical avian emissary, can devise an answer to this threat is one of the great challenges of the coming days.

Jonathan Rosen, the editorial director of Nextbook, is the author, most recently, of “The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature.”

/reposts from 2008/

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Is the Dot-Kosher Internet Domain Extension Kosher?

Some rabbis say yes; other rabbis say no.

Here's a both ironic and Talmudic kosher story to end your week from Bloomberg ("It’s Rabbi Versus Rabbi in $17 Billion Dot-Kosher Battle"). "The Internet’s organizing body, called Icann, is meeting this week in the South African port city of Durban to begin a major expansion of domain names. That may include a decision on who can operate and license “dot-kosher” as a suffix for Web addresses, the same way “dot-com” and “dot-net” are used."

When rabbis engage in a dispute like this one, well that's Talmudic:

Five organizations have banded together to oppose the sole applicant for dot-kosher, Kosher Marketing Assets, saying it seeks to profit from a sacred tradition that shouldn’t be over-commercialized. The two sides, which both are in the business of certifying food as kosher, are at odds over how Internet users will find such products in the future.

And when rabbis say obviously silly things, well that's ironic:

“We think that if the term ‘kosher,’ which has important meaning in the Jewish religion, is commercialized, it will do a disservice to how religion in general should be treated and will harm the kosher public specifically,” said Harvey Blitz, the Kashruth Commission chairman of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, one of the five groups. The New York-based organization oversees OU Kosher, the world’s largest certification agency.

Ironic here because there is no question that Kosher certification agencies have already commercialized kosher supervision.

We sure hope these rabbis work this domain dispute out.

Kosher Marketing Assets is a unit of OK Kosher Certification, a Brooklyn, New York-based competitor to OU Kosher. Rabbi Don Yoel Levy, OK Kosher’s CEO, said he never intended to control the potential domain name unilaterally and said he was open to working with the five groups -- the Orthodox Union, STAR-K Kosher Certification Inc., Chicago Rabbinical Council Inc., the Kashruth Council of Canada, and Kosher Supervision Service Inc., better known as the KOF-K.

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Jewish Times: Are Hebrew National Hot Dogs Really Kosher?

Yes. Hebrew National Hot Dogs have been kosher since 1905.

We eat them. But we know lots of more-kosher-than-thou types who don't partake. Those are the Jewish folk who answer to an even "higher authority" than Hebrew National.

Kenneth Lasson, writing in a Baltimore Jewish Times cover story in 2009, weaves together reportage about the hot dog industry, the kashrut supervision industry and baseball parks to come up with a fascinating fabric of a story, "Hebrew National and Kosher Politics - What’s kosher about answering to a higher authority?".

For years there have been some super-glatt-orthodox who whisper about whether the supervision of Hebrew National was "reliable." Lasson covers this controversy and says for instance,

...As to Triangle K, Rabbi Abadi wrote on the kashrut.org Web site, “Rabbi Ralbag is a G-d-fearing man and if he says it’s kosher, you sure can eat it. I can’t say the same for many of the other labels out there.”...more...

The Talmudic question is of course, can we trust the writing of Kenneth Lasson. Is he reliable? Is he glatt kosher? /repost from 7-9-09/

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Is the New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich Kosher?

CBS reports that there is a New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich.

It's made from a glazed donut, fried egg and bacon. And it has only 360 calories.

No, it is not kosher? It has bacon.

It's also a violation of improperly mixing up the distinct categories of the universe. Desserts, must not be mixed with real foods.

I mean what next? Cupcake burgers? Fries with whipped cream?

And lastly, yuck.

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Top Ten Reasons We Eat Dairy on Shavuot

It seems we can never remember exactly why we eat dairy on Shavuot. Multiple thanks to our good friend who researched and thought about this question and sent us a retrospective for this year and reminder for years to come.

After immersing myself and my family in milk, cheese, eggs and noodles for the past two days, the question remained, why? Why do we eat dairy on Shavuot? Here are the top ten reasons that I came up with.

My first thought was to look for some Biblical or Talmudic reason and for that, I turned to "The Jewish Book of Why", which gave three reasons:

1. "Dairy foods should be eaten on the day the Tora was received on Mount Sinai because the words in the Song of Songs, 'honey and milk under thy lips' (4:11) imply that, like milk products and honey, the words of the Tora are pleasant and good for our spirits".

