Jewish Action Winter 2022

CELEBRATING OF OU KOSHER 100 YEARS

Winter 2022/5783 | Vol. 83, No. 2

OU KOSHER CENTENNIAL ISSUE

Even the Stones Are Treif: The Kashrut Chaos that Spurred the Founding of the OU

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

Keeping Kosher, Becoming American: A Brief History of OU Kosher By Dr. Rafael Medoff

OU Kosher Through the Decades: A Timeline

OU KOSHER:

THE INSIDE STORY

Rabbi Menachem Genack; Rabbi Julius Berman; Rabbi Moshe Elefant; Dr. Chaim Wasserman; Dr. Simcha Katz; Harvey Blitz; Steve Savitsky As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

MEET THE MASHGICHIM: Ever Wonder What an OU Mashgiach Really Does?

Rabbi Shoshan Ghoori

By Carol Green Ungar

Rabbi Yisroel Hollander

By Carol Green Ungar

Phyllis Koegel

By Carol Green Ungar

Rabbi Reuven Nathanson

By Leah R. Lightman

Rabbi Moshe Perlmutter

By Sara Trappler Spielman

Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company’s Sunshine Cookies becomes the first product to be certified by the OU.

Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg, zt”l By Rabbi Berel Wein

Rabbi Nota Greenblatt, zt”l By Rabbi Menachem Genack

Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig, zt”l By Steve Lipman

Rabbi Chaim Yisroel Belsky, zt”l By Rabbi Menachem Genack

Photo Essay: From Our Archives A Collection of Ads—Past and Present

The Future of Food: Trends that Are Shaping the Kashrut of Tomorrow

By Merri Ukraincik and Barbara Bensoussan

The Technology Behind OU Kosher By Rachel Schwartzberg

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Loyalty

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

Invisible People 16

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI MOSHE HAUER

LEGENDS IN THE KOSHER WORLD BOOKS

By Rabbi Micah Greenland 20

86

IN FOCUS

A Bigger Tent for Our Teens

THE CHEF’S TABLE Warming Foods for the Wintry Soul

By Naomi Ross

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI JOSH JOSEPH How Do You Learn? 91

INSIDE THE OU By Sara Goldberg 92

99 Bible Dynamics By Dr. Pinchas Polonsky Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Leshem

INSIDE PHILANTHROPY

$1.1 Million Gift Dedicated to New Home for Sderot’s Youth By Aviva Engel

105

108

Bridging Traditions: Demystify ing Differences Between Sephar dic and Ashkenazic Jews

By Rabbi Haim Jachter Reviewed by Israel Mizrahi

Reviews in Brief

By Rabbi Gil Student 110

LASTING IMPRESSIONS

My Siddur

By Dr. Moshe Dickman

Jewish Action is published by the Orthodox Union • 40 Rector Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10006, 212.563.4000. Printed Quarterly—Winter, Spring, Sum mer, Fall, plus Special Passover issue. ISSN No. 0447-7049. Subscription: $16.00 per year; Canada, $20.00; Overseas, $60.00. Periodical's postage paid at New York, NY, and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Jewish Action, 40 Rector Street, New York, NY 10006.

Jewish Action seeks to provide a forum for a diversity of legitimate opinions within the spectrum of Orthodox Judaism. Therefore, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the policy or opinion of the Orthodox Union.

5783/2022

Touro’s Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Powering Success for 50 years.

Being a first generation American has made me curious to learn and driven to succeed. I am one of just a few women partners at my firm and I bring trust, expertise and compassion as I coach high net worth individuals on estate and tax planning. I’m proud to be on the Citiwealth Leaders List and a recognized member of a national Top 10 accounting firm. Due to the stellar education I received at Touro’s Lander College of Arts and Sciences, I was able to pass all four parts of the CPA exam at once and land a position at a prestigious firm right out of college. Touro truly provided me with the foundation for a successful career.

the profession, the quality, efficiency and future of our schools and institutions will suffer irreparable harm.

Dear parents, please ask yourself, “Who do you want to teach your children and grandchildren?”

We need to cultivate a renewed emphasis on the field of education. We can encourage our children to choose the profession of teaching. We can let those who are passionate about the field pursue their dreams. We can empower schools to hire and support qualified teachers. We can raise the status of the profession mindfully and deliberately.

So what can we do about this critical teacher shortage?

1. Permit our children to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in education.

2. Craft and fund scholarships for undergraduate and graduate programs in education.

3. Encourage schools to hire highly qualified teachers, compensate them appropriately and support their professional growth and development.

4. Shift the language we use when talking about teachers and teaching.

5. Demonstrate respect for the discipline. Let’s join together to make this happen, b’ezras Hashem.

Miriam Hirsch, PhD Associate professor of education Chair,

Educator Preparation Program

Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University

Thank you for highlighting the critical issue of staffing day schools and yeshivot. As always, Jewish Action comments on contemporary topics of importance to the Jewish community.

I believe there are innovative ways of dealing with the problem, beginning with, of course, the Torah. According to most authorities, the Levi’im were the mechanchim for the Jewish people. They were supported by ma’aser, communal funds.

Communities, especially outside of New York City, where the problem is most acute, can work with schools to help talented educators remain in the classroom. Communities can help with housing (I was once offered free housing for a teaching position in a Canadian community), and teachers deemed essential to the pedagogic goals of these institutions can be hired to assist with adult education and other projects within these communities.

Many of our children, especially in the Modern Orthodox world, don’t see chinuch as a reasonable career choice because of the pay scale, but also because of status. Many schools are therefore getting mechanchim from sources far to the right of the schools’ hashkafah, not by choice but by necessity.

When I was in NCSY and YU in the late 60s and early 70s, the strongest students were interested in rabbinics or medicine; today, the best and brightest are studying business and high tech, for reasons beautifully elucidated in the Jewish Action issue on the economics of frum life (fall 2021).

If we want the next generation of American Orthodox Jews to look anything like this one, we must find the right role models and keep them in the classroom.

Dave Walk

Yerushalayim, Israel Semi-retired rebbi

Former New Jersey NCSY regional director, 1974–75, and rebbi (Manhattan Hebrew High School, Hebrew Academy of Atlantic County, Yeshivat Hamivtar and Bi-Cultural Day School)

REMEMBERING A SPECIAL TEACHER

I would like to add to Lillie Mermelstein’s story (“Teachers to Remember,” fall 2022) about Mrs. Ruth Kalish [who enabled Lillie, who had been stricken with polio, to attend a Jewish school by promising to carry her down the stairs in case of a fire]. I was two or three grades ahead of Lillie. What the article didn’t say was that the staircase in the school was at least two stories high, with a landing only halfway up!

Mrs. Kalish also made it a habit to call each student by the Jewish name he or she was given at birth. Since many of the children came from non-observant homes, she wanted to make sure they all knew their Jewish names so that when it came to marriage (or divorce), the correct name would be used.

Miriam Levitz Brooklyn, New York

GENUINE DIVERSITY

I would like to add a footnote to Moishe Bane’s excellent article about diversity (“Don’t Squander the Benefits of Orthodox Fragmentation,” [summer 2022]).

I was at Ner Yisroel when it started its Mechina division, an entry-level program, in 1957. There was an Iranian boy in the Mechina division who was allowed to take off his yarmulke when he left the yeshivah’s premises, as that was the custom in Iran. There was also a boy from Toronto who was an avid Bnei Akiva-nik, who was permitted to leave the yeshivah on Shabbos afternoon to attend the local Bnei Akiva program.

Marty Katz

Jerusalem, Israel

ORTHODOX AND LIBERAL

In his article “The State of Jewish Outreach” (fall 2022), Rabbi Doron Kornbluth writes: “Liberalism is strong among many Jews today and can be a major hindrance to religious growth.” I believe it’s a mistake to view liberal political views as something incompatible with an Orthodox life. If kiruv professionals approach unaffiliated Jews with the prejudiced belief that their liberal politics are a barrier for them to overcome, it will reflect negatively on their ability to connect with young Jews who could otherwise be seriously interested in living an observant life. People who are open to

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considering an Orthodox life need to see a potential future for themselves that does not require changing everything about their identity. If they feel that Orthodoxy is only for the political conservative, many won’t even give it consideration, and the makeup of the Orthodox community will become increasingly narrow. One of Orthodoxy’s strengths is how diverse our communities are by comparison to the nonOrthodox movements, which often represent quite-narrow segments of the community based on ethnic background, income level and political views. We should be united in our shared commitment to Torah and halachah and not divided over politics.

Steven Dubois Chicago, Illinois

Rabbi Doron Kornbluth is to be congratulated on his wellwritten and engaging essay on Jewish outreach. However, I have two concerns about the article.

Rabbi Kornbluth implies that there’s a conflict between American political liberalism and Orthodox Judaism. It is true that some positions taken by liberalism, such as on abortion and homosexuality, are deeply problematic from a Torah perspective. But on many other issues, such as climate, the environment, poverty, immigration and access to health care, liberal positions can be quite compatible with Orthodoxy. I certainly hope so, as I consider myself to be both strictly Orthodox and politically liberal. Since the American Orthodox Jewish community tends to be politically conservative, there is a danger that some prospective ba’alei teshuvah may feel that they must surrender all of their political sensibilities and positions to become frum. I don’t believe this to be true.

Secondly, while Rabbi Kornbluth may be right that students are spending less time in Israel and that we need to adjust to that reality, we must nevertheless teach the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in Jewish thought. Jews should not be allowed to think that an ideal Jewish life can be lived anywhere but in Eretz Yisrael, even if there are good reasons for them to live elsewhere (I live in Brooklyn). In fact, many ba’alei teshuvah understand this better than those who are born frum and they therefore make aliyah.

Despite these concerns, I found Rabbi Kornbluth’s article very encouraging and optimistic, and wish him and other outreach professionals the very best success as they work to strengthen Torah observance and the Jewish people.

Michael H. Klein Brooklyn, New York

RABBI DORON KORNBLUTH RESPONDS

Many thanks to both Steven Dubois and Michael Klein for taking the time to write and help me clarify (to myself as well!) the liberal/Orthodox relationship.

Both letter writers’ points are well-taken. Liberal positions on issues such as access to medical care and climate change (just two examples of many) do not impede religious growth, and there is little reason to see a contradiction between them and Torah thought. Nevertheless, nearly all of the outreach

professionals with whom I consulted when researching the article mentioned liberalism as being a block to their students’ religious growth. This indicates to me that when many young people refer to themselves as “liberal,” they are thinking of issues such as homosexuality, transgender and other identity issues, abortion, and myriad “social justice” issues, not more “pareve” political positions. These “controversial” liberal issues do seem to prevent many Jews from connecting to Torah.

With regard to Mr. Klein’s point concerning teaching the centrality of Israel, I agree with it, albeit that was not the focus of the article.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughtful responses to my article.

This magazine contains divrei Torah and should therefore be disposed of respectfully by either double-wrapping prior to disposal or placing in a recycling bin.

LOYALTY

By Mark (Moishe) Bane

Loyalty is arguably one of our most valued character traits. We aspire to be a loyal child, a loyal friend, a loyal Jew. Accusing someone of being disloyal is casting a particularly damning aspersion. As illustrated below, loyalty has factored into many of my most consequential life choices. Nevertheless, I repeatedly discover that decisions concerning loyalty are fraught with confusion and ambiguity and Torah discussions exploring its appropriate parameters are scarce.

In community matters, for example, though loyalty is regularly raised as a significant consideration, definitive and uniform guidance is elusive. For example, when making charity allocations, should I focus on an institution’s effectiveness and communal impact, or should loyalty justify prioritizing my alma mater, institutions led by friends or mentors and institutions long supported by my parents and grandparents? Does switching one’s children into different yeshivos, changing shuls or attending a backyard minyan constitute disloyalty?

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

And, in the reverse, what duties of loyalty do religious educational institutions owe their alumni? Should they prioritize accepting the children of former students? Should they give precedence to alumni’s requests for references for either job applications or shidduchim? What duty of loyalty is owed by a not-for-profit to long-term employees who, unfortunately, can no longer be productive, or former donors no longer capable of philanthropy?

Similarly, to what extent, if any, should loyalty to friends and family be taken into consideration by those able to influence a communal institution’s choices, whether it be regarding allocation of project funding, allotment of funds to be distributed to the needy, or notifications regarding internal job openings? Does influencing communal allocations differ from allocating one’s own resources? I have personally repeatedly encountered these types of dilemmas during my tenure as OU president.

As an OU lay leader, I often receive calls from close friends and relatives asking me to intervene and have their children placed on the top of a waiting list for one of the NCSY or Yachad summer programs. It is fairly common for philanthropists to receive similar calls regarding children’s admission to popular schools and yeshivos. Frequently, accommodating such requests would necessarily deny admission to a different child who had been next on the waiting list. Does loyalty justify helping a friend at the direct and express expense of others?

The Torah imposes a duty of areivus, binding each Jew to each other. Does areivus demand an obligation of loyalty among all Jews? If we are required to be loyal to all Jews, how can we ever favor one at the expense of another? Or is there an enhanced duty of areivus and loyalty to close friends?

And when does loyalty to family members trump our loyalty to other fellow Jews? We are taught that “u’mibesarcha lo tisalam, do not ignore your own kin” (Yeshayahu 58:7). Does this principle convey that there is a particular duty of loyalty to family

members, and if so, how should such loyalty be balanced with loyalty to close friends or to all Jews?

Ethical concerns can arise when, for example, one is asked to help in matters that do not align with one’s own standards of behavior. A relationship may suffer irreparable damage when one declines to provide rather benign assistance that advances an unethical, or even illegal, activity. Perhaps the most dramatic loyalty dilemma arises when a person is threatened by the authorities with a lengthy prison sentence unless he compromises others in a criminal investigation. I often hear folks adamantly declare that they would never be so disloyal as to succumb to betrayal. Personally, I cannot imagine the anguish of such a choice. But what parameters does the Torah provide for such a dilemma?

I once served on the board of directors of a company headed by a close friend. Suspecting that my friend had violated a federal securities law, the board members dutifully reported the apparent violation to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and I submitted my resignation from the board. My friend viewed my resignation as an act of disloyalty, of abandoning him in his time of need. I felt it was he who had been disloyal to me by unilaterally committing violations that damaged the company and put me and the other board members in harm’s way. It is now years later and I still wonder, who betrayed whom?

What about less dramatic decisions? Is there a particular loyalty one should feel toward neighborhood proprietors? To a business one has patronized for years? To service or merchandise businesses owned by old family friends?

During my legal career I twice changed firms, first as an associate and later as a partner and department head. In each instance, I struggled with the ethic of loyalty in deciding whether to make the move. In retrospect, I wonder whether I resisted the offer out of a genuine sense of loyalty or because I wanted to avoid being in the awkward situation of informing valued and respected peers that I would

Mark (Moishe) Bane is president of the OU and a senior partner and chairman of the Business Restructuring Department at the international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP.

One

I m ported By: Roy al Wine Co. New York

be leaving. In any event, I soon learned how very subjective loyalty really is.

Several months after joining the new law firm as a department head, I met with the firm’s Management Committee to report on my group’s annual performance. In the course of the meeting, I was asked for my input regarding the compensation of individual partners. Regarding a particularly accomplished and ambitious partner, I recommended a certain degree of overcompensation, suggesting that he was likely being aggressively recruited by competing law firms. A veteran member of the committee scoffed at my suggestion, disdainfully noting that if my suspicions were correct, the firm would prefer to be rid of a partner whose character was so flawed as to be prepared to betray his fellow partners by even entertaining a competitor’s offer.

Discretion being the better part of valor, I refrained from noting that the law firm was actually not reluctant to include flawed partners of such “disloyalty.” After all, I fit that very description, having just joined the firm after being successfully lured from my prior partnership!

Was I being disloyal when I agreed to transfer my legal practice to a different law firm? And if loyalty should have been factored into my decision process, how should that loyalty have been balanced against the loyalty I simultaneously owed to my family and to myself to pursue a significant career opportunity?

Are We Being Prepared for the Intricacies of Loyalty?

While I was growing up my parents modeled a deep sense of loyalty to family and friends. I do not recall, however, my teachers or rebbeim exploring the topic. My only recollection of loyalty being addressed by teachers was when they admonished us not to use classmate loyalty as a reason not to tattletale on the classmate who was responsible for whatever offense had taken place that day. Indeed, loyalty was apparently held in higher esteem in the playground than in the classroom.

To be sure, the Torah is replete with lessons of profound loyalty to Hashem and to the Jewish nation. Tanach also provides models of loyalty to family and

other Jews. For example, Avraham Avinu went to battle out of loyalty to his nephew Lot, and a young Moshe Rabbeinu suffered the fate of being exiled from Pharaoh’s palace in choosing to protect a Jewish slave from a ruthless taskmaster.

But there are also examples of family loyalty being compromised, sometimes wrongfully and other times justifiably. Examples include Cain killing his brother; Avraham permitting Sarah to torment Hagar; Yaakov defrauding his father to deny his brother Eisav the firstborn birthright; and Yosef’s brothers selling him into slavery.

Curiously, certain incidents in Tanach are fraught with conundrums of conflicting loyalties, but the Torah conveys little about how the conflicts were considered, weighed and resolved. From what I’ve seen the commentators do not often address the quandaries of these conflicting loyalties and they are rarely explored in yeshivah study halls.

Two examples come to mind: Out of loyalty to her sister Leah, Rachel shares the wedding night secret codes that she and her future husband Yaakov had designed to shield against her father Lavan’s beguilement. Only a few commentators address Rachel’s evident betrayal of Yaakov in favor of Leah.

Out of loyalty to his beloved friend, the future King David, Yonasan betrays his father, King Shaul. The text and commentators provide some insight into Yonasan’s decisions, but provide us with little guidance regarding how we should apply appropriate parameters if forced to choose between competing loyalties.

A Possible Approach to Loyalty

Perhaps some of the confusion regarding loyalty is due to our failure to recognize that there are actually multiple kinds of loyalty, each with distinct rules governing when and how it should be prioritized and practiced. Despite the significant distinctions between them, each genre evokes similar emotional inclinations, further obfuscating the differences.

Among the numerous types of loyalty, distinguishing between three general categories may be extremely helpful: commitment, gratitude and identity. Commitment Loyalty: “Commitment Loyalty” often signifies being faithful

to one’s own commitments. One who promises, for example, to enter into a partnership but then partners with someone else is considered disloyal. Unlike other types of loyalty, however, this kind is actually about honesty. Its application and priority must therefore be considered in that context. The Torah considers a man’s word as his bond. Failure to honor a promise, even when a counterparty has no legal recourse, exposes one to the curse referenced as “mi she’para” (Bava Metzia 44a).

Commitments are frequently regarded as creating a loyalty obligation. For example, through our acceptance of the Torah at Har Sinai we can be described as Hashem’s loyal subjects and our religious observances as reflecting our loyalty to the Torah’s precepts and values. Similarly, a couple committing to each other under the chuppah thereby embraces inviolable mutual loyalty, through good times and bad.

This category of loyalty is actually implied in the broadest array of roles of responsibility, such as serving as a corporate officer or director, assuming a meaningful communal position, joining the military or accepting a government office. Betraying these or other similar commitments is both an act of disloyalty to others and an act of disloyalty to one’s own integrity.

Gratitude Loyalty: Loyalty is also often a demonstration of hakaras hatov (gratitude). This kind of loyalty may not only influence to whom we allocate our time or resources but may even induce us to do gracious favors. In certain ways, this form of loyalty is less compulsory than commitment loyalty, as the latter only leads us to honor commitments, while gratitude loyalty may engender a more expansive range of responses.

Thus, for example, we may feel pain when a person or institution to whom we owe significant gratitude is suffering, and out of loyalty we may aggressively defend them. A student may therefore vehemently defend a favorite teacher or yeshivah against criticism, and a congregant may emphatically shield his longstanding rabbi from blame.

The loyalty we show close friends is partially rooted in love, but may be

partially rooted in gratitude, as well. Aside from appreciating the assistance and support our friends provide, we treasure the warmth and security generated by authentic camaraderie. In addition, we deeply appreciate the reciprocal loyalty of dependable friends.

Identity Loyalty: We may discover within ourselves a sense of loyalty to people or entities to whom we owe neither commitment nor gratitude, but rather in whom a sense of our own identity is invested. The degree of our invested identity may be significant, such as when we identify as members of a nation, community, family or even an ideological or religious movement. Or the commonality of identity may be rather superficial, such as the fellow who pulls over to assist someone with a flat tire and explains that “as a Volvo driver I always feel a sense of loyalty and duty to another Volvo driver in need.”

Though my personal identity loyalty is currently dominated by substantive and meaningful ideals and values, I first learned of identity loyalty in sports.

As youngsters, my friends and I had a firm allegiance to the Montréal Canadiens hockey team. We were dyed-in-the-wool fans and would treat disparagingly (and potentially worse) anyone in the neighborhood who dared to root for a competing team. But during my youth, from 1965 to 1979, allegiance to the Canadiens was easy since they won the Stanley Cup championship ten out of those fifteen years. Far more challenging was our loyalty to the hapless Montréal Expos baseball franchise, which failed to have a single winning season in the first ten years after its founding in 1969.

One might suppose that identity loyalty would be the type that generates the least sacrifice or effort. After all, no commitments were made, and there was no nexus between the parties to generate a debt of gratitude, other than appreciation for the identity provided. Yet, it is often the source of the most profound and intense expressions of loyalty, occasionally even breeding a willingness to kill and be killed. Such extreme devotion is observable on the

battlefield, during political uprisings, and, most shocking of all, in soccer stadiums.

Perhaps the occasional intensity of such loyalty should not be surprising since our identity is ultimately of our most precious and prized possessions.

The Need for Further Exploration

As Orthodox Jews we believe that all of our choices and actions should be informed by halachah and Torah values. When practicing ritual or conducting life cycle events, we instinctively turn to these guideposts, and we also do so when considering everyday actions, like eating or conducting business, which are directly addressed by halachah.

Throughout life, however, we also confront choices and dilemmas that do not fit squarely within the four corners of halachah, but nevertheless must be resolved in consideration of what Hashem would want us do. Loyalty dilemmas are one such example. In all such situations, we rely on our Torah teachers to provide the principles and parameters by which we can make appropriate choices. It is our responsibility to insist that they do so.

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INVISIBLE PEOPLE

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI MOSHE HAUER

It was Moshe Rabbeinu who clearly demonstrated that there is no bifurca tion between the spiritual and interper sonal sixth sense. Moshe—the ultimate prophet—had an incomparable ability to see the invisible, to “gaze at G-d’s visage.”2 It was Moshe who stopped to notice the supernatural image of the burning bush.3 And it was that same Moshe who had previously noticed and attended to the suffering of his people4 and to the persecution of strangers, earning his position as our ultimate redeemer and advocate.5

merchandise, jockeying for position and angling to be the first to review the next fresh batch of samples brought out to the display tables. This is a typical scene, as it is often the men—the ones obligated to fulfill this time-bound positive mitzvah—who assume respon sibility for purchasing their family’s arba minim, bringing them home for the entire family to enjoy.

By Rabbi Moshe Hauer

There are many in our community struggling in silence. They and their challenges are invisible to us, their neighbors, friends, family members, rabbis, rebbetzins and com munal leaders. As a religious com munity, it is our fundamental charge to overcome that, to hear through the silence and see through the darkness.

Spirituality requires the development of a sixth sense, an ability to perceive the invisible, whether that is the G-d outside us or the soul within us.1 This is a basic hurdle to jump in the explicitly religious realms of avodat Hashem. Do we experience prayer as the ultimate opportunity to literally stand before G-d? Can we live lives permeated by tangible faith and yirat Shamayim, fear of Heaven? Religious individuals and communities must, however, also deploy that sixth sense interpersonal ly, bein adam lachaveiro, to build our capacity to notice and address invisible people and hidden challenges.

This capacity is not only a definitive characteristic of true leadership; it is the basic measure of greatness, as expressed clearly in the words of Rav Yochanan: “In every place that G-d’s greatness is referenced, you will also find His hu mility.”6 The verses from every section of Tanach that he cites to support this idea do not speak of humility in the way we usually use the term, but focus in stead on G-d’s interest and commitment to use His lofty position and power to consider and address the needs of the most vulnerable. “Who is like the L-rd, our G-d, enthroned so high, yet deigns to look down on heaven and on earth? He lifts the poor from the dust, raises the needy from the dunghill, to seat him with princes, with the princes of His people. He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children.”7

Two years ago, I heard about a mag nificent arba minim sale. It did not take place in the bustling marketplaces of Jerusalem or on the crowded avenues of Brooklyn, overflowing with beautiful produce and teeming with pre-yom tov energy. It was held in a modest and uncrowded space in New Jersey, and the uplifting nature of the event was the direct result of one person’s ability to see the invisible.

In the days leading to Sukkot, that person—like thousands of others— went to select and purchase his lulav and etrog when he noticed something. The room was predominantly occu pied by men scrutinizing the available

But there were others underrep resented there, women and children who would certainly welcome a set of arba minim but who had no “man of the house” who would bring one home. Where were they? How would they introduce the joy of Sukkot into their homes? This realization led to his arranging an arba minim sale designed specifically to create a comfortable ex perience for this significant—and often invisible—population.

If this story sounds familiar, you may recall it from a recent article in the pages of Jewish Action addressing the challenges of single parenting.8 That story, along with recent studies conduct ed by the OU’s Center for Communal Research (CCR), our research arm, surveying Orthodox singles9 and single mothers,10 exposes some of our serious blind spots relative to these populations.

The traditional family unit—rather than the individual—is the fundamen tal building block of the Orthodox community. This is a source of great strength, as a healthy familial frame work provides a support system that builds security and resilience, serves as the most effective vehicle for the trans mission of our mesorah, and contrib utes to an enhanced sense of identity. The Orthodox emphasis on family is a primary driver of the community’s dramatic growth, driving an earlier and higher rate of marriage than other Jewish denominations,11 a significantly elevated birth rate, a lower rate of di vorce than the general population, and an apparently high rate of retention, as the greatest hedge against abandonment is a strong sense of belonging.12

Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.

This beautiful and all-important emphasis on family is also the source of numerous challenges and vulnera bilities for the many individuals who are not living within such a household. Research and experience consistently demonstrate the difficulty faced by sin gles—men and women, single, divorced or widowed, those seeking marriage and those who are not—wishing to properly participate in Orthodox Jewish life and feel valued by their communi ties. Similarly, single parents struggle to provide their children with the normative experiences of their peers, and those children are consistently and painfully reminded of their family sta tus. And finally, the emphasis on family can produce an extreme reticence to divorce even in toxic and practically irreparable relationships that are deeply harmful and often dangerous to the spouse or children or both.

It would be terribly counterproduc tive for us to attempt to ameliorate these issues by undervaluing or chal lenging the significance and promi

nence of the traditional family structure and its values. It would, however, be profoundly positive to build supports for those who lack them within their own family structure. This would be a fulfillment of one of the Torah’s most repeated instructions, the directive to care for the widow, the orphan and the convert.13 What all these individuals share is the lack of a natural support system. It is not a radical or inappro priate step to suggest that this mandate extends beyond those three arch-cate gories to anyone who shares our value system but who lacks—through no fault of their own—the support of a caring spouse, an involved parent or a familiar community.14 These individuals almost invariably do not wish to be pitied or to be anyone’s chesed or charity case. They simply wish to be seen and respected for who they are and valued for the con tributions they so badly wish to make to their communities, if only we would let them.15

That need to overcome invisibility ex tends to so many others. The OU-CCR

survey of divorced mothers demon strates that the stresses of poor mental health, infertility, economic challenges, struggles with intimacy, special needs parenting, and even multiple births are all meaningful risk factors for divorce. If as a community we could not just commit to produce practical solutions to these technical challenges but also work to build understanding of the as sociated stresses as they occur, it would allow us to be more supportive and prevent individual and familial collapse.

Our community has begun to address many of our social issues by creating and supporting a plethora of outstand ing programs and organizations that provide both services and companion ship for those experiencing particular challenges and has also enhanced awareness of those difficulties. However, their ultimate success will be achieved when responding to them is no longer outsourced to discreet specialist organi zations dedicated to a particular cause or population but has become baked into our awareness and our normative

ability to hear silent cries. That understanding will ultimately produce much more than projects; it will induce neighbor liness, respectful and sensitive friendship and an elevated communal sixth sense—among both leaders and peers—that sees the invisible and hears the inaudible.

The Torah law of eglah arufah16 provides perhaps the ulti mate expectation that we—leadership and community—see the invisible. An anonymous murder victim is found, and the To rah requires the rabbis of the community to come forward and say, “Our hands did not spill this blood.” The Mishnah,17 sur prised by this, asks: Were the elders really the prime suspects in this murder? The Mishnah goes on to explain that while the elders are not to blame for the actual murder, they are to blame for being inattentive and unconcerned with the wayfarer’s wel fare. The elders say: “We did not see him come through town and let him leave unaccompanied and without food.”

How does this answer the question? Why is it the rabbis, the leaders, who must say that? Is it their responsibility to feed and to accompany every traveler through town?

Perhaps it is indeed the responsibility of leadership to make every individual feel seen and connected. Leaders must personally greet, welcome and include everyone. But even if it is not possible for the rabbis themselves to literally greet, feed and accompany everyone who passes through town, they must set the tone, activate the community and lead by example such that nobody passes through that city—and most certainly nobody lives in that city—feeling invisible and unnoticed.

This expectation rests on the inability to bifurcate between the interpersonal and the religious. One of the striking findings in the CCR study of divorcees is that those women whose experience had created greater distrust in commu nal rabbis, leaders and organizations had a lesser feeling of closeness to G-d. As a community, we represent Judaism and G-d to everyone with whom we come in contact. Yehi ratzon shetishreh Shechinah b’ma’aseh yadeinu. We must ensure that G-d’s presence will be felt through the work of our hands.

As an organization, the Orthodox Union will continue to use every means at our disposal to enhance communal sensitivity to these and other issues. It is neither our role nor is it within our capacity to even attempt to create the solu tions to every one of these problems. It is our responsibility, however, to generate widespread understanding and compas sion. Whether through the pages of this magazine, studies undertaken by our research department, or the formal and informal conversations and connections we may convene amongst our many sensitive, committed and responsible communal partners, together we must find ways to refine our awareness of the needs of others and enhance our ability to act effectively with both caring and respect. Please join us and help us use your vision to improve our own.

Notes

1. Berachot 10a.

2. Bamidbar 12:8.

3. Shemot 3:4, Rashi.

4. Shemot 2:11.

5. Shemot 2:17, Seforno.

6. Megillah 31a; included in the V’yitein Lecha prayer recited on Motzaei Shabbat.

7. Tehillim 113:5-9. Translation from The Koren Tehillim.

8. Aviva Engel, “Supporting the Divorced Family: What Every Com munity Can Do to Help” (summer 2022).

9. This study will be forthcoming.

10. “Kol D’Mama Daka: Silent Voices: The Needs of Divorced Women in the Orthodox Community,” available at research.ou.org/divorce/.

11. Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of American Orthodox Jews,” pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/08/Orthodox-Jews08-24-PDF-for-web.pdf.

12. Pew Research Center, “Jewish Americans in 2020,” pewresearch. org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/.

13. Note that the Ramban saw Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus itself, as the ultimate expression of G-d’s dedication and responsiveness to those who lack natural support systems (Ramban to Shemot 22:20-22) and mandated us to take up this cause so critical to Him (Ramban, Devarim 11:1).

14. In fact, the Sefer Hachinuch, no. 431, specifically suggests that the mandated care for the convert applies to anyone who moves to an unfamiliar place.

15. It should be noted that these supports should certainly be pro vided generously and wholeheartedly to members of the Orthodox community who are unable to marry due to same-sex attraction and related issues. The only support that we cannot provide is the affirmation or celebration of behaviors proscribed by the Torah.

16. Devarim 21:1-9.

17. Sotah 45b.

A BIGGER TENT FOR OUR TEENS

By Rabbi Micah Greenland

One of the most beautiful scenes

I have the privilege to observe on a regular basis takes place in my hometown of Chicago. Each Thurs day night for the past eleven years, boys from a variety of local high schools gather in a neighborhood synagogue for an hour of Torah study, followed by a raffle and refreshments. They learn in pairs or in small groups, as would commonly be found in most any beit midrash around the world. And while that alone is a wonderful sight, it is hardly exceptional.

What makes this scene particularly beautiful, and indeed far more unique, is the hashkafic diversity that is repre sented. Nearly 100 boys, and sometimes even more, from across the Jewish religious spectrum—from co-ed Jewish high schools, single-gender Mod ern Orthodox yeshivah high schools, multiple different “black hat” yeshivot,

and even public high schools—all learn in the same beit midrash, interacting naturally with one another and kindling or strengthening friendships. The pro gram was created and is run by Rabbi Yosef Cohen, known fondly as “Reb C.,” an eighth-grade rebbi at Arie Crown Hebrew Day School and a public school alumnus of NCSY in the late 1980s. The power of such a program is only partially due to the Torah being studied. It is all the more potent because of the sense of unity it instills, the bringing to life of Ben Zoma’s message from Pirkei Avot: “Eizehu chacham? Halomeid mikol adam—Who is wise? One who learns from every person.”