2. From Exodus 23:19: "'The choicest first fruits shalt thou bring to the House of the Lord. Thou shalt not cook a kid in its mother's milk.' The 'first fruits'... refers to the Shavuot holiday. The second part... is taken to mean that the two main dishes to be served at the holiday meal are to be first a dairy dish, followed later by a meat dish".

3. According to a legend repeated in "The Jewish Book of Why", the Israelites returning from Mount Sinai did not have enough time so slaughter an animal and instead made the quickest possible meal, which was dairy.

I don't find any of these explanations convincing, so I turned to the experts. We are, after all, talking about food, so where better to look than in Jewish cookbooks? So, here we go:

Joan Nathan, noting the origin of Shavuot as a harvest festival in the iconic "The Jewish Holiday Kitchen", asks "how do dairy dishes fit into a barley harvest festival?" and she gives the following explanations:

4. "At this time of year...such foods are eaten because of the large amount of cheese produced. Churning and cheesemaking are common features of spring harvest festivals the world over, when goats, sheep, and cows begin to graze more and thus produce more milk."

But wait, there's more from Joan Nathan:

5. Psalm 68:16-17 refers to Mount Sinai as the "mountain of peaks (har gavnunim). She notes that gavnunim comes from the same root as gevinah, Hebrew for "cheese". "Thus (writes Joan Nathan), it could also be called Cheese Mountain, a common folk image."

6. Another reason Nathan cites is a follow-up to Reason #3, in which the Israelites returning to camp after receiving Ten Commandments or Torah, found that they had been gone so long that their milk turned sour and was made into cheese.

7. Nathan cites another rabbinic source which says "the Israelites fasted while they went to receive the Ten Commandments and returned so hungry that they drank milk immediately rather than go through the long process of preparing a meat meal."

Marlene Sorosky's "Fast and Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays" refers to Reason #4 above, but suggests there is an abundance of milk, rather than cheese, and to another explanation

8. that "the Hebrews abstained from eating meat the day before they received the Torah".

9. Sorosky also suggests that "perhaps it's because the whiteness of milk is symbolic of the purity of the Torah".

So I offer Reason #10. Yes. Let's eat dairy meals because they're fun to make, and when the holiday is over, you can work off all that cheesecake and those blintzes.

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Is Elk Meat Kosher?

IKEA has been caught selling pork as elk meat in their lasagna (April, 2013). That is not kosher.

Anyways, yes, elk is a kosher species. JTA reported in July 2008 that yes, you can purchase kosher slaughtered and processed elk meat.

Here a recipe for elk steaks.

Kosher elk coming to stores

Elk meat is about to become available to kosher consumers.

Noah's Ark Processors in South Dakota, which sells kosher meat under the Solomon's Finest Glatt Kosher label, is expecting to slaughter its first elk for the commercial market on Monday. It will be shipped to supermarkets including Fairway and ShopRite the week of July 14, according to owner Ilan Parente.

Those stores have been carrying the company's kosher buffalo for the past 10 years, he said.

Parente said Noah's Ark has been raising elk for 11 years and exploring the idea of processing its meat for the kosher market for at least six.

"It took that long for the rabbis to say yes, it's kosher," he said.

Elk is a member of the cervidae family, which includes deer.

Rabbi Seth Mandel, who oversees Orthodox Union-certified kosher meat processing in North America and South America, says this is the first commercial production of kosher elk meat.

Although he says elk is "good meat, not as tough as deer," Mandel expects elk to be a specialty product like buffalo that will "take a while" to penetrate the kosher market.

Parente disagrees.

"We don't look at it as exotic," he said. "These animals have been here before the cow was introduced to North America. They're native to this country."

In addition, Parente points out that elk is "70 to 80 percent leaner than beef, it's tastier and a lot healthier."

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No to the NYTimes Op-Ed: The Talmud is not a Valid Diet Book

From The New York Times: OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Rabbi Jonathan Crane: The Talmud and Other Diet Books suggests that, "When Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-obesity programs fail, look to God and the ancient Greeks." And it suggests that local ordinances are not the way to resolve the obesity problem.

"...Perhaps a different approach can be considered, one that begins from within. Instead of fixating on indulgence and excess, as do so many top-down and outside-in efforts, we should focus on what it means for each individual to be sated..."

We are not impressed with this obvious advice. The Talmud derives from a culture at least 1500 years detached from ours and continents apart. Eating practices of today in the USA are not comparable.