As a product of NCSY myself, I know firsthand the mutual benefit gained from having teens across the religious spectrum spend time together in a constructive way. I was able to “learn the ropes” of normative observance from those to whom it was second nature. Observing my more religious peers, I began to see making berachot on food and wearing tzitzit as behav iors a “normal” kid like me could feel comfortable doing. At the same time, I recognized my own ability to have a positive influence on others. As a ninth-grade public school student who made the rare decision to wear a kippah to school, I saw the cascading impact that decision had. My peers in yeshivah high schools were uplifted by what they viewed as my courage, while a fellow Jewish student in the same school I at tended followed my example and began wearing a kippah as well.

When I served as NCSY Midwest regional director in the 2000s, I ran a program that brought NCSY yeshivah

high school and public high school students to learn with boys at Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago. Not only was the experience exceptionally positive for the NCSYers, but I recently encoun tered one of the Telshe students, now over thirty years old, who recalled the impact those learning sessions had on him. He was struck by the thirst and motivation of the NCSY teens to study Torah, so much so that he remembered the impression it made on him over fifteen years later.

Interactions among various “stripes” of the Orthodox community were more commonplace decades ago when our frum community was considerably smaller. A generation ago, Orthodox Jewish communities the sizes of Chi cago, Toronto, Baltimore, Miami and Los Angeles generally had one or two yeshivah high schools for boys and one or two for girls, usually in addition to one co-ed Jewish high school. By default, these schools functioned as community high schools, with students’ families rep resenting a variety of religious outlooks and levels of observance. Interactions like those described above took place formally in school, in addition to infor mally outside school. However, as Ortho dox Jewish communities in larger cities grew, the number of schools also grew, bifurcating the Orthodox Jewish student populations along ideological lines,1 similar to what had previously begun to occur in New York and New Jersey.

Today, a growing number of Ortho dox Jewish families seem to prefer to limit their children’s social and educa tional interactions to those with whom they are a “hashkafic match.” This explains in part the proliferation of day schools and yeshivot, each espous ing slightly nuanced differences with regard to religious ideology. While the aversion to exposing one’s children is understandable to a point, the oppo sition to even wholesome, Torah-cen tered interactions with children from different backgrounds has a substantial cost: our children lose the opportunity to learn with and from one another.

Rabbi Micah Greenland is international director of NCSY.

GAUCHER DISEASE IS THE #1 MOST COMMON JEWISH GENETIC DISEASE

Furthermore, they fail to appreciate the normalcy of those to their ideological left or right.

Some of the programs of NCSY of which I am proudest are those that encourage exactly these types of interac tions. In New Jersey, Orthodox high school girls in NCSY’s 4G program, themselves students at a variety of different single-gender and co-ed yeshivah high schools, learn Torah weekly with public high school girls. In both Boston and Los Angeles, boys and girls from Orthodox yeshivah high schools, Jewish community high schools, and public high schools study Torah in small groups comprised of students from varied religious educational backgrounds. And each fall, hundreds of teenage participants at two simultaneous NCSY conferences—the JSU Presidents’ Conference, a gathering of Jewish teen leaders in public high schools; and the JUMP Conference, a convening of mostly yeshivah high school student leaders—come together to study Torah in a series of innovative workshops. The hallmark of all of these programs is that the relationships and connections formed are mutually beneficial: each teen benefits from getting to know other Jewish teens from varied backgrounds.

Although common, Gaucher disease type 1 isn’t life threatening and is not included in all Jewish genetic testing panels. Symptoms of Gaucher disease include enlarged liver and/or spleen, easy bruising, nose bleeds, and bone pain. Once diagnosed, Gaucher disease can be treated with medication.

If you suspect your loved one has Gaucher disease, speak to your doctor and request a simple diagnostic beta-glucosidase leukocyte (BGL) blood test.

For more information,visit gaucherdisease.org/mysymptoms

Each of these scenarios is replicable. Chicago need not be the only city with a “Reb C.,” and NCSY need not be alone in bringing Jewish teens together from across the religious spectrum. Our Jewish community overall would do well to promote more such opportunities for teens to grow and connect.

Note

1. A comparison of the Avi Chai Foundation Jewish day school census data from 2000 (avichai.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ Census-JDS-2000.pdf ) and 2020 (avichai.org/knowledge_base/acensus-of-jewish-day-schools-2018-2019-2020/), particularly focusing on Table Six in both surveys, supports this assertion. For example, the number of Modern, Centrist, Chabad and yeshi vah-type schools in the US increased 41 percent over that twen ty-year period, from 388 to 548. Further, there is reason to believe there was a similarly dramatic increase between 1980 and 2000.

As a ninth-grade public school student who made the rare decision to wear a kippah to school, I saw the cascading impact that decision had.

(and you probably were never tested for it)

EVEN THE STONES ARE TREIF:

THE KASHRUT CHAOS THAT SPURRED THE FOUNDING OF THE OU

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

“Howling Mob Turns on Rabbi,” a headline in the New York Sun announced one spring morning in 1906. Antisemites? Street hoodlums? The sub-headline added to the mystery: “Trouble Arose When the Rabbi Decided to Bake Matzoths.” Angry neighbors? Extreme Jewish secularists?

The tumult in the synagogue on Willett Street on the Lower East Side was, in fact, the result of an intra-Jewish struggle over the control of the Passover food market. Such turmoil was an all-too-frequent manifestation of the chaotic state of kashrut supervision in early-twentieth-century America, which helped galvanize the rise of the Orthodox Union’s best-known communal service.

In 1902, in response to a coordinated increase in the price of kosher meat from 12 to 18 cents a pound, American Jewish women launched a boy cott against New York City kosher butchers. Due to the increase, many Jewish families could no longer afford to buy meat.

Photo: The Protected Art Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

The writings of Rabbi Moses Weinberger provide a fascinating glimpse of kosher food issues in New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1887, the young Hungarian-born rabbi wrote (in Hebrew) Jews and Judaism in New York, a book that offered a gloomy assessment of Jewish life in the new world.1

Back in Europe, Rabbi Weinberger recalled, Jewish communities were sufficiently small and tight-knit to ensure adherence to the highest standards of kashrut. “Every stone had seven eyes!” he wrote. “People knew everything that was done and said, even behind closed doors. Not even the stupidest butcher or a non-Jew could make any problems . . . ”

In America, by contrast, there was no central system or agency for kashrut supervision. Individual butchers, bakers and grocers claimed their goods were kosher but there was no method of verification.

A certificate in a shop owner’s window could declare the establishment was kosher without supplying the name of a supervising rabbi. Or it could include the name of a rabbi or “reverend” who might or might not be qualified for the task.

Rabbi Weinberger described meeting shochtim who looked as if they had learned the techniques of ritual slaughter “while standing on one foot, a month before they left their native lands [in Europe].”

A New York State law enacted in 1915 prohibited selling as kosher any meat that was “not sanctioned by the Orthodox Hebrew religious requirements.” Yet ten years later, the city’s Commissioner of Markets still estimated that 40 percent of the “kosher” meat sold in New York was actually treif.

Who Was to Blame?

Even well-intentioned shochtim simply were in over their heads, rabbinical critics contended. After his first visit to the United States, Rabbi Yaakov David Willowski, better known as the Slutsker Rav and later as the Ridbaz, wrote scathingly in 1904 of the state of kashrut there. Typical of the sad situation was a shochet whom he described as having to single-handedly slaughter 2,000 chickens every Thursday and Friday in order to make a living; the labor left him so exhausted by Friday night that he could not even lift his fork at dinner and had to be fed by his children.

Another part of the problem, according to the Ridbaz, was that some kosher consumers had grown careless. Struggling to survive in the face of poverty and overcrowding, many immigrant housewives were no longer as scrupulous as they would have been in the old country. He cited what he said was a well-known saying: “Az men ruft ihm Mendel, meg men essen fun zein fendel.” (“If his name is Mendel, you may eat from his pot.”)

As a result, the Ridbaz concluded, America was “a treif land where even the stones are impure.”2

Turf Wars

Since there was no central authority, the supervision of slaughterhouses, factories, bakeries and shops fell to individual rabbis. For underpaid and overworked turn-of-the-century

American Orthodox rabbis, kosher supervision was often a major source of income—and sometimes a major source of conflict.

Professor Jeffrey Gurock has written of kosher-supervising rabbis who, “holding to their jobs for dear life,” fought vigorously to fend off competitors. Especially fierce struggles were waged in the early 1900s in cities such as Boston, Massachusetts, and Paterson, New Jersey, with the latter community finding itself with two rival “chief rabbis” in 1906.3

When the Ridbaz returned from Europe to head a consortium of Orthodox synagogues in Chicago, a prominent rabbi accused him of coming to the city “to rob my rights, to trespass upon my property, and to cut off my meager sustenance.” The rhetoric in such disputes could be quite stinging. “ The first time he was

The boycott against New York kosher butchers led to rioting as well, as illustrated by a New York Times headline in May of 1902. Courtesy of the New York Times

Dr. Rafael Medoff is the author of more than twenty books about American Jewish history, Zionism and the Holocaust, including The Rabbi of Buchenwald: The Life and Times of Herschel Schacter (New York, 2021).

Ten years later, the city’s Commissioner of Markets still estimated that 40 percent of the “kosher” meat sold in New York was actually treif.

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AUTHENTIC ITALIAN FOOD

in America, we heard him say that even the stones in America are treifa,” the rabbi wrote of the Ridbaz. “Now that he has returned to America, the stones have become kosher and ritually pure, although they have not been purged or immersed in a mikvah.”

The competition occasionally escalated beyond rhetoric. It was Rabbi Moses Weinberger whose challenge to the kashrut status quo made him the target of the aforementioned “howling mob” at the Willet Street shul. His offense? Trying to secure a piece of the local Passover matzah supervision business, over which a member of his congregation had a monopoly.

When Rabbi Weinberger stepped up to the bimah on the final day of Pesach in 1906, there was so much “shouting and screeching” from supporters of his matzah-supervising rival that the police were summoned, the New York Sun reported. The policemen initially managed to repel the protesters, but “more serious trouble developed” when “the women members of the

congregation, who are separated from the males and sit in the gallery during services, violated custom and made for the ground floor.” The officers “lost their helmets and buttons” as they were overwhelmed by “a swirling mass of humanity.” The riot stopped only when Rabbi Weinberger announced his resignation. (Or, as the Sun put it, “Rabbi Weinberg [sic] calmed the agitators by telling them that he would soon get a new church.”)

An editorial in a local Orthodox weekly newspaper, the Hebrew Standard, pointed out with dismay that it was not the only recent eruption of violence in the community. “Such occurrences . . . happen with too much frequency among our Orthodox brethren,” the editors complained, noting that there had been “a hand to hand fight between two East Side rabbis” not long before. The editors connected such behavior to the growing problem of assimilation, arguing that “it is not surprising” that “the young generation refuses

to attend a synagogue, the officials and members of which are devoid of all sense of decency and respect.”

For the editors of the Hebrew Standard, a generational conflict was at least partly to blame for the turmoil in the Orthodox community. “The average old-fashioned Orthodox rabbi, hailing from Eastern Europe, always boasts of his learning and lamdonus,” they wrote. “It would be far better if he bore in mind the maxim of [Ethics of] the Fathers: ‘Where there [are] no manners, there is no Torah.’”

Questionable supervision was not the only problem plaguing the world of American kashrut in the early 1900s. Lax government oversight of the meat industry (memorably depicted in Upton Sinclair’s famous novel The Jungle) enabled a handful of major meatpacking companies to monopolize the market and manipulate prices. A sudden 50 percent increase in kosher meat prices in 1902 sparked a massive boycott led by Jewish housewives on the Lower East Side. The government’s

Photo: J.B. Lightman/CJH

Professor Jeffrey Gurock has written of kosher-supervising

efforts to prosecute meat industry officials on antitrust and racketeering charges eventually reached into the kosher world as well. Most memorably, thirteen leaders of New York City’ s Live Poultry Commission Merchants’ Protective Association were convicted in 1913 of illegally monopolizing the kosher chicken market by fixing prices and violently intimidating proprietors who defied them. The prosecution’s star witness, independent retailer Bernard Baff, was shot dead near Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers soon after the trial.

Europe vs. America

The generational conflict to which the Hebrew Standard alluded was evident in more ways than one.

While many older, European-born Orthodox Jews resisted any accommodation with American society, the younger generation believed it was possible to remain faithful to Jewish tradition while at the same time embracing positive aspects of American life—including those that were relevant to the world of kosher food production.

As young American-born Orthodox rabbis began making inroads into the kosher supervision business, one prominent elderly rabbi complained, “Leave the responsibility for kashruth supervision to the genuine rabonim.”4

The younger rabbis were, of course, no less halachically committed than their elders, but they sought a more modern, efficient American approach to kashrut supervision, with centralization, transparency and clearly defined standards.

As it turned out, a crucial development in the evolution of home appliances in the United States, and an equally important legal development, would pave the way for the transformation of kosher supervision in America.

The manufacturing of home refrigerators, initiated by General Electric in 1911, combined with the spread of frozen and canned foods, meant that the average Orthodox housewife had to spend much less time preparing meals. And the adoption in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote, legitimized the

increasingly prominent role of women in public policy matters.

Naturally, these changes would impact Orthodox households as well. Soon the newly created OU Women’s Branch, under the leadership of Rebecca (Betty) Goldstein, would galvanize the OU leadership to significantly enlarge the organization’s kashrut supervision activities. The building blocks were at long last in place for the kosher certification system that would ultimately put an end to the chaos and abuses of earlier years.

Notes

1. Quotations here are taken from the edition of the book that was translated and edited by Jonathan Sarna as People Walk on Their Heads (New York, 1981).

2. See Aaron Rothkoff, “The American So journs of Ridbaz: Religious Problems within the Immigrant Community,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 57:4 (June 1968), pp. 557-572.

3. Jeffrey S. Gurock, American Jewish Or thodoxy in Historical Perspective (1996), pp. 26, 217.

4. Jenna W. Joselit, New York’s Jewish Jews (1990), p. 80.

rabbis who, “holding to their jobs for dear life,” fought vigorously to fend off competitors.

In America, there was no central system or agency for kashrut supervision at that time. Individual butchers, bakers and grocers claimed their goods were kosher, but there was no method of verification.

Photo: J.B. Lightman/CJH

KEEPING KOSHER, BECOMING AMERICAN

By Dr. Rafael Medoff

Heinz mashgiach Frank Butler (right) and Rabbi Baruch A. Poupko of Shaare Torah Congregation, a local shul, inspecting a vat at the Heinz plant in Pittsburgh, 1951. Courtesy of the Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center

OU mashgiach Rabbi Moshe Perlmutter at Allen Flavors, Inc.

Photo: Kruter Photography

The opening of a kosher cafeteria on an American college campus is not the kind of news that a major US newspaper ordinarily deems worthy of coverage. But when the Orthodox Union inaugurated a kosher dining facility at Harvard in 1926, America’s most influential daily considered the story “fit to print” precisely because the Harvard administration had been, as the New York Times put it, “restricting the number of Jews” admitted as students. That Harvard of all places would become the home of a kosher cafeteria dramatically illustrates how the phenomenal success of OU’s kosher supervision efforts has not only revolutionized kosher cuisine in the United States but also helped contribute to securing Orthodox Jewry’s place in American society.

and physically healthy Jewish home. The Women’s Branch also published popular kosher cookbooks that made keeping kosher more attractive.

OU Kosher’s Beginnings

The Rebbetzin and the Engineer

There is no evidence they ever knew each other, but the Barnard College–educated founder of the OU Women’s Branch and an eccentric World War I–era Chicago engineer were two of the main reasons for the rise of effective kashrut supervision in modern America.

Rebecca “Betty” Goldstein founded the Women’s Branch of the OU in 1923 with a mission “to re-establish the Jewish home as a sanctuary and to recreate the Jewish mother as the priestess.” Pamphlets distributed by the Women’s Branch explained women’s ritual obligations and presented kashrut as the key to developing a spiritually

But it is hard to imagine Goldstein’s kashrut education efforts succeeding without the advent of the modern home refrigerator. Enter Fred W. Wolf, Jr., a Chicago inventor known for his “eccentricities” (as one chronicler put it), who had a special interest in both race car design and refrigeration. On the eve of World War I, Wolf invented the “Domelre,” short for Domestic Electric Refrigerator. The spread of home refrigerators during the interwar years revolutionized the lives of American homemakers and their families. The new appliance greatly simplified meal preparation, made it possible to buy larger quantities of food products without fear of quick spoilage, and in general turned mealtime into a more pleasurable experience.

Betty Goldstein and her colleagues in the OU Women’s Branch recognized the urgent need to increase the variety of food products available to the women whom they were urging to keep kosher. A Kashruth Committee was appointed, which immediately launched a program of “making kosher products available to the housewife, products which had heretofore been of doubtful manufacture.”1 The Women’s Branch began dispatching representatives to personally inspect food manufacturing plants.