And particularly today, we need to observe that the Talmud is not a valid diet book -- after two days of Yom Tov and two Seders, where surely we ate and drank more than we needed to and we were instructed by age old rabbinic writings that it was a religious necessity to do so!

Let's hope all people continue both to work on their inner appetites and monitor carefully what they eat and to observe the new regulations that help to curb the obesity outbreak in our midst. And let's pray for the success of legislation that helps end the epidemic of fatness brought on in large part by the relentless marketing of junk foods to our populace by greedy corporations in search of a fast buck.

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Top Ten List for Seder Leaders

Passover is coming... Time for our top ten tips for your Seder...

Most folks consider preparing and eating the festive meal to be the central focus of their Passover Seder. There's not much advice that we can offer to help improve upon that.

However, we have always had fun conducting the reading of the Haggadah. We learned this art as a child by watching our father masterfully conduct the communal synagogue Seders as the rabbi of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.

Sad. We will miss dad this year. Happy. We greet a new grandson this year. Barak and Miriam just had a boy!

So in the spirit of the season of rebirth and freedom, let us try to help free you from the dread of the task of conducting your family Seder this year.

If you follow these ten tips you will get rave reviews of your Seder from all of your guests. Guaranteed.

1. Know your Haggadah. This year, spend an hour before Passover reading through your favorite version of the Haggadah. Sort out the rituals (like Kiddush), the liturgies (like the Hallel) and the learning (like the ma nishtanah and what follows). Make marginal notes or use a highlighter.

2. Know your guests.
Find out who is coming (yes, Seder leaders need to know that). Think through what their skills are and what role they can play in the Seder. Remember some guests may be simple, some wise, some won't know how to ask a question. Try to meet the needs of everyone assembled.

3. Make a recitation assignment list (in your head or on paper).
The Best Ever Seder will be a collaboration of all the guests. Those who can't read Hebrew can read a passage from the Haggadah in translation (English, Russian or otherwise) or perform another essential task.

4. Prepare props for colorful explanations.
The matzo, maror, haroseth, shank bone, egg all have familiar symbolic meanings worth mentioning. You can include other props of your choosing for added flavor to the event: use miniature pyramids, toy or paper or chocolate frogs, relevant family memorabilia or a special illustrated Haggadah (hold it up to show it off or pass it around).

5. Buy toys for the children. Give them something nice at the retrieval of the afikomen or distribute something small anytime they start to lose interest.

6. Tell a (short) story (or two). During the reading of the Haggadah tell about how your family matriarch or patriarch conducted the Seder or prepared the meal. Reminiscing in small doses adds great flavor to your production.

7. Be dramatic.
The Seder is a drama. The guests are the actors. Yemenite Jews have the custom to dress up and walk around the table to reenact the exodus. Even if you are not much of an actor, at the very least, you can talk about how other people are dramatic.

8. Don't be melodramatic.
You and your guests all are on stage. This is not the time to bring up old family arguments. If you do, your Seder might become the "last supper" that you eat together.

9. Have the matriarchs (of the families) greet Elijah at the door.
Watch as the wine in Elijah's cup changes color as he sips from it. Talk about loss and the mystical redemption.

10. Sing the songs with gusto.
Sing the closing songs in all the ways you can remember. You can sing Chad Gadya in Yiddish, if someone knows how, or you can add the animal sounds. Have fun -- these are supposed to be rowdy songs that you sing after drinking four cups of wine.

These tips may be self evident to you -- or they may be new. Whatever the case, good luck and have a happy and kosher Pesach. [annual repost]

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Is Julius Genachowski Jewish?

Yes, Julius Genachowski is a Jew.

Barack Obama named Genachowski as Head of the Federal Communications Commission in 2009. He announced his intention to resign in March, 2013.

Several news reports confirmed that, "Mr. Genachowski, attended yeshiva through high school and studied in yeshiva in Israel before going to Columbia... His parents are immigrants who survived the Holocaust."

Calling him a "Talmud Ace," The Forward reported:

Julius Genachowski was born August 19, 1962, to Adele and Azriel Genachowski. He grew up in Great Neck, a Long Island suburb, in a family that attended the local Young Israel. He attended Orthodox day school at North Shore Hebrew Academy and summered at Camp Raleigh. His high school was the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, which is part of Yeshiva University. Though he says he cut classes to play basketball, he won the Talmud award.

Genachowski spent a year after high school studying in Jerusalem at Yeshivat HaKotel, where he and his peers practiced “learning, discussing, questioning each other, even the possibilities of different points of view,” he recalled. “One of the things that you take away from learning Talmud, learning Gemara, is that two or three brilliant people can look at the same passage and have different interpretations and views, each of which makes a lot of sense, but they’re not all consistent. So I enjoyed that.”

Today, Genachowski attends Sabbath services regularly at Adas Israel, Washington’s largest Conservative synagogue.

He is the cousin of Rabbi Menachem Genack (we assume shortened from Genachowski), rabbinic administrator and CEO of O.U. Kosher, an Orthodox rabbi with liberal political views.

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Is Marijuana Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

Is pot kitniyot? It's up to the rabbi

JERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.

This year, the Green Leaf Party, which advocates legalization of marijuana, warned its members by e-mail that it may be considered kitniyot, or a legume. Observant Ashkenazi Jews abstain from kitniyot during the holiday.

Rabbi Daniel Ayin told the Jerusalem Post that the issue is whether hemp seeds -- and marijuana -- are considered edible. If they are edible, then Ashkenazi Jews should not eat them during Passover.

Ayin said that individual rabbis can make the decision for their congregations.

One couple, who for some reason did not want their last names used, told the Post they only realized that they might have a problem when a friend offered to buy their marijuana. Daniel and Sarah, both recent emigrants from Chicago, said he told them he was making the rounds of all his observant friends before the holiday.

To play it safe, the couple got rid of their stash -- not by selling it, which they decided would be inappropriate -- and gave the house an extra ritual cleaning.

[repost]

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Is Times' Columnist David Brooks Jewish?

First off, is David Brooks Jewish? Yes, David Brooks is a Jew.

Okay then. Midday today there were over 400 comments on David Brooks' Times op-ed praising Orthodox Judaism. Many of those comments on the Times' web site were not quite as laudatory of the kosher lifestyle.

Brooks toured a Kosher supermarket in Brooklyn with a modern Orthodox rabbi and then waxed quite eloquent about the virtues of Orthodox life.

For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.

The laws, in this view, make for a decent society. They give structure to everyday life. They infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance. They build community. They regulate desires. They moderate religious zeal, making religion an everyday practical reality.

The laws are gradually internalized through a system of lifelong study, argument and practice. The external laws may seem, at first, like an imposition, but then they become welcome and finally seem like a person’s natural way of being....

Is David Brooks Orthodox? No, Brooks identifies as a Conservative Jew, "in the political and religious sense,” according to a report in 2011 in the Jewish Week:

...While a student, he met Jane Hughes, who would become his wife, and three years after their marriage, she decided to convert to Judaism (and has since changed her name to Sarah Brooks). They had moved to New York by then, and she studied with Rabbi Harlan Wechsler, who became their rabbi. When Brooks was asked at the time by another rabbi about what being Jewish meant to him, he mentioned “Saul Bellow, Woody Allen, cultural things.”

But, as he explains, at his wife’s urgings, “I got pulled back in.” She became more deeply involved in Jewish life, becoming the “mikveh lady” at their shul when they moved to Washington. “She wanted to keep kosher, which we do. She wanted to send our kids to religious school, which we do.” Their three children — who have biblical names — have attended local Jewish day schools.

“It’s now quite a Jewish life,” says Brooks, who recently turned 50. “I’m still not as observant as my wife. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship to a lot of Jewish things.” He says that their social lives are less involved with Washington’s power brokers and journalists, but rather built around weekly Shabbat dinners with friends from their shul and their kids’ schools.

The family belongs to Washington’s large Conservative synagogue, Adas Israel Congregation. Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, senior rabbi, says, “There are people who live worldly and otherwise secular lives who — when hearing my messages of Jewish heritage and connection and meaning — either don’t relate or don’t resonate with it. But that’s never the case with David. He totally gets it, and he lives his life in a way that shows that he values the deepest messages of Judaism.” He says that he often uses Brooks’ columns as “jumping-off points for sermons and teachings because his conclusions so often jive so well with the ultimate conclusions of Judaism.”

Brooks participates in a Jewish study group with Erica Brown, scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, along with other Jewish journalists. Last year, he wrote a column about her and Jewish study, “The Arduous Community,” admiring her conviction, confidence and combination of “extreme empathy and extreme tough-mindedness.” He finds her “endlessly impressive.”
The columnist sees Judaism as a very rational tradition, and he sometimes feels frustrated that “rational dissections, like parsing the minute meanings of textual passages,” are emphasized far more than spiritual experiences. The Ne’eila, or concluding service, of Yom Kippur includes moments he finds profoundly spiritual.