“We had always been telling our children what they might not eat,” a member of the OU Women’s Branch

Twenty-five years ago, a handful of farsighted women came together to form an organization whose function it would be to bring about a close bond between Orthodox Jewish women and Orthodox Jewish women’s organizations . . . A Kashruth Committee was appointed, which immediately launched a program of making kosher products available to the housewife, products which had heretofore been of doubtful manufacture. We had always been telling our children what they might not eat; now we decided to see if we could persuade some of the well-known manufacturers of food products to substitute kosher for non-kosher ingredients and then point out to our children the things which they might eat. The work of the Women’s Branch consisted in paying for the initial investigations and analyses, and in visiting the factories for the purpose of persuading the manufacturers to make the changes which our dietary laws required. The actual work of investigation and supervision of the products had to be done, of course, by the rabbis. It was not long before brands of kosher crackers and ice cream were on the market.

From Selma Freedman, “The Women’s Branch: 25 Years of Achievement,” Jewish Life, 15: 5 (June 1948), 51-56.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is the author of more than twenty books about American Jewish history, Zionism and the Holocaust, including The Rabbi of Buchenwald: The Life and Times of Herschel Schacter (New York, 2021).

The founder and pioneering leader of the OU Women’s Branch, Rebecca (Betty) Goldstein was instrumental in the establishment of OU Kosher in 1923. Courtesy of Aaron Reichel

Members of the OU Women’s Branch worked hard to organize campaigns and pressure food companies to make their products kosher. They gradually convinced a growing number of companies that catering to kosher consumers would increase sales. By the mid-1930s, about two dozen companies, a few of which manufactured national brands, were kosher certified by the OU.

Pictured here, a letter sent from the OU Women’s Branch to its constituents in 1932. The letter states that Borden cream cheese is now kosher for Passover and that they “promised the Borden Company that in recognition of their willingness to provide Kosher Cream Cheese, we will do everything in our power to make this Kosher Cream Cheese popular among our people.”

One day in 1924, a delegation of rabbis called on the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company . . . and made a strange request. They wanted the company to start a department for making kosher cookies . . . . It turned out well. There are four and a half million Jews in the United States and last year, they bought an average of four boxes of kosher cookies or crackers apiece. This is a lot of cookies and crackers.

Excerpted from “Kosher Kookies,” the New Yorker, Oct. 17, 1931

in the New York Times article above, dated October 6, 1926.

wrote [see sidebar on page 30]. “We decided, however, to see if we could persuade some of the well-known manufacturers of food products to substitute kosher for non-kosher ingredients—and then we could point out the things we were permitted to eat.”

These hands-on efforts inspired Betty’s husband, OU President Rabbi Herbert W. Goldstein, to launch the organization’s program of systematic kashrut supervision.

The program was to be “a not-for-profit public service free of the element of personal gain and vestment.”

Moreover, the OU’s kosher certification program aimed at ensuring the growth and vibrancy of Orthodox synagogues, a central part of the OU mandate.

Crackers and Beans

“The OU . . . established a new business and organizational model for kosher certification the independent private kosher certification agency and, in the process, they transformed kosher certification in America.”

Timothy D. Lytton, Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 53.

Rabbi Goldstein already had some experience in this realm, as the (unpaid) supervisor for Sunshine Biscuits, the only kosher cracker available in the United States in the early 1920s. Sunshine products appear to have been the first to be labeled with the OU’s certification, marked by an early Hebrew-language version of the organization’s insignia.

“This is the first time in the history of our country that kosher crackers are available for use in Orthodox Jewish homes, and we feel that by this accomplishment we have helped to fill a long-felt want among scrupulous and observant housewives,” the Women’s Branch proudly announced in a 1925 report.

The first major coup scored by OU Kosher was its agreement with Heinz in 1925. A visit by OU supervisors to the Heinz plant in Pittsburgh that year determined that its vegetarian baked beans, and twenty-five more of its famous 57 varieties, merited the kosher stamp of approval. Heinz products were the first to carry the now-famous

mark of a “U” inside a circle. The new symbol, which is today the most widely-recognized certification mark, was designed by Heinz mashgiach Frank Butler, OU President Herbert S. Goldstein and advertiser Joseph Jacobs.

Certifying food products was not the only way in which the OU advanced the cause of kashrut during those years. Thanks in part to the efforts of OU lobbyists, the New York State Assembly banned the marketing of food as “kosher” without evidence of Orthodox rabbinical supervision, and the state’s Department of Agriculture created a Kosher Law Enforcement Bureau. The OU also worked with New York City’s Department of Markets, which fielded a special unit to pursue evidence of fraudulent kosher claims, and the Manhattan district attorney prosecuted violators so vigorously that one Yiddish newspaper hailed him as “the best chief rabbi New York ever had.”

While the legal authorities did what they could, the OU focused the bulk of its attention on expanding the availability of certified kosher food products. Those efforts were greatly enhanced by the establishment, in 1935, of the OU’s Organized Kashrus Laboratory. Headed by chemist Abraham Goldstein, the lab tested foods and fielded questions about the status of various products. The lab also published a quarterly Kosher Food Guide.

In the years prior to World War II, OU certification was extended to, among other notable items, Manischewitz wines (1934), Empire Kosher chicken (1938) and Barton’s Candy (1940). The latter grew to fifty stores within a decade and dominated the kosher candy market.

An Exodus and its Aftermath

The mass exodus of inner-city residents to the suburbs after World War II made the OU’s kashrut supervision program an even more important part of the broader effort to combat the erosion of Jewish religious observance.

In heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York City, kosher food products

The newly established OU Women’s Branch forms a Kashruth Committee, dedicated to engaging in “negotiations with . . . companies which manufacture food products” to come under kosher supervision.

Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

Several of Heinz’s 57 varieties become OU certified, with its Vegetarian Baked Beans being the first kosher-certified product to be marketed nationally. The OU certification mark we know today was designed at the request of Heinz for use on the baked beans packaging.

Courtesy of the Detre Library Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center

Empire Kosher is started in the Catskills by the Katz family and obtains OU certification.

Loft’s, the world’s largest maker and seller of candy in the 1920s, obtains OU certification, which one periodical hailed as “an historic event for the Jews of America.” (New York’s Jewish Jews by Jenna Weissman Joselit [Indiana, 1990])

Kosher goes mainstream, and the kosher food market expands.

1980s

Thousands of Jewish immigrants leave Europe to settle in the USA, which is the impetus for the growth of OU Kosher.

Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America is founded.

Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company’s Sunshine Cookies becomes the first product to be certified by the OU.

Courtesy of Shulamith Berger

OU KOSHER: Through the Decades

Coca-Cola

Photo: Giovanni Cancemi/stock. adobe.com

Photo: Olesya/stock.adobe.com

1987

1990 1997 2018 2021

Tic

Photo: mehaniq41/stock. adobe.com

Considered

Due to popular demand, some Pepperidge Farms products become OU certified.

Photo: Adriana/ stock.adobe.com

obtains OU certification.

a water shed in the history of the kosher food industry, Nabisco’s Oreo cookies become OU certified (along with eighty-two other Nabisco products).

Photo: Steve Cukrov/stock. adobe.com

2007

The Jelly Belly Candy Company responds to consumer requests to change their kosher certification to the OU.

Courtesy of Jelly Belly Candy Company 2009

Tootsie Roll join the ranks of thousands of products in becoming OU certified.

Courtesy of Even Amos/ Wikimedia Commons

2010

Gatorade joins other PepsiCo brands in becoming OUcertified.

Some varieties of Kellog’s PopTart Bites become certified OU-D.

Tac Mints becomes OU certified.

Impossible Foods obtains OU certification for its new popular Impossible Burger.

Courtesy of Impossible Foods

were easily accessible at small grocery stores, bakeries and butchers. That was not always the case in outlying areas to which Jews relocated after the war. Ensuring the availability of a wide range of kosher products in suburban grocery stores—and, increasingly, supermarkets—was crucial to keeping on-the-fence Jewish consumers within the kosher fold.

With the OU’s kashrut efforts under the leadership of Rabbi Alexander S. Rosenberg, the postwar years saw a major expansion of OU Kosher activity. Hired in 1950 as the first rabbinic administrator of the Kashrut Division, Rabbi Rosenberg would serve in that position until his death twenty-two years later.

At the beginning of Rabbi Rosenberg’s tenure, the OU employed about 40 full-time mashgichim, certifying 184 products for 37 companies. By 1954, those numbers had increased to 78 mashgichim, 300 products, and 138 plants. By 1961, there were 585 mashgichim, 1,830 products, and 359 factories; by 1970, the respective figures had grown to 750, 2,500, and 475.

Historians attribute much of Rabbi Rosenberg’s success to his ability to develop close personal relationships with top executives at the manufacturers the OU supervised. Many came to relate to him “like a Hasid believes in his rebbe,” as one biographer put it. Among the many prominent clients Rabbi Rosenberg brought to the OU were Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.

Another important factor was Rabbi Rosenberg’s focus on bringing OU supervision to factories that produced the key ingredients used in many kosher foods. Increasing the number of kosher ingredients significantly expanded the number of food products that could then be certified kosher.

Rabbi Rosenberg also launched an annual OU Kashruth Directory, distributing more than 100,000 copies through Jewish organizations and synagogues. Such educational efforts simultaneously served the needs of the kosher community and helped created an ever-larger base of consumers. By 1970, an estimated 3,000 different kosher products were available nationwide.

Under Rabbi Menachem Genack, OU Kosher’s rabbinic administrator

In the years prior to WWII, the OU certified many notable brands including Bartons candy.

Passover directories over the years offer a window into the achievements of OU Kosher and the growth of supervision over time. Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

Photo: Alpha Stock/Alamy Stock Photo

Today, OU Kosher remains by far the largest and most widely-recognized kosher certifying agency, with some 900 mashgichim and managers, more than 6,000 companies, more than 1.3 million supervised products produced in 14,000 facilities in 106 countries, and a database for tracking the 2.4 million ingredients used in the foods that the OU certifies.

since 1980, OU supervision has been extended to an almost dizzying array of major clients. Pepperidge Farms signed on in 1987, opening its famous lineup of baked goods to the Orthodox community. Coca-Cola switched its supervision to OU in 1990.

They were soon followed by—among many others—Hershey’s chocolates (1994); eighty-two of Nabisco’s products, including the long-elusive Oreo cookies (1997); Dole fruits and juices in 2008, followed four years later by Minute Maid juices; the Post family of breakfast cereals switched to the OU in 2016; and Tic Tacs breath mints became OU certified two years after that. And as the popularity of meat substitutes has soared in recent years, the Impossible Burger became OU certified in 2018, a true sign of the times.

Today, OU Kosher remains by far the largest and most widely-recognized kosher certifying agency, with some 900 mashgichim and managers, more than 6,000 companies, more than 1.3 million supervised products produced in 14,000 facilities in 106

countries, and a database for tracking the 2.4 million ingredients used in the foods that the OU certifies.

The Americanization of Keeping Kosher

In the first decades of the twentieth century, keeping kosher was widely regarded as an esoteric, old-world dietary regimen to which only a tiny number of consumers adhered. Even within the small American Jewish community, only a portion observed the rules of kashrut. As a result, not many manufacturers regarded the kosher market as a serious vehicle for selling their products.

But gradually a snowball effect developed, as each new food that came under OU supervision provided fresh evidence of marketing opportunities. And as kosher-certified foods became more numerous and more visible, this marker of Jewish separatism increasingly became an accepted part of American culture. Making

America more kosher was making keeping kosher more American.

Professor Timothy Lytton, a historian of kashrut, has pointed to a subtle but important link between kashrut expansion and the Americanization process. He has argued that in their development of products such as kosher imitation bacon bits, food companies are appealing to a “desire to use food as evidence of the compatibility of traditional religious observance with a typical middle-class American lifestyle.”

Increasingly, during the 1960s, ethnic groups in the United States were no longer expected to abandon their traditional ways, including their cuisine, in order to be part of the fabric of American life. Jews, too, could feel more comfortable embracing their kosher—often OU-supervised—diet.

As food manufacturers came to treat Orthodox Jews as a legitimate constituency of consumers, they helped advance the process of Orthodox Jewish culinary differences being seen as a legitimate part of the American experience. A kosher option

A growing number of food manufacturers came to understand constituencies of consumers with compelling reasons to purchase kosher-certified food, such as the lactose-intolerant who rely on “OU pareve” and those allergic to animal proteins who look for OU-certified dairy products that have no trace of meat. Photo: Kruter Photography

in airplane travel meal service was first offered in 1962, and would soon become the norm in that industry. Three years later, a famous series of advertisements for OU-supervised Levy’s Rye Bread featured a Native American, two African-Americans, and an Asian-American enjoying Levy’s alongside the slogan, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.” The ads were evidence of not only a growing tolerance for Jewish food differences, but also an increasing interest by non-Jewish consumers in certain Jewish foods.

A growing number of food manufacturers came to understand that in addition to those non-Jews who might enjoy a slice of kosher rye bread simply for its taste, there were constituencies of consumers who had more compelling reasons to patronize kosher-certified food—such as the

lactose intolerant, who can rely on the “OU pareve” designation to ensure no dairy is in a particular product; individuals with allergies to animal proteins, who can rest assured that an OU-supervised dairy product could have no trace of meat in it; and Muslim consumers whose observance of halal religious dietary laws requires them to be certain that no pork could ever make its way into their food.

At the same time, the word “kosher” has gradually entered the American lexicon as a synonym for “pure” or “superior.” A certain number of non-Jewish consumers perceive kosher-supervised foods as possessing a higher level of quality. For them, the OU certification mark stands for a preferable product, religious considerations aside.

An initiative undertaken one hundred years ago to make Orthodox

practice more feasible and attractive has thus not only enhanced an important component in the lifestyle that Orthodox Jews now enjoy, but has also made it more possible than ever for them to feel no conflict between being Jewish and being American.

Today, an incredible array of OU-certified products has revolutionized the dietary habits of American Jews and more than a few non-Jews. References to keeping kosher abound in the popular culture. And the opening of a kosher cafeteria on an Ivy League university campus is no longer reported in the mainstream news media—precisely because keeping kosher has become an accepted part of American life.

Note

1. Selma Freedman, “The Women’s Branch— Twenty-Five Years of Achievement,” Jewish Life, 15: 5 (June, 1948), 51-56.

Ensuring the availability of a wide range of kosher products in suburban grocery stores, and increasingly, supermarkets, was crucial to keeping on-the-fence Jewish consumers within the kosher fold.

Photo: Ira Berger/Alamy Stock Photo

OU Kosher: THE STORY

Rabbi Menachem Genack CEO, OU Kosher

As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

When I came to the OU in 1980, there was no one else working full time as rabbinic staff at OU Kosher headquarters (then known as the OU Kashruth Division). There was one rabbi working part time in the office, and I was the only full-time rabbi. Rabbi Julius Berman, Esq., was then president of the Kashrut Commission and he helped in all our endeavors. We started to hire more people so we could create a structure that would both strengthen kashrut oversight and allow us to grow. Our idea was to bring on rabbinic coordinators who would be responsible for different industries and become experts in those areas—meat, fish, fowl, wine, dairies, bakeries, flavors, et cetera. I also wanted to create a pyramid, with senior rabbinic coordinators (RCs) overseeing others, to construct multiple layers of oversight. Over time we grew, and today we have more than fifty RCs in the national office who oversee 850 mashgichim or rabbinic field representatives (RFRs) across the globe.

We made sure the RCs we hired were talmidei chachamim and that they represented the breadth of the Orthodox world. We hired rabbis who had trained at all the great yeshivot Yeshiva University, Beth Medrash Govoha, Ner Yisroel, Torah Vodaas, Satmar. This helped enhance the OU’s credibility throughout the Orthodox world. The OU doesn’t represent

only one segment of the Orthodox community; it represents the whole community.

Another development we oversaw was the introduction of OU Kosher halachic advisors. The RCA’s Kashrut Commission, a committee of RCA rabbis, used to work in partnership with OU Kosher—it was known as the Joint Kashruth Commission. They

Rabbi Menachem Genack, who has served as CEO, OU Kosher, since 1980, seen below giving a shiur at the OU’s Torah New York event in 2019

Photo: Kruter Photography

1978–1984

I joined the OU when Nathan K. Gross, who was known as “Mr. Kashrus,” asked me to serve with him on the Kashrut Commission. At the time, OU Kosher was basically a one-man operation. It was directed by Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg, a”h, who ran it like the German Jew he was. He ran the show from beginning to end, and nobody really conflicted with his views on anything.

Rabbi Rosenberg served as rabbinic administrator at OU Kosher for twenty-two years, and when he died in 1972, there was a huge vacuum.

In 1980, Rabbi Menachem Genack, who was a talmid of Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, was enlisted to serve as rabbinic administrator of OU Kosher. Soon after he came aboard, it became evident that he was the man to do the job.

When it comes to kashrut, the main thing to keep in mind is that we should never have a situation where any individual company is so important to us that we feel the need to lower our standards or make accommodations. I’ll tell you a story. When Coca-Cola was seeking OU certification in 1990, we faced a unique problem. We asked the company, as we request from all companies, for a list of ingredients. Coca Cola was reluctant. “We can’t give out our recipe,” they claimed. “It’s a $2 billion investment!” We told them we can’t certify a product if we can’t review all of the ingredients and be assured of their kashrut. We then came up with a novel idea: the company would give us a list with more ingredients than they actually use, as long as it included all the possibilities. And so we were able to resolve the issue.

Over the years, the growth of kashrut has been incredible. The burgeoning of the kosher food industry developed to such an extent that today when I walk into a supermarket, it’s actually difficult to find something that’s not kosher. That’s a far cry from how it was when I was

would meet once or twice a month to discuss kashrut issues that arose. [This is not to be confused with the Kashrut Commission, a lay board of senior OU officers who volunteer their time to interact with staff and help decide non-halachic policy matters.] With the growth of the OU, I realized we needed on-site halachic consultants. With the approval of the RCA, we brought Rav Hershel Schachter, shlita, rosh yeshivah at Yeshiva University, and subsequently Rav Yisroel Belsky, zt”l, rosh yeshivah at Torah Vodaath, to serve as our senior posekim. Rav Schachter, Rav Belsky and I would meet regularly to discuss halachic issues that arose. Today, our halachic advisors are Rav Schachter; Rav Asher Weiss, rosh kollel of Machon Minchat Asher in Yerushalayim; and Rav Mordechai Gross, av beit din of the Chanichei Hayeshivot community in Bnei Brak.

Rabbi Yaakov Luban, executive RC, was one of the first to join our expanding staff. He wrote a memo at the time that greatly helped in envisioning and creating the structure of the OU. Our New Companies Department, headed by Rabbi Donneal Epstein and Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, is another development that has contributed to the OU’s growth. And our Flavor Department, headed by Rabbi Moshe Zywica, deals with the largest flavor manufacturers all over the world, which is a crucial area of kashrut.

Among my interviews of the various people we hired at OU Kosher, one that stands out in my mind was that with Rabbi Moshe Elefant, now chief operating officer of OU Kosher. He had just written a sefer on hilchot yichud, and I remember how impressed I was with him. Over the last thirty-five years, Rabbi Elefant has consistently proven that my initial impression was correct.

When I joined the OU, I was a rosh kollel at Touro College. I recognized the need for someone who understood

Rachel Schwartzberg is a writer and editor, who lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

Rabbi Julius Berman Chair, OU Kashrut Commission; OU President,

As told to Nechama Carmel

Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives

Nechama Carmel is editor-in-chief of Jewish Action.

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the business side of kashrut and asked Dr. Simcha Katz, a professor of business at Baruch College (who later became president of the OU), to join the OU to help with the professional and business side of OU Kosher.

As the world turned to computerization, we brought in a top IT professional, Sam Davidovics, who served as chief information officer and helped create the software for the OU’s Ingredient Approval Registry, a database with more than 2.4 million products. Our database includes both OU-certified products and products certified by other kosher certification agencies that have been assessed and approved by the OU. The ingredients are classified by kashrut sensitivity—some require hashgachah temidit (constant supervision); some require less intense scrutiny. That information represents an enormous resource, the very lifeblood of kosher certification. Our knowledge of these ingredients serves as the foundation of all kashrut all over the world.

In 2017, OU Kosher invited the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, zt”l, to deliver the keynote address at its annual mashgichim conference. Rabbi Perlow opened his speech by thanking the OU and stating how happy he was to be there. The extraordinary growth of the Torah community in America, he said, was attributable in many ways to the efforts of the OU. Chazal tell us that a forbidden food “metamtem et halev,” causes one’s heart to become spiritually insensitive. Because the OU made kosher food so widely available and accessible, he said, Torah was able to flourish in America.

Over time, the OU continued to grow. Rabbi Yerachmiel Morrison heads our Ingredient Department. He also serves as the RC for Coca-Cola, whose formula is a closely guarded secret, disclosed only on a need-to-know basis. Once, a senior vice president of CocaCola was visiting the OU and wanted to talk to Rabbi Morrison about an issue involving the formula. Rabbi Morrison told the VP that he could not discuss it unless Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta granted him permission. They contacted headquarters, and Rabbi

Morrison was told that he, in fact, could not discuss it.

Another initiative we started at the OU was Mesorah, a Hebrew Torah journal, which Rabbi Schachter and I edit, that consists of two components: one section is devoted to halachic issues in kashrut, and the other is dedicated to the shiurim of Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. Before we began the journal, we obtained the Rav’s permission to publish his shiurim, and we have continued it to this day.

Since I came to the OU, the world has changed. With the rise of the global economy, companies buy ingredients from all over the world. This has led to an enormous explosion in the kashrut business. We now supervise over one million products in 14,000 facilities in over 100 countries throughout the globe.

Many years ago, McCormick & Company, one of the biggest spice

manufacturers in the world, applied for OU certification. At the time, it was under a different kosher supervision. The head of that certifying agency said it would be hasagat gevul [encroaching on their boundaries, i.e., their business] for us to give McCormick certification. I asked Rav Soloveitchik what to do. He told me that companies have the right to choose which agency certifies them. But, he added, that he didn’t ever want to see the OU become a monopoly, because that wouldn’t be a good thing for the Jewish community in America. I live by that idea. We gladly accept the kashrut of other agencies if it meets our standards. This has only helped further the growth of the OU and allowed us to build relationships throughout the world. The OU has close relationships with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel as well as with Satmar and the Badatz. In fact, almost every shechitah in the US

Because the OU made kosher food so widely available and accessible, Torah was able to flourish in America.

is certified by the OU—in addition to whatever other certification it may have.

One of the first contracts I signed after coming to the OU was with Entenmann’s, which has since become a staple of many a kiddush. The head of the company asked me exactly how many kosher consumers there were. I told him I couldn’t answer that question, but that after certifying Entenmann’s the number would definitely increase!

We continue to face contemporary issues as new challenges and new technologies arise. Synthetic meat is probably the best known of these issues. What is the halachic status of meat grown from DNA? We spend a lot of time exploring these issues, and we’ve developed significant expertise in the interface between technology and halachah.

Several factors set OU Kosher apart. First of all, we are a bonafide nonprofit organization. Simply put, there is no financial motivation in any decision we make. Whatever funds come in are reinvested in the Jewish people. Secondly, we have an impressive staff of high-caliber RCs. Thirdly, we are driven by a sense of communal responsibility. We recognize our mission is not only to make more food kosher and accessible to the broad Jewish community but also to educate the community Rabbi Yosef Grossman, zt”l, pioneered our ASK OU program, which offers training to expand knowledge in areas of kashrut—not for our mashgichim but for school children, college students, community members and just about anyone. OU Kosher serves as a tremendous public resource.

When I came to the OU, my predecessor, Rabbi Yacov Lipschutz, told me what Rav Soloveitchik had told him: The presence of an OU certification mark attests to the vitality of the Jewish community in the US. The OU’s success in making kosher food—with a high standard of kashrut—widely available and accessible is the very foundation upon which the Orthodox community was built.

Rabbi Moshe Elefant COO, OU Kosher

Aside from managing the day-to-day operations of OU Kosher, Rabbi Moshe Elefant, COO, OU Kosher, is a maggid shiur for the OU’s Daf Yomi webcast, possibly the largest Daf Yomi class in the world.

Iwas hired as an RC in 1987. Rabbi Julius Berman, then chairman of the Kashrut Commission, interviewed me for the job. At the time, I was essentially the account representative for 100 OU companies. Soon after I was hired, OU mashgiach Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig of Chicago flew to Hawaii to supervise a factory of the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut company. He needed some information about an ingredient, so he called me. It was 12 am New York time, and I was the new guy on staff. I said to him, “Well, how do you expect me to know that?”

All of this information is available now through our highly advanced computerized system, and the job of mashgiach has therefore evolved quite a bit; a mashgiach can now simply look up any ingredient online.

Back then, we communicated with mashgichim around the country via phone, and they would report back with handwritten notes. And we didn’t have mashgichim all over the world. To supervise one of our first international companies, we sent a rabbi from Brooklyn to Morocco!

We had one fax machine for the entire department. It printed on shiny paper, and if you didn’t copy down the information quickly, the writing would fade and become illegible. Accounting had an index card system for billing. If you couldn’t locate the card, you were in big trouble.

Now our entire operation is digital, and everything is stored in the cloud. In fact, when the OU moved into its new headquarters in downtown Manhattan this past May, we didn’t transfer any paper files. Our level of professionalism

As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

Dr. Chaim Wasserman Chair, OU Kashrut Commission, 2000–2004

As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

I was once in a meeting with Rabbi Genack, Rabbi Elefant, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, and a representative of a company that manufactures feed for animals across the US and Canada. It was one of the only sources for this kind of feed in the entire country. The issue was that they mixed milk and meat to make the product, and it is halachically prohibited to eat the meat of animals that are only fed something that is assur b’hana’ah [can’t derive benefit from it]. Rav Schachter was trying to determine if perhaps there was an insignificant amount of milk used— but it turned out that milk constituted about 20 percent of the product. Finally, Rav Schachter asked the representative if it were possible to use pork rather than beef in the feed [because there is no issur hana’ah with regard to pork]. The expression on the man’s face was priceless! He was clearly shocked. “Rabbi, I don’t know much about kosher,” he said, “but do you mean you want me to use pork?” It was a pleasure to be there for such moments.

One period that must be mentioned is 9/11. The OU’s headquarters is located in lower Manhattan, so for three to four weeks after the horrific tragedy, we couldn’t go to the office. We tried to get as much work done as we could off site, but working remotely in those days wasn’t anything like it is today. Although the entire country was affected, it was a terribly challenging time to be in downtown Manhattan. When we came back to the office, the smell of death was all around us. But we continued signing contracts, and the work got done. At the same time, we were in the midst of a transition from an old computer system to a makeshift system, on the way to the new highly advanced system we use today. It was very difficult.

But we continued to grow, even throughout that time. Overall, I attribute our ability to manage during those difficult times to our amazing staff and their level of professionalism. Everyone had a singular mission. It was truly exemplary. I have worked for the klal my entire career, and I must say that the people at the OU have an extraordinary selflessness. That is what stands out in my mind above all else.

has also changed dramatically. An OU Kosher rabbinic coordinator is a professional, no different than a lawyer or an accountant.

The fact that we are so technologically advanced was extremely helpful during a very challenging time: the pandemic. Our whole program is based on mashgichim visiting facilities. We had to pivot and go entirely remote—within about a week. We never envisioned doing business this way, and it was no small miracle that we pulled it off. The challenge is diminished now, but not entirely. We supervise 500 facilities in China, and the country still isn’t functioning as it was before Covid.

It’s much easier nowadays to go kosher. It’s no longer a big drain on a company’s time or resources. Part of this is because we are totally transparent with our rules and processes. We have no secrets to keep, and we pride ourselves on that. Years ago, we also didn’t have the availability of kosher ingredients we have now. Back then, we needed the companies more than we need them today—because we wanted kosher food to be available. Today, we clarify our policy to a prospective client, and if they say, “We can’t do that,” we say, “Sorry, it won’t work.”

Unlike other food fads that have come and gone, kosher has remained popular. Which is why companies come to us. Many of us remember when the Oreo cookie became kosher back in 1997. Oreos were a prime example

The kosher consumer of the twenty-first century is entirely different from the kosher consumer of the twentieth century.

billion

Dr. Simcha Katz Chair, OU Kashrut Commission, 2007–2010; OU President, 2011–2013

I became involved with OU Kosher in 1980 when Rabbi Genack first came to the OU. He was asked by Rabbi Julius Berman and Shimmy Kwestel to run OU Kosher; however, he had no background in running an organization. I was friendly with Rabbi Genack, and he asked me to help him out.

I believe OU Kosher would not have been successful without Rabbi Genack. He is a talmid chacham who is recognized by the world of kosher as the expert. I once went with Rabbi Genack to meet with Rabbi Shmuel Berenbaum, zt”l, the former rosh yeshivah of the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. We were given an appointment close to midnight. When we arrived, the rosh yeshivah was reclining, and he stood up for Rabbi Genack. We had gone to consult with him regarding a controversy involving the kashrut of a certain fish. For the first half hour, he discussed Rabbi Genack’s sefer with him. Then, for about twelve minutes, they discussed the problem. Ultimately, Rabbi Berenbaum said: “Whatever you say is correct.”

OU Kosher experienced tremendous growth during my years there. This was largely due to the leadership of Rabbi Genack and Rabbi Elefant. Rabbi Elefant plays a critical role. He is practical, sensible, and a talmid chacham.

Another contributing factor to this remarkable growth was the supportiveness of all the presidents of the OU. They understood that kashrut needed to be separate from the OU’s other programs. All they wanted was quality, quality, quality. This allowed Rabbi Genack to delegate and build OU Kosher, creating true expertise in the field.

The OU became the premiere source of knowledge on kashrut for the entire Jewish community. Rabbi Yaakov Luban worked to standardize piskei halachah. He codified everything—kashrut standards for restaurants, for catering, for vegetables. He clarified and created consensus. Rabbi Yosef Grossman, z”l, was in charge of OU Kosher’s educational arm. His ASK OU program continues to bring rabbanim, semichah students and lay people to learn about kashrut—at no cost. We also send OU rabbis to serve as consultants to local kashrut vaadim (kosher councils) in communities around the county. Why do we do all this? To ensure high standards in the world of kosher supervision.

I remember one day we had two meetings. In the morning, we met with more than thirty Conservative rabbis in the kitchen of a catering facility. They had asked for the meeting for their own education. It was a fantastic session. In the afternoon, we were in Kiryas Joel, reviewing a Satmar chicken operation. That day stands out as a highlight for me. The two meetings were just so different, but the OU was there playing a critical role.

As the leader in worldwide kosher certification, the OU offers educational seminars as part of our commitment to the kosher consumer. Seen here, a demonstration on treibering (removing forbidden fats from kosher meat and the sciatic nerve) at an ASK OU seminar.

As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

Where the OU Goes

Currently found in more than 106 countries around the globe, the OU sends its mashgichim anywhere— as long as it’s safe, says Rabbi Menachem Genack. A mashgiach even traveled to the Himalayas in an attempt to certify yak milk (it did not work out in the end). “We will not send to any place or region, including in the Western Hemisphere, if it’s dangerous in any way,” explains Rabbi Genack. “We are guided by the State Department.”

Continued from page 46

of a classically treif food item. Oreos going kosher proved that kosher had become mainstream.

Looking to the future, we have a few challenges in the kashrus field. Firstly, the food industry, like all industries, is dynamic. We don’t know how food will be made five years from now, twenty years from now or fifty years from now. We have to be on top of manufacturing processes.

Secondly, we have to hope the world will still want kosher food. The success of the OU is a miracle of sorts. Despite the fact that the Jewish population is relatively small, companies still come to us for supervision. We need to make sure it remains that way.

Thirdly, there’s the need to keep up with changing demands; the kosher consumer of the twenty-first century

is entirely different from the kosher consumer of the twentieth century. When I was growing up, there were things that were kosher and things that were not—and we were okay with that. People’s needs were simpler. Nowadays, people don’t want to do without. In the early years, we felt the need to certify products because Jews might not keep kosher otherwise. Today, kosher consumers are more observant; they’re looking for a high standard of kashrus. And the observant community is also much larger than it once was. At the same time, kosher consumers want everything. There is a demand for foods to be kosher that we never imagined being kosher, and we have to keep up. Meeting the needs of kosher consumers is our goal.

The Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, zt”l, addressing attendees at OU Kosher’s annual mashgiach conference in 2017, with Rabbi Genack and Rabbi Elefant seated on either side of him.

The OU doesn’t represent only one segment of the Orthodox community; it represents the whole community.

Harvey

Blitz Chair, OU Kashrut Commission, 2011–2016; OU President, 2000–2004

As told to Rachel Schwartzberg

The mission of OU Kosher is to make sure there is kosher food available for the Jewish community at a high standard. We view it as a vital service to the community, like everything else we do at the OU. However, for everything else—NCSY, Yachad, OU-JLIC, Jewish Action, Synagogue Initiatives, et cetera—we spend money. The brilliance of the kashrut system is that companies pay us so they can become kosher because it’s in their best interest as a way to increase their sales; manufacturers and supermarkets believe kosher sells better. So there is no cost to the Jewish community to have kosher products that are widely available.

In 1994, I was a member of the Kashrut Commission when the OU gave kosher certification to Hershey’s. It was a seminal moment. The significance of such an iconic brand taking that step put kosher on the map; it was noticed among other food manufacturers. These days, most products that can be kosher are kosher. Back then, there were few kosher foods available nationwide. It needed to be these major companies that took the lead.