Calling on his interest in the workings of the mind and the unconscious, he muses that Judaism’s powerful laws, customs and rituals — the understructure of life — get embedded in the mind, which explains his own particular journey. “Even though my Jewish life was not consciously willed, I could so easily fall into it.”

“I identify as a Conservative Jew, in the political and religious sense,” he says.

Postscript: Is it surprising that Brooks does not inform his readers that he is an apologist for the religion that he practices? Yes, it is. Stakeholder disclosure is part of the professional responsibility of journalism. Brooks makes it seem like he just discovered that kosher foods exist. That's a mockery of honest writing.

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Superbowl Alert: Hebrew National Hot Dogs Still Kosher

Lawsuit Claiming Hebrew National Hot Dogs Not Kosher Dismissed

By Reuters

FLICKR: VOTEPRIME

ConAgra Foods Inc has won the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by consumers claiming the company’s Hebrew National hot dogs and other products are not kosher.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul federal court ruled on Thursday that he does not have jurisdiction over a dispute that he described as “intrinsically religious in nature.”...

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Indian Woman fires Jerusalem Rabbis

Business Standard reports, "Indian woman fights against powerful Jewish religious body."

Here is the sad story:

An Indian woman, owner of the a restaurant here, has stood up against the dictates of the powerful Jewish rabbinate and decided to give up the kashrut certification for her restaurant after she was forced to buy vegetables in specific stores.

Lehava Silman Herman, 50, who runs Ichak Dana Indian restaurant in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market gave up kashrut certification for her restaurant following "impossible demands" made by the Rabbinate.

Mahane Yehuda has an overwhelming religious Jewish population which only dines out at Kosher restaurants.

Lehava, who immigrated from Kolkata in 1981 and still holds an Indian passport, told PTI that she is not going to succumb to the pressures of "impossible demands" being made by the Kashrut supervisor that is "acting like a mafia leading to corrupt practices".

"The market's Kashrut supervisor, Shmuel Zamelman, asked me to buy vegetables for my restaurant only from four shops. I refused to accede to his demands as i don't want to join their monopoly. We are a pure vegetarian Indian restaurant and continue to do what we always did.

"I fail to understand this arm-twisting and decided to give up on the kosher certification," Lehava said.

Her fight against the powerful body, which wields tremendous political and social clout in Israel, has gained tremendous support with more than 8,000 people expressing their 'likes' or support for her defiance on the restaurant's Facebook page.

Asked if her business has suffered because of the certification, Lehava said that at the moment business has actually improved as a lot of secular Jewish people, who had never been to her restaurant before, have been turning up to eat expressing their support.

"We have just put up a note that we continue to do things exactly like we did in the past and have decided not to renew the Kosher certification," she said.

Miffed at the growing influence of the religious population in the city, the Indian business woman said that they have wreaked havoc in the popular market.

"Government organisations like the Rabbinate should be user friendly. On the contrary they are promoting corruption. Why do i have to pay so much money every month for this supervisor who pays a two minute visit to my shop every month. I am also tired of their double standards," Lehava said.

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Times: Is Starbucks Kosher?

Yes, many items at Starbucks are kosher according to sources cited in the Times, "Blending a Strong Interest in Kosher Ingredients With a Taste for Starbucks Coffee" by Mark Oppenheimer.

The Times profiles Uri Ort who runs a web site on the topic at www.kosherstarbucks.com

...Mr. Ort helpfully marks all Starbucks products with either a green light or a red light. The Frappuccinos all get red lights. The Tazo teas, green lights. Hot chocolate, green light — but white hot chocolate, red light. The Vivanno smoothie? It depends on the flavor. Mocha drizzle on top — yes! Caramel drizzle, no.
Yes to whipped cream.

Mr. Ort is not the only macher in this game. Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, the kosher supervisor for the Chicago Rabbinical Council, spent more than two years stopping into Starbucks stores all over the world, researching his definitive 2011 document, “Guide to Starbucks Beverages.” “I’d say I visited 50-plus Starbucks,” Rabbi Fishbane said, calling from his vacation house in the Catskills. “It’s safe to say I’ve been to three-quarters of the states. I’ve been to Japan.”

Rabbi Fishbane’s paper is a thorough, painstaking document. For example, he discusses at length the Starbucks dishwasher, which uses 180-degree water — a reassuringly sanitary temperature, but bad for Starbucks’s kosher status, because it is considered hot enough to absorb nonkosher flavors into a pot.