I’d say one driver in the growth of kashrut was the movement away from ingredients made from meat products, like lard, to vegetable products, due to growing health concerns. That trend meant that many other products could become kosher. In the 1990s, Nabisco, the maker of Oreos, switched from using animal fat to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

At one point, animal rights activists were complaining that kosher slaughter isn’t humane; kosher slaughter in the US can’t be banned because there is a federal law that defines kosher slaughter as humane, but activists can make life very difficult for us. Rabbi Genack developed a relationship with Temple Grandin, the most prominent animal rights activist in the US. I went with him to Denver to meet with her and talk about the issue. She wanted animals to be treated humanely before slaughter [which is a policy the OU maintains]. But she supported the process of kosher slaughter. Her support was very significant and a major assist in ensuring that kosher meat would remain available in the US.

OU Kosher Publications

The Daf Hakashrus, a monthly newsletter for mashgichim detailing current news and developments in the realm of kosher, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2022. OU Kosher also produces a Consumer Daf Hakashrus, geared to the layman, which is published periodically. A Spanish-language version of the Consumer Daf Hakashrus is currently available as well.

Steve Savitsky Chair, OU Kashrut Commission, 2004-2007; OU President, 2004–2011

As told to Nechama Carmel

When I became president of the OU, I decided I wanted to also serve as chair of the Kashrut Commission. I felt that since kashrut was the engine behind all of what the OU does, fueling all of its diverse and multifaceted programs, I wanted to learn everything about it. I needed to understand kashrut in order to understand the OU.

Moreover, I thought I could contribute a different and much-needed perspective to OU Kosher. I had spent my entire career in business, and as an entrepreneur I saw things differently. At the time, OU Kosher did not engage in a serious marketing program, for example. From my viewpoint, this was a significant problem. One of the first changes I made was recommending that they hire a marketing director for OU Kosher who would be responsible for new business development. Phyllis Koegel, currently still the marketing director for OU Kosher, was hired in 2006. Attracting new clients all the time, Phyllis travels all over the country, attending numerous food shows each year and bringing in new clients on a steady basis.

Around the same time, we hired an independent research firm to conduct a marketing study on the OU and how it is perceived. The study discovered that for millions of consumers, OU Kosher signifies accountability, reliability and quality. The data proved to be very useful in discussions with new clients.

OU Kosher plays a significant role not only on the national and international level but on the local level as well. Local kashrut organizations, often known as vaadim (kosher councils), frequently call upon the OU for guidance and advice. One service I am particularly proud of is our heavily subsidized program in which our RCs visit communities and perform a comprehensive evaluation of the vaad, assisting in professionalizing and strengthening its overall operation.

I will conclude with a story: Some years ago, when I was OU president, I was in Los Angeles on business. While driving, I noticed two kids wearing yarmulkes and tzitzit manning a lemonade stand. Admiring their entrepreneurial spirit, I stopped the car and got out, planning to buy a cup of lemonade. The kids had placed two huge signs near their stand: On one was written, “Lemonade $1.” Written on a sign right underneath the first was a big OU certification mark. Essentially, it was an unauthorized OU. So I asked the kids: “I don’t understand—what is the circle with the U?” They responded: “Don’t you know what it means? It means that the lemonade is kosher.” Playing along, I said, “But I live in New York where we don’t trust just anyone. How do I know it’s really kosher?” The kids looked at me, flabbergasted: “Well, if you can’t trust the OU, you can’t trust anybody!”

Continued from page 49

Rabbi Genack has done an incredible job leading the OU. He established the largest kosher agency in the world—probably in the history of the Jewish people. And alongside him, the lay leadership of the OU has been supportive of our programs. With every chairman [of the OU Kashrut Commission], the common denominator is how much I’ve learned from each of them.

In my view, the OU is very special. What makes it special? A few things: Rabbi Genack has assembled a rabbinic staff made up of sincere, intelligent talmidei chachamim who are professionals. What is also remarkably unique, particularly in the polarized world in which we live, is that every yeshivah is represented here at the OU. Our staff is a veritable United Nations, where rabbis from Yeshiva University to Satmar all work in great harmony for the same goal. To have such a staff is unheard of and is undoubtedly a major factor in our success.

Secondly, we are a nonprofit organization. Once expenses are covered, the funding goes back into the wonderful programs the OU administers to help Klal Yisrael. This helps us make the right decisions because the money isn’t going into anyone’s pocket. Financial decisions at OU Kosher are not based on financial gain.

Thirdly, I’m often asked how I define a strong kosher organization. My answer is: a strong kosher organization is one that can say no. If we get an application we’re not comfortable with, we don’t have a problem rejecting it. Similarly, if there’s a company we certify that we no longer feel deserves to be certified, we can walk away.

I’ve been very blessed spending my days here. It’s truly a berachah to be able to do something I enjoy while knowing that every day we are accomplishing something for the Jewish people.

Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography

A Chanukah Tradition Since 1882

MEET THE MASHGICHIM

Ever wonder what an OU Kosher mashgiach really does?

Editor’s Note: Transliterations in the magazine are based on Sephardic pronunciation, unless an author in known to use Ashkenazic pronunciation. Thus, the inconsistencies in transliteration in this section and throughout the magazine are due to authors’ preferences.

It is not uncommon for Rabbi Shoshan Ghoori to take a trip down the Amazon River to visit plants for routine inspections, as shown in this video still. Courtesy of Rabbi Shoshan Ghoori

By Carol Green Ungar

For Rabbi Shoshan Ghoori, director of OU Kosher’s Latin America client relations, a run-ofthe-mill plant inspection is an Indiana Jones–style adventure. It is not unusual for him to prepare by applying copious amounts of bug spray and donning heavy rubber boots and a netted face mask—all to protect himself from the snake bites, malaria and dengue fever he might encounter while journeying to plants tucked deep in the Amazon.

And those trips can include heartstopping moments. On one recent visit, the rabbi and his driver spent three hours on a journey that included drives

under waterfalls and through mudslides at night. “At times it was very dangerous,” the Brooklyn-born rabbi says. Still, he is enthusiastic about his work.

More than the excitement and the breathtaking scenery, Rabbi Ghoori thrives on the joys of connecting South American factory owners to the Jewish market. “These company owners go to international fairs, but they don’t realize the window of opportunity the kosher market offers for selling in the US. Once a product is selling to kosher consumers in supermarkets on the East Coast, supermarkets elsewhere are attracted to it,” says the rabbi.

Although it’s not part of his job description, Rabbi Ghoori will often take

South American factory owners on a tour of Brooklyn’s upscale kosher supermarkets to show them what they are missing.

“I’m bringing the jungle to Brooklyn,” he jokes, though the manufacturers tend to be cultured and sophisticated. “We visit Pomegranate and Breadberry, then I’ll take them to a kosher restaurant for lunch.” He estimates that companies he has helped in this way have increased their sales by as much as 30 percent.

Rabbi Ghoori also played a crucial role in the OU’s decision to certify quinoa for Passover; he visited the quinoa fields in Bolivia and Peru and discovered that due to their remote locations in the Andes mountains, quinoa is grown separately from other crops.

Teaming up with local activists, Rabbi Ghoori also helped farmers market directly to consumers at fair prices. Though quinoa was selling for record-high prices on the world market, the rabbi noticed that quinoa farmers were excluded from the bounty by unscrupulous middlemen. “Middlemen are now offering much better prices to the farmers,” he says.

“He’s a unique personality, very warm and friendly and very professional,” says Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, a senior rabbinic coordinator (RC) for OU Kosher who has worked closely with Rabbi Ghoori for more than twenty years.

Well connected in countries throughout South America, Rabbi Ghoori is involved in helping his fellow Jews in any way he can. While he’s reluctant to provide details, he does admit that he was instrumental in arranging for Jacob Ostreicher’s escape from prison in Bolivia. Ostreicher, an Orthodox Jew, was unjustly arrested by Bolivian authorities in 2011.

Before coming to the OU, Rabbi Ghoori worked in kiruv rechokim Having learned at Jerusalem’s Yeshivas Toras Moshe as well as at Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey, Rabbi Ghoori spent seventeen years in Santiago, Chile, building the local chapter of Aish. Working with

newcomers to Judaism deepened the rabbi’s own relationship with Yiddishkeit “I myself became a ‘ba’al teshuvah’ by learning about Judaism from that perspective,” he says.

During those years, he developed an easy fluency in Spanish, which he attributes to his Yemenite roots— Rabbi Ghoori is half Yemenite and half Ashkenazi. “Yemenites have a sensitivity to language,” he points out.

When one of his Aish congregants, a factory owner, sought his assistance to kosherize a Chilean anchovy factory, Rabbi Ghoori turned to the OU. Rabbi Rabinowitz, Rabbi Moshe Elefant, COO, OU Kosher, and Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO, OU Kosher,

took him under their wing, introducing him to the halachic complexities of twenty-first-century hashgachah. It wasn’t long before Rabbi Ghoori joined the OU as a mashgiach

When concerns for his children’s schooling brought him back to the US, Rabbi Ghoori continued at the OU. As a rabbinical field representative (RFR), he oversees the work of five rabbis—three in Chile and two in Peru.

Today, his home base is Woodmere, New York, but the rabbi estimates that he spends half a year in Latin America. He is often based in hotels, but when he’s in Chile, he stays with a married daughter who remained in Santiago. While there, he also checks up on the community where he once served as the rabbi. “It feels like [one of my] children to me,” he says.

The trips are busy. Rabbi Ghoori is up at dawn, and right after davening, breakfast and an exercise routine, he’s off. “During my last trip, I visited twenty-five factories in less than three weeks,” he says.

“I have traveled with him. He has a lot of energy,” says one of his colleagues.

A natural networker, Rabbi Ghoori often engages with new companies while he’s on the road. “If I see a warehouse or factory, I’ll knock on the door to speak to the export manager,” he says. He estimates that through these spontaneous visits, he’s brought fifty factories under the aegis of the OU. When he’s on the road, he also visits Jewish communities, reaching out to local rabbis to help them with their kiruv projects.

While the fields of kiruv and kashrut share little in common, Rabbi Ghoori feels that the two parts of his career form a coherent whole with the goal of creating a kiddush Hashem

OU

Carol Green Ungar is an awardwinning writer whose essays have appeared in Tablet, the Jerusalem Post, Ami Magazine, Jewish Action and other publications. She teaches memoir writing and is the author of several children’s books.

Rabbi Shoshan Ghoori, director of OU Kosher’s Latin America client relations, at OU Kosher’s annual mashgiach conference in 2018. Photo: Naftoli Goldgrab

It is not unusual for him to prepare by

copious amounts of bug

face mask—all to protect himself from the snake bites, malaria and dengue fever he might encounter while journeying to plants tucked deep in the Amazon.

By Carol Green Ungar

In a recent email to his colleagues, Rabbi Yisroel Hollander, OU Kosher’s senior rabbinic representative of Europe, describes a week in his life.

Sunday: a two-hour train ride from Antwerp to Paris.

Monday: a factory inspection, followed by a flight to Istanbul and from there to Baku (Azerbaijan).

Tuesday: plant inspections in Baku.

Wednesday: fly back to Istanbul, and then on to Prague to supervise a Pesach run of Slivovitz.

Thursday: fly to Belgium, conduct another plant inspection, and return home to write up the reports.

Add to this thrice-daily davening and daily Torah learning, which is only natural for a Gateshead Yeshivah alumnus, and you’ve got a recipe for a life that feels overfull. Yet the gentle fifty-three-year-old rabbi is serene. “The OU has been very good to me,” he says. Rabbi Hollander has spent a quarter of a century at the OU, joining after a stint at a kashrut organization in Manchester.

Even now, with airports still in post-Covid chaos and gas prices at nosebleed levels, the rabbi continues on his journeys. “Indefatigable is the word I’d use to describe him,” says Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, a senior RC for OU Kosher who has traveled with Rabbi Hollander.

During a recent Zoom interview, Rabbi Hollander described his most recent trip, a midnight flight followed by a more than 400-mile drive to Bulgaria to supervise the manufacture of maraschino cherries, as “nothing— for me, it feels like driving up the road.”

Though he’s a devoted family man, Rabbi Hollander admits that he spends more time on the road than he does at home. “I can go a whole week without a warm meal because I travel to areas without kosher food,” he says. Oftentimes, his meals consist of cheese and crackers or salami sandwiches. Yet the rabbi seems immune to the stresses of traveling. “He’s always smiling and

he’s pleasant to work with,” says Rabbi Hillel Kusmierski, an OU European RFR who works closely with Rabbi Hollander and considers him a mentor as well as a close friend.

“He often sleeps in his car,” says Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO, OU Kosher. Rabbi Genack was once traveling to meet Rabbi Hollander in Amsterdam for a factory visit. When Rabbi Genack travels to certain European countries, he prefers to wear a baseball cap so as not to draw attention due to rising antiSemitism. However, when he landed, Rabbi Hollander was in the airport waiting for him, dressed in Chassidic garb. “You’re ruining my camouflage!” Rabbi Genack cried.

Being multilingual helps Rabbi Hollander communicate as he crisscrosses Europe. Born and raised in the UK, the Antwerp-based rabbi is fluent in six languages—Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, French and Flemish.

Years of traveling have refined his sensitivity to cultural nuances. When planning random factory inspections— the bread and butter of a mashgiach’s job, in fulfillment of a halachic requirement called “yotzei v’nichnas”— he pays careful attention to the timing and style of the midday meal. “In Spain, lunch goes from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, and there’s nobody to speak to during those hours. In France, it’s 12:30 to 1:30 pm . . . but in Bulgaria, showing up at lunchtime is no problem.”

Rabbi Yisroel Hollander supervising a Pesach run of Slivovitz at Rudolf Jelinek in the Czech Republic. Courtesy of Rudolf Jelinek

Even when the timing is right, surprise visits can be challenging. “Sometimes I have to wait a long time,” says Rabbi Hollander.

Occasionally he will arrive at a plant to discover that his contact isn’t around. “If it happens once, I let it go, but if it happens regularly, I report it to the OU and sometimes the hashgachah is retracted,” he says. Even when his contacts are there, the welcome the rabbi receives varies greatly across borders. “In France, no one offers food or drink, but in Germany, they put out drinks and fruit,” he says. “Bulgaria and Eastern Europe are also very friendly, and in the Czech Republic they are so proud of their kosher Slivovitz that they interviewed me on Czech television.”

While inspections of plants that are in the process of going kosher tend to be friendlier than regular visits, the latter visits have their own kinds

of glitches. “The most common is failing to report a new ingredient,” says Rabbi Hollander.

Even when he receives a nice welcome, Rabbi Hollander still has to contend with plant managers who don’t understand Judaism. “They think the rabbi comes to bless the food. They don’t understand that we follow these rules in our own lives. After a two- or three-hour conversation about kosherizing the plant, some managers will offer me a non-kosher lunch,” he says with a chuckle.

Bottom right: Rabbi Yosef Grossman, z”l, the former director of education for OU Kosher, with a group of Jewish day school students from Denver who visited OU Kosher for a “Kashrut 101” seminar.

OU Kosher’s educational arm, the OU Kosher Community Relations Department, provides kashrut education to the Jewish community at large. The department, under the leadership of Rabbi Eli Eleff, offers ongoing programming and resources to yeshivot, kollelim, schools, shuls and community organizations throughout the globe. Additionally, it offers a hotline for consumers as well as publications including the Daf Hakashrus,

kosher professionals.

Even now, with airports still in post-Covid chaos and gas prices at nosebleed levels, the rabbi continues on his journeys. “Indefatigable is the word I’d use to describe him,” says Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, a senior RC for OU Kosher.

Pictured above left: OU Kosher set up an “Ask the Rabbi” booth at Gourmet Glatt supermarket in Cedarhurst, New York, during Pesach season last year, where shoppers could ask their Pesach kashrut questions and get answers on the spot.

a monthly publication geared toward

By Carol Green Ungar

When Phyllis Koegel was growing up in the 1960s in Brooklyn, keeping kosher demanded quite a bit of forbearance. Back then, kosher consumers made do with a relatively sparse selection of products. Many of today’s pantry staples, including OU-certified Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers, were ubertreif, and the only kosher chewing gum came from Israel.

The landscape of kosher is different now, largely because of the vision, effort and determination of various personalities at the OU, including Phyllis Koegel.

Koegel’s official title is marketing director, OU Kosher, which means she’s on a mission to bring OU supervision to as many products as possible. And she’s made a grand success of it. Over the past sixteen years, Koegel has brought in over 2,000 new brands and over 250,000 new products, among them Gatorade, Sambazon, Jelly Belly jelly beans, and Tootsie Roll. “She loves kashrus, and she knows how to get companies to be interested in kosher,” says her colleague Rabbi Yisroel Hollander, OU Kosher’s senior rabbinic representative of Europe.

Rabbi Reuven Nathanson, OU Kosher’s director of the West Coast region, describes Koegel as a

consummate professional. “She’s very enthusiastic and always willing to go the extra mile to get things certified,” he says.

While these are impressive accolades, Koegel, a youthful-looking sixty-something-year-old has higher aspirations. “I’ve got a wish list,” she says. “Pop Tarts, US-made versions of Skittles, Mentos and Doritos [the Israeli versions of these products are kosher].”

Where does her wish list come from? “Consumers,” says Koegel. “We get emails all day long recommending products.” Koegel urges consumers to reach out to manufacturers. “Tell them you would buy their product if it were

certified kosher. That goes a long way,” she says.

When she’s not meeting with manufacturers or traveling to food shows in cities across the country and twice a year internationally, Koegel is in her office in downtown Manhattan cold-calling companies. “The goal is to reach the top managerial people who make the decisions,” she says. It’s hard and often frustrating, but through savvy use of LinkedIn, Koegel has learned how to pinpoint the decision makers. “It’s a lot of luck and a lot of persistence,” she says. And, of course, “a heavy dose of siyata d’Shmaya.”

After that comes the task of selling them the benefits of going kosher. “I talk about it as a value-added,” says Koegel. She cites a study conducted by the marketing group Koshertoday. com revealing that kosher consumers spend 45 percent more on food than other consumers. “That’s because they have more kids and serve more meals, especially on Shabbos and holidays,” she explains.

Surprisingly, Orthodox Jews aren’t the only market for OU products. “In the US, halal isn’t widespread, so many Muslim shoppers look for the OU

Over the past sixteen years, Koegel has brought in over 2,000 new brands and over 250,000 new products, among them Gatorade, Sambazon, Jelly Belly jelly beans, and Tootsie Roll.

Phyllis Koegel (left) with Robin Cuneo, executive director of the Meadowlands Exhibition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, at Kosherfest 2018.

certification for meat and poultry and also for other products,” notes Koegel. Another large group of OU consumers turn to the OU seal as a safety guarantee. “They know there’s an extra set of eyes on OU products,” she says.

For these reasons, as well as the growth of the Orthodox community, the number of companies adopting kosher has been rising steadily. The only child of Holocaust survivors, Koegel, a mother and grandmother, spent most of her career in the food industry. Before joining the OU, she was the show director of Kosherfest, the annual kosher food fair, and helped introduce hummus to US consumers in her role at Sabra.

Although the OU has quite a few women in leadership roles throughout the organization, in the Kosher Division Koegel is one of the few high-level women. “It took a while for people to get used to me,” she says, but she now enjoys cordial relations with the more than fifty rabbis who serve as RCs at the OU Kosher headquarters. “There can

be halachic complications in bringing a product under supervision, but I have the benefit of their knowledge.”

So what’s next? “Chobani,” says Koegel. She is presently helping the yogurt giant develop a plant-based line. Also on the horizon are kosher certification of kombucha, a fermented beverage; more keto-friendly foods; and more mushroom-based snack foods.

Koegel is proud that beyond increasing choices for kosher consumers, the OU funnels its profits back into the community by supporting NCSY, its highly successful international youth organization; OU-JLIC, the OU’s campus arm; Yachad, which is dedicated to providing social and emotional opportunities for those in the Jewish community with developmental disabilities; OU Advocacy, its advocacy arm in Washington, and more. “We do so much for the community with these funds. We are responsible for tremendous kiddush Hashem,” she concludes.

PESACH SEASON

In the month preceding

In addition to certifying companies such as Osem, Strauss-Elite, Tenuva and many others, OU Kosher’s Israel Division offers kashrut education to English-speaking olim and tourists to help them understand the complexities of kashrut in Israel. Through its Gustave and Carol Jacobs Center for Kashrut Education, under the leadership of Rabbi Ezra Friedman, OU Kosher educates thousands in Israel via shiurim, engaging videos, kashrut guides, a hotline and ongoing workshops. Pictured below, a video on kashering featuring Rabbi Ezra Friedman.

Left: OU Israel mashgichim visiting a plant.

Rabbi Reuven Nathanson

By Leah R. Lightman

Rabbi Reuven Nathanson’s career as an OU mashgiach can be summed up with the motto “Always put your best foot forward.” Literally.

The Los Angeles–based rabbi was supervising the production of wine in California’s Napa Valley, one of the premier wine regions of the world, when a new client insisted that Rabbi Nathanson and his two OU colleagues press the grapes themselves—with their feet. The vintner maintained that stomping on grapes with feet covered in disposable booties would result in a higher quality wine because feet are softer on the grapes than machinery, thereby reducing the bitterness in the wine. Surely, he asserted, the rabbis, who

are key to producing kosher wine, would want a hand—or a foot—in this process.

The three OU mashgichim donned bathing suits and booties and made sure their yarmulkes were securely fastened to their heads. Their legs were then sprayed with nongrain alcohol disinfectant, after which they jumped into three-foot-deep vats that each held over a half-ton of grapes. Then the stomping began. “I’m sure the onlookers were convinced that an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ was being filmed onsite,” Rabbi Nathanson reminisces.

After a job is completed, a mashgiach generally submits a report to the RC overseeing the company back at OU Kosher’s main headquarters providing details about the particular run. Rabbi Nathanson wrote and submitted his report to his supervisors. Subsequently, he received back a letter stating that the preferred dress code for OU mashgichim, especially for the rav hamachshir (certifying rabbi), is a jacket and tie. Thankfully, the client never asked the mashgichim to stomp on grapes again.

Rabbi Nathanson, OU Kosher’s director of the West Coast region, with

a specialty in the wine and grape juice industries, has been with the OU for more than three decades. Inspecting plants in no less than ten Western states, he “fell into” kashrut while working in acute care hospital administration in New Orleans several decades ago. At the time, the OU had one account in the area, about fifteen miles from his job. “Since there was flexibility in my job, and the OU required my services only monthly, I decided, ‘Why not?’” says Rabbi Nathanson.

Other OU Kosher jobs came along, which Rabbi Nathanson accepted. Then two things happened that pushed Rabbi Nathanson toward a career in kashrut: He and his wife wanted more educational options for their children and did not want to send them away from home. And at the same time, the number of OU jobs assigned to him began growing exponentially. Rabbi Nathanson and his family relocated to Los Angeles in 1991, where he again worked simultaneously in hospital administration and for OU Kosher. Eventually, he left healthcare and immersed himself in the world of kosher supervision.

Nowadays, Rabbi Nathanson travels throughout the South Pacific, Mexico, and southwestern and western United States. He flies twice a year to Australia and New Zealand, and multiple times to Hawaii and the islands in the South Seas. He travels mostly on weekdays, returning home for Shabbat and yom tov. Because of his arduous travel schedule, he treasures spending time at home with his wife, children and grandchildren. In fact, Rabbi Nathanson seems to be passing on his love for kashrut to the next generation: one of his sons and a son-in-law are working for OU Kosher.

While her husband’s irregular schedule poses challenges for Chana Lieba Nathanson, it also, she says, gives her a “greater appreciation of my husband when he’s home.”

What makes Rabbi Nathanson so good at what he does? He’s a “people person,” says OU Kosher RC Rabbi Nosson Neuberger. “He relates well to people; they don’t feel that he’s just there trying to get the job done.”

Rabbi Reuven Nathanson supervising a production run at It’s Delish, a bulk producer of spices, nuts, dried fruit and candy. Photo: Gilad Koriski

His perception, focus, and ability to target and resolve kashrut challenges is

Little gets past him.

Other colleagues say that Rabbi Nathanson brings to the table two seemingly contradictory qualities that serve him well in this role “On the one hand, he is always calm, friendly and kind,” says Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, an RC who has traveled with Rabbi Nathanson extensively, accompanying him on OU plant visits in which they dealt with very intricate scenarios. “Everyone who deals with him feels at ease and really enjoys interacting with him. He works wonders, always managing to set things straight, leaving all parties satisfied and happy. On the other hand, his perception, focus, and ability to target and resolve kashrut challenges is razor-sharp. Little gets past him, and solutions to the most perplexing quandaries emanate from him smoothly and easily.”

Rabbi Nathanson’s good-natured disposition enables him to form friendly and solid connections with

plant managers and staff. He was once onsite for an OU Kosher client, when he began speaking with the research and development manager, who was trying to locate an uncommon ingredient. The company CEO passed them en route to a meeting, and forty-five minutes later, after the meeting had ended, he found them still talking. Upon which the CEO said, “How much is this chatting costing me?”

The manager responded: “Hey, the rabbi here is a wealth of information and is actually saving us about $50,000—the cost of having me research the ingredient and then get in samples that in the long run won’t fill our needs.”

Through his work as an OU RFR, Rabbi Nathanson is always drawing upon his keen detective skills to assure the integrity of the products he is supervising. Once, he was wrapping up a job supervising the canning of yams, when an interesting-looking piece of machinery caught his eye. After examining the machinery, he asked

OU KOSHER SEMINARS

OU Kosher’s educational arm offers the Harry H. Beren ASK (Advanced Seminars in Kashrus) Summer Kashrus Training Program, an intensive, three-week internship program geared to semichah students, kollel members and aspiring kashrut professionals. Additionally, it offers a weeklong educational program for anyone interested in gaining an indepth understanding of kashrut. The ASK OU internship programs, offered to men and women in alternate years, boasts more than 1,000 alumni. The hands-on internships include presentations by kosher experts as well as field trips to plants, slaughterhouses, wineries and industrial kitchens, among other real-life settings.

Top: Interns in this year’s ASK OU Summer Kashrus Training Program outside of the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Bottom: ASK OU interns visiting the test kitchen at Culinary Depot in Spring Valley, New York.

the secretary why a cooking kettle on wheels was in the corridor. When she responded that it was there because there was a leak in the closet in her office, something gnawed at Rabbi Nathanson, and he decided to pursue the matter before concluding his job there. He asked more questions and found out that the cooking kettle was used “only occasionally,” according to the secretary, to make shrimp soup. “My heart skipped a beat,” says Rabbi Nathanson. Pushing further in his quest for information and clarity as to when the cooking kettle was used and not used, and whether it impacted the canning process for which the OU was hired, he searched through the company’s ledgers and calendars and determined that the kashrut for the canning of yams was intact.

Even after three decades of nonstop traveling for OU Kosher, Rabbi Nathanson shows no signs of slowing down. “I’ll go where I’m needed. And I’ll help whoever needs help,” says Rabbi Nathanson. “I love what I do.”

Leah R. Lightman is a freelance writer who lives in Lawrence, New York, with her family.

Rabbi Moshe Perlmutter

By Sara Trappler Spielman

It’s 2:30 am on a summer Motzaei Shabbat and Rabbi Moshe Perlmutter’s work for the week is just beginning. He managed to find mashgichim to cover three catering jobs that Shabbat, but he will be on the road most of the week doing plant inspections throughout northern and central New Jersey. He says it’s tough to find mashgichim willing to supervise kitchens on Shabbat, and even harder to find people to work in food service since Covid hit.

Working at non-kosher venues, such as catering halls or hotels, Rabbi Perlmutter needs to be available at odd hours. Referring to the 2:30 am Motzaei Shabbat job, he says, “It was a lot of pressure because the hotel had an event until 11 pm Saturday, and the kitchen was not available beforehand.” The chefs in this case needed the ovens ready at 6 am Sunday to start cooking for guests arriving at 11 am. In situations such as this, he often starts right after Shabbat and pulls an all-nighter.

“The life of a mashgiach is not easy,” Rabbi Perlmutter admits. To hear him describe his job is reminiscent of a doctor on call. Known as OU Kosher’s “kosherization expert,” Rabbi Perlmutter has been an RFR for the OU for about thirty years, overseeing catering jobs, conducting inspections, and kosherizing factories and food facilities; his areas of expertise include

chemicals and flavorings, bottling, and oil companies. Additionally, he is often involved in educating future and current mashgichim at OU seminars on topics ranging from “Kosherization 101” to “Industrial Kashering and Equipment.”

Rabbi Perlmutter’s assignments often entail hours of driving; he used to sleep at roadside hotels for an entire week until the job was completed. Six times a year he goes to the Connecticut and Massachusetts border from his home in Passaic, where he has lived for the past thirty-five years; to beat traffic, he leaves at 5 am. Last month, during a bad rainstorm, it took three and a half hours for him to get home. “When I arrive at a plant, I don’t need coffee; I have a mobile office with everything in my car.”

The intricate process involved in kosherizing a plant and getting a product labeled with the OU certification mark requires not only

OU Rabbinic Field Representative Rabbi Moshe Perlmutter inspecting Allen Flavors Inc. in New Jersey. Photo: Meir Kruter

When you’re a mashgiach in the field, you are an ambassador for the OU and for the Orthodox world.

skill and patience but an unparalleled dedication and commitment. Most of Rabbi Perlmutter’s jobs nowadays are local, but when he worked with spray dryers (expensive equipment used to convert liquid solutions into powder) for a certain flavor factory, he stayed for a week every month to kasher the dryer and supervise the production. Heading out there on Sunday night, he stayed until the first shift Friday to make it home for Shabbat. “I just went round the clock for three shifts a day in the quaint town of New Milford, Connecticut,” he says. “I would go back and forth throughout the day, sleeping only a few hours, and I wouldn’t see my family for a week every month.”

Although Rabbi Perlmutter received extensive “on the job training” when he first joined the OU, he credits his OU mentor, Senior RC Rabbi Avraham Juravel, for being his rebbi in kashering. But Rabbi Perlmutter, who grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, notes that being a former plumber as well as being mechanically inclined have proven to be invaluable assets as a mashgiach. His

in-depth understanding of complex piping systems makes him uniquely suited for his career and gives him a serious advantage when visiting plants.

“The handier you are, the more you look at things differently,” says Rabbi Perlmutter. “When I walk into a factory, I’m fascinated by its workings, and I understand things beneath the surface. Sometimes the manager forgets to mention something, such as whether a tank was heated or cooled or used at ambient temperature, and I need to recognize it on my own. Also, the ability to use a blowtorch safely is essential. As food technology advances, kashering gets more complicated. The equipment that is used to simplify food production can sometimes make it more challenging for the world of kosher supervision. Moreover, the technology is always changing. People assume a mashgiach is a rabbi, without any particular expertise, sitting in a restaurant. But it’s a far cry from that.” Rabbi Perlmutter recalls the first day he walked into a factory and noticed a pareve margarine line that was connected to a dairy line in three different places, which could lead to cross-contamination. “A mashgiach needs to know basic piping; there could

be miles of pipes one needs to follow to trace where it’s all going,” he says.

Rabbi Perlmutter visits one factory that produces both kosher and nonkosher jams. Nearly every week, the factory requires kashering as it switches back and forth. He gets up 4 am and arrives at the plant at 5 am to kasher early enough for them to start their run. He kashers three sets of tanks as well as the fillers (the equipment that fills the food products into their containers).

“You have to kasher everything from the beginning of the process, from the path of the first ingredient, to all the equipment it touched,” he says.

At the OU’s annual ASK (Advanced Seminars in Kashrus) OU Summer Kashrus Training Program—an intensive, three-week internship program—and a second, weeklong educational program for those interested in gaining an in-depth, expert-level understanding of kashrut, Rabbi Perlmutter gives a tour of a local factory, where he demonstrates kashering on the industrial level. He always stresses that “someone can know all the halachot of kashrut, but if you can’t discern that there’s a non-kosher tank or steam pipe going right into the system, you are likely

Sara Trappler Spielman is a free lance writer living in Florida.

OU Kosher Posek Rav Hershel Schachter (left) and European RFR Rabbi Yitzchok Sterling at OU Kosher’s annual mashgiach conference in 2018. Photo: Naftoli Goldgrab

to miss crucial things.” Additionally, he speaks at OU Kosher mashgichim conferences, at AKO (the Association of Kashrus Organizations) and to diverse audiences, from YU semichah students to members of the Satmar Kollel in Monroe, New York, at OU Kosher educational seminars held year round.

Rabbi Perlmutter once did an initial inspection at a fatty-acid plant outside Boston, which used treif animal fat, as the company wanted to produce a kosher line in addition to its non-kosher line. The challenge was navigating four floors with close to 100 tanks. “It was a maze of miles of pipes,” says Rabbi Perlmutter. He spent three days there, ensuring that all the pipes were segregated. “The piping was very complicated. I found three places that their engineer missed.”

“The best mashgichim are the plumber types, you know, the kind of

guy who installs his own baseboard heating when the heating in his home breaks down,” says Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman, an OU RC. “That’s because you need someone who understands how the systems work,” he says.

Rabbi Perlmutter’s most exotic visit was to a factory in Iceland, where he oversaw a herring run. But while the field can have its share of excitement, there are also significant occupational hazards. He once arrived at a factory and set out to boil water for the purpose of kashering the equipment. Despite his years of experience in kashering, the water shot up like a geyser and he suffered burns on 11 percent of his body, scalding his back, neck and arms. “I’m okay now,” he says. Subsequently, he delivered dozens of seminars on safety during kashering for the OU.

But this story attests to a littlediscussed truth: the extraordinary

mesirut nefesh that mashgichim must have while traversing the globe to ensure kosher food is available and accessible.

Another quality essential for a field mashgiach is an ability to interface with plant employees. Rabbi Perlmutter’s friendly, genial nature enables him to create cordial relationships with plant managers and personnel. He admits that plant personnel often confide in him since they view him as a spiritual leader. “They’ll tell me things like, ‘My mother is sick.’” Especially during Covid, when people were dying unexpectedly, employees at the factories sought him out for comfort and advice.

But Rabbi Perlmutter doesn’t mind. He knows that a mashgiach’s role demands far more than just expertise in using a blowtorch. “When you’re a mashgiach in the field, you are an ambassador for the OU and for the Orthodox world.”

Legends in the Kosher World

zt”t

By Rabbi Berel Wein

King Solomon in Kohelet relates the parable of the anonymous wise man, poor in wealth and notoriety, who saves a besieged city with his advice and wisdom and yet is apparently soon forgotten by all who benefited from him. Jewish history is replete with unsung heroes who “saved our city” but are mainly forgotten, even though generations of Jews are beholden to them for their valor, wisdom and selflessness. Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg, though he

may still be remembered by the older generation of rabbis in this country and Israel, is at best a half-sung hero. And that is probably exactly the way he would have wanted it. So the words of mine that follow come not to simply eulogize Rabbi Rosenberg, but rather to describe how kashrut, in a practical sense, was saved and its banner raised high in the Jewish world.

The Achilles’ heel of the Orthodox rabbinate in America during the first six decades of intensive Jewish immigration to America was kashrut supervision. The chaos that surrounded kashrut matters is almost indescribable.

The great Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, who was elected as the first and the only chief rabbi of New York, was hounded to his premature death in 1902 by the conflicting forces battling for control of kosher food supplies in New York. Kashrut supervision fell into the hands of people food manufacturers and distributors, butchers, slaughterhouse owners, questionable “rabbis,” and out and out charlatans who were clearly in it for the dollars that could be

extracted from the kosher consumer. The kashrut industry was also infiltrated by corrupt labor-union bosses and even by the capos of organized crime. There were individual rabbis who struggled heroically in their communities and neighborhoods to uphold the standards of kashrut, but for many it was a bruising and eventually losing battle.

At the root of the problem was the fact that there was no communal organization that could undertake intensive kashrut supervision that would be free from the individual’s need for personal profit and the pressure from food manufacturers and purveyors for lower standards. The abysmally low salaries paid to American rabbis of the time forced many otherwise great and honorable people into positions of silence and compromise in the field of kashrut supervision. The Orthodox Union began to deal with this problem, but it was not until Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg became the rabbinic kashrut administrator of the OU that real progress was made. Rabbi Rosenberg,

Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg,

Prior to serving as rabbinic administrator at the OU, Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg was the religious director of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). In this photo, he is presenting Chaplain Benjamin Chubov, JDC representative, with kosher food that the JDC supplied for the Holocaust survivor passengers of the S.S. Marine Flasher in Bremerhaven, Germany, in May 1946.

Courtesy of the JDC Archive

descended from a distinguished family of Hungarian rabbis, combined within himself old-world charm, a shrewd understanding of people and their motives, an uncanny business sense, unimpeachable integrity, enormous compassion and a sense of public service that allowed him to see the big picture. Rabbi Rosenberg was an accomplished talmid chacham, someone who knew when and with whom to consult on matters of halachah and policy, and he was the epitome of efficiency and rectitude in all of his dealings. But his greatest accomplishment was that wherever he went and with whomever he dealt, the experience always turned into a kiddush Hashem.

Rabbi Rosenberg envisioned the day when a Jew could walk into almost any supermarket in North America and purchase kosher food, supervised by the OU. These days, any Jew who has traveled anywhere in the United States Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, North Dakota, literally anywhere can well appreciate the service that Rabbi Rosenberg provided in guiding the OU

Rabbi Berel Wein is a renowned lecturer, author and historian. This article originally appeared in the summer 2002 issue of Jewish Action.

and popularizing the concept of kosher products distribution in the general food industry. He would not allow compromises in kosher standards and yet unfailingly understood the problems that many food manufacturers had in meeting those standards. He always said to the managers of the food plants that were under OU supervision: “We are here to help you. We are not the problem; rather we are here to provide you with the solution.” Many a product today is certified as kosher due to Rabbi Rosenberg’s innovative spirit, quiet diplomacy and iron will. It was he who perfected and pioneered the system of the mass slaughtering of kosher poultry that, with further technological improvements and refinements, is de rigueur throughout the Jewish world today. It was Rabbi Rosenberg who impressed upon major American food companies such as Colgate-Palmolive, H.J. Heinz, Rich’s, Procter & Gamble, Best Foods and others the possibilities for them in kosher production and supervision. And it was his aristocratic manner, his handsome appearance and immaculate dress, his integrity, his wisdom and his faith that most impressed these non-Jewish concerns and won them over to allow “rabbis to bless their machinery” and control their inventories and suppliers.

AJew once made a less than straightforward proposal to Rabbi Rosenberg from which he stood to derive substan tial personal gain. Rabbi Rosenberg responded, “Un vos zogt G-t?” (“And what does G-d think?”) I was so impressed with Rabbi Rosenberg’s reply that I frequently related the story to my talmidim, who bought me a plaque with the words, un vos zogt G-t inscribed on it. The plaque helped me avoid situations I might later regret.

Rabbi Rosenberg loved Jews, all Jews, something which is not necessarily easy to do when one is involved in the nitty-gritty of daily kashrut supervision and administration. He possessed enormous patience, forgave the personal slights cast upon him by spiteful and jealous people, and always looked for opportunities to help others. Rabbi Rosenberg was a rabbinic representative to the Displaced Persons camps in Germany after World War II. There he was seen as a delivering angel, especially to the surviving rabbis and Chassidic leaders. When many of them arrived in America a few years later, Rabbi Rosenberg helped them become established by providing advice, money (he was notorious for giving excessively to charity), jobs and personal encouragement. During the 1960s, he had the custom of visiting Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Boro Park communities on Chol Hamoed. He would stand there, watching the baby carriages, the holiday clothes, the parading post-Holocaust generation, and smile through his tears. It is no exaggeration to say that the basis for

Rabbi Nota Greenblatt, zt”l

By Rabbi Menachem Genack

Rav Nota Greenblatt, zt”l, who worked as an RFR for OU Kosher for decades, possessed two remarkable characteristics: an extraordinary level of chesed and a rare mastery of disparate fields of Torah knowledge. In 1947, Rav Moshe Feinstein wrote about Rav Nota, who was then about twenty-one years old, that “within a short time . . . he will be one of the gedolei Torah of Israel and pillars of halachah in the world,” a prediction that was fulfilled.

To give one example of Rav Nota’s chesed: As is well known, Rav Nota, who since the 1950s was based in Memphis, Tennessee, would travel around the

the many Chassidishe hechsherim (kosher certifications) that exist today was laid by Rabbi Rosenberg. That is also true for many other current successful “private” kashrut supervising organizations, all of whom relied on the OU for the basic raw materials for their products and probably still rely today on the OU. Rabbi Rosenberg was magnanimous and generous to a fault, and if he felt that helping someone else’s efforts and organization would aid the cause of authentic kashrut, he would supply the necessary advice, judgment and experience.

I have purposely not burdened this article with numerous anecdotes, of which I have many, regarding Rabbi Rosenberg. But I wish to conclude this tribute with the following tale: I was Rabbi Rosenberg’s immediate successor as rabbinic administrator of the OU. In 1974, in the midst of the Arab oil boycott of the West in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, one of the two main suppliers of kosher glycerin in the United States had to discontinue its deliveries due to a shortage of oil. An OU-supervised company, a very

world—often at his own expense—to obtain a get for women in need (he administered thousands of gittin). On one occasion, Rav Nota was trying to obtain a get from a recalcitrant husband, who finally agreed to meet him at a shul at 8 pm. The time came and went, and the husband did not show up. Rav Nota stayed up all night calling the man, until morning, when the latter finally arrived.

Later that day, Rav Nota was visiting a Humco oil manufacturing plant for the OU. Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg, the rabbinic administrator of the OU at the time, was driving with Rav Nota and asked him why he looked so tired. When Rav Nota told him he had been up all night waiting for a recalcitrant husband, Rabbi Rosenberg asked the driver to stop the car so he could get out and stand up for Rav Nota. Some thirty years later, Rav Nota was at a brit when the father of the baby approached him and said: “Over thirty years ago, you arranged a get for my mother.” The brit

large concern, called me in a panic. They had 100,000 labels with an OU printed on them; they currently had no other labels for their product and therefore they would have to shut down their factory for two or three days until they could obtain non-OU labels. This would cause them substantial financial loss. I told them that I would try to help them. I called the other supplier of kosher glycerin and explained the situation to the vice president in charge of marketing. I asked him to sell a number of tank cars of glycerin to this company, even though it was not a regular customer. The vice president thought it over for a moment, then agreed to do so and told me that the glycerin would be billed at the price schedule used for regular customers. He then asked me: “Rabbi, do you think Rabbi Rosenberg in heaven knows what I am doing for you?” This hard-nosed, non-Jewish businessman had no doubts that Rabbi Rosenberg was in heaven! Well, neither do I. On behalf of all of us millions who find kosher food so readily and plentifully available, thank you, Rabbi Rosenberg.

Rabbi Nota Greenblatt Courtesy of AMI Magazine

was for the grandson of the woman for whom Rav Nota had stayed up all night.

Another story is one I heard from Rav Dovid Feinstein, son of Rav Michel Feinstein. A husband agreed to give his wife a get in a far-flung location on erev Yom Kippur. Rav Nota immediately traveled there, which of course meant sacrificing Yom Kippur with a minyan; this did not matter to him. Rav Nota said that his Yom Kippur spent alone in this remote location was his most productive.

Rav Nota once traveled to Chile to perform a conversion. When he arrived, he saw that the woman planning to convert was not fully at peace with her decision; her family was unhappy, and as a result she was somewhat dejected. Although she was still eager to convert, Rav Nota told her that he would come back another time—at his expense—so the conversion could take place when she was feeling a sense of peace and joy and was not distressed.

Rav Nota was also a first-rate lamdan—the OU benefited from his in-depth expertise in many areas of halachah. As a very young boy, he met Rav Kook, who gave him a berachah that he would be a talmid chacham and merit arichut yamim. In his modesty Rav Nota would joke that at least the second half had come true (he passed away this past May at the age of ninety-six). He was also a master of practical halachah, and of course, he was a close student of Rav Moshe Feinstein, the posek hador.

When I first came to the OU, Rav Nisson Alpert, zt”l, a rosh yeshivah at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, told me that I would be working with Rav Moshe’s best talmid—Rav Nota Greenblatt. Years later, I shared that with Rav Nota, who responded: “Of course you know that’s not true—Rav Nisson was Rav Moshe’s best talmid.” In fact, they were Rav Moshe’s two greatest talmidim. Rav Nota absorbed from Rav Moshe his lomdut, his courage, and his concern for those asking questions.

Rav Nota was one of the rare people who knew the realia of halachah—he

combined theoretical lomdut, his knowledge of pesak halachah, and the actual how-to of implementation. He was not only an expert on gittin but also wrote gittin. He built mikvaot and eruvin throughout the South, was a mohel and a shochet, and in fact took charge of the OU’s shechitah as well, visiting slaughterhouses throughout the country. I didn’t have too many experts in shechitah I could turn to at the time— Rav Nota was one of the few.

Rav Nota was very close with Rav Michel Feinstein, a nephew of Rav Moshe Feinstein and son-in-law of the Brisker Rav (while studying in Israel, Rav Nota met with the Brisker Rav). He studied for six months in Boston at Heichal Rabbeinu Chaim Halevi, the yeshivah founded by Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. Rav Nota and Rav Michel would learn until the early

our teacher without mentioning his pleasantness toward everyone with whom he was in contact? I was pulled toward him in my youth because of his kindness, before I recognized his greatness in Torah. His sweetness in worldly matters was matched by the sweetness of his Torah.

Elsewhere, Rav Nota wrote about Rav Soloveitchik (Mesorah, vol. 17):

I will not pretend that I can accurately evaluate his greatness or the depth of his personality, but I will describe how he appeared to me, in my youth, when I was a young student and he a young rabbi . . .

hours of the morning. In the morning, the newspaper would arrive, and Rav Nota would translate the headlines for Rav Michel. That relationship and commitment persisted throughout their lives. In the introduction to his sefer, K’reiach Sadeh, Rav Nota wrote about his rebbi Rav Michel:

Those who merited to be in the presence of Rav Michel, zt”l, and saw how deeply he was engrossed in his shiurim, and how precise they were—shiurim in all areas of Torah, which were given constantly, almost without stopping, without regard to the suffering which always engulfed him—understand that he was wholly occupied with serving G-d, and through his shiurim he was serving G-d with the attributes of truth and perfection . . . Can one mention

My first impression of the Rav came from my teacher Rav Dovid Leibowitz. . . . The conversation turned to Rav Soloveitchik and another rabbi who was in a dispute with him. Rav Dovid said that the difference between the two was existential: the disputing rabbi was a distinguished talmid chacham, but “Reb Yoshe Ber is a gaon”. . . In the beginning of 5702, a group of students traveled to Boston with Rav Michel Feinstein to study and hear his shiurim and those of the Rav. . . We entered the study of the Rav. He sat opposite the single portrait in the room, that of “the Zeide, Reb Chaim,” and he took out a small Rambam and began to teach Hilchos Shofar. Each word sparkled like a gem in its clarity. . . . We did not notice the time passing, as we sat for hours without losing atten tion and drank from his unceasing well. . . . Reb Dovid was indeed correct. A gaon is an entirely different category of existence.

Rav Nota was so perceptive in describing his teachers because he shared their attributes. He was driven by his sense of responsibility for all of Klal Yisrael, and everything he did was performed with his superior intellect and his extraordinary heart. In Memphis, he founded the day school, the Memphis Jewish Academy, and later the yeshivah high school, and his efforts were crucial in maintaining the shomer Shabbat community in the city.

Rav Nota leaves a legacy of his wonderful family and talmidim, and Jews around the world who were beneficiaries of his knowledge, kindness and sense of achrayut. He was, as he wrote about Rav Soloveitchik, in a category of his own.

Rabbi Menachem Genack is

CEO,

OU Kosher.

I didn’t have too many experts in shechitah I could turn to at the time—Rav Nota was one of the few.

Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig, zt”l

By Steve Lipman

Rabbi Menachem

Genack, longtime CEO and rabbinic administrator of OU Kosher, likes to tell the story of the time Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig, a Chicago native who served as an RFR with OU Kosher for five decades, was stuck at a Chicago airport several years ago.

Because of a storm, all planes were grounded. Rabbi Goldzweig struck up a conversation with another Orthodox traveler in the terminal, a stranger. The traveler was between flights and needed some kosher food.

Somehow, with his connections in his hometown, Rabbi Goldzweig arranged for a kosher meal to be delivered to the terminal. He handed it to the stranger.

“I’d like to pay for the food,” the man said.

“I don’t want any money,” Rabbi Goldzweig responded. “I’m doing a mitzvah.”

“I can afford it,” said the stranger. “I’m Moshe Reichmann.”

The rabbi returned the introduction. “I’m Chaim Goldzweig.”

Rabbi Goldzweig, says Rabbi Genack, apparently did not recognize the name of one of the wealthiest Jewish people in the world, a prominent Orthodox businessman-philanthropist whose family funded innumerable causes in the Jewish community. Rabbi Goldzweig did not accept payment for the kosher meal he had arranged. “That was typical Chaim Goldzweig, his natural style, his humanity. He didn’t know what money was. And whenever he had money, he gave it away,” says Rabbi Genack. He was more aware of the details of international kosher food

production than of the identities of world-renowned billionaires.

Rabbi Goldzweig, who passed away at age eighty in 2018 a few years after retiring from his position as senior mashgiach, traveled around the United States and several foreign countries on kosher supervision assignments, while also lending his unique expertise to other kashrut organizations. He was regarded as “the mashgiach’s mashgiach,” bringing his encyclopedic knowledge of kosher ingredients and factory production practices to the cause of kashrut in the days before high-tech information storage and retrieval, Rabbi Genack says. An earlier article in Jewish Action dubbed him “The Super Mashgiach.” Rabbi