And he gives permissible ratios for nonkosher ingredients in a kosher food: “Even though it is possible that a tiny bit of nonkosher grease might be on the rag used to wipe the steamer wands and that grease might end up in my steamed milk, the milk remains kosher because the volume of the milk is more than 60 times the volume of the grease.”

Rabbi Fishbane is a full-time kosher supervisor, and his Starbucks visits were just side trips on his travels. Mr. Ort, by contrast, is part of the Starbucks community — and, he says, a more reliable guide than even some of the professionals.

“The large certifying agencies, such as the Star-K and the Chicago Rabbinical Council, are far too quick to simply say beverages in Starbucks are not kosher,” Mr. Ort said. They are thus “keeping themselves safe while inconveniencing thousands of people, when in fact, according to Jewish law, many beverages are completely kosher.”...

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Detroit News: What is a Kosher Amigo Shabbat Scooter?

The Amigo Shabbat Scooter is a clever invention. We had bought one for our dad in 2007. It helped him get to shul on Shabbat.

Kosher scooters help Jews keep faith

Mich. company's device gets disabled Orthodox followers to synagogue

ORALANDAR BRAND-WILLIAMS
The Detroit News

Wixom --Michael Balkin observes traditional Jewish practices, but walking to services has been difficult for the past 20 years.

A worsening neurological disorder has made walking more than a few steps nearly impossible for the 59-year-old West Bloomfield resident. But in recent years, things have improved for Balkin, thanks to a motorized -- and perfectly kosher -- scooter.

"Now I'm able to do whatever and go to Shul and do whatever I want and how I want," said Balkin.

Orthodox Jews don't drive vehicles or use anything motorized during the Shabbat, or Sabbath, which lasts from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday. But a Bridgeport company has rolled out specially designed scooters that allow Orthodox Jews to follow their beliefs and still make it to the synagogue.

Amigo Mobility International Inc. began making the Shabbat-approved scooters five years ago. It uses a module manufactured in Israel and certified by the Zomet Institute, an Israeli nonprofit that specializes in electronics that meet Halakha, or Jewish religious law.

The scooters, which cost $2,500 to $3,500, are sometimes covered by insurance. Amigo sells the scooters at a a store in Wixom the company opened two years ago to meet the needs of the estimated 7,000 Orthodox Jews in Metro Detroit.

Scott Chappell, the manager of the Amigo Mobility Center on Wixom Road, said the company was approached by the local Orthodox Jewish community for a scooter model that could help homebound individuals to be able to get to the synagogue during Shabbat.

"It's designed in such as way that on Fridays and Saturdays, it's a special mode and during the week it is a standard mode," Chappell said.

The Shabbat-approved scooter carries a special black-and-white sticker that has to be displayed at all times so others know it meets Halakha law, said Chappell. "(Others) will see that it has been certified by Zomet."

Balkin said he has used the Shabbat-authorized scooters during his trips to Israel. He was happy that he was able to get one in the United States. Deborah Balkin says she's glad that the scooter has given her husband more mobility so that "he doesn't have to stay home on Shabbat."

"He can go to services," said a smiling Deborah Balkin. "We can walk to a friend's house on Shabbat. It keeps him from being isolated. One of the worst things for a person who is ill is to be isolated."

Iris Rosen, who is not Orthodox, but uses a scooter to get around, said she is happy to see the technology come to the United States.

"It's amazing. It's proven. It's approved by the Orthodox community. It's definitely, definitely a good thing," said Rosen, a Farmington Hills resident.

Rabbi Jason Miller, who has been studying the use of technology and Judaism, said the technology has allowed Balkin and others to be more physically comfortable and practice their faith "without violating the tradition."

"We should all see this as a benefit to our community no matter where you are on the observance spectrum," said Miller, also the rabbi of Oakland County-based Tamarack Camps and the spiritual leader of Congregation T'chiyah in Oak Park.

"There are many rabbis out there who would give him permission to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath but on a psycho-spiritual level for someone with his observance patterns they would still be uncomfortable with this leniency," said Miller.

"His (scooter) allows him to be part of the community on the Sabbath and to feel comfortable in knowing that he hasn't compromised his observance.

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Bernice's Favorite Pesach Recipe for Passover Peach Kugel

Here once again is Bernice's favorite Passover Peach Kugel recipe! Happy and Kosher Pesach to all!

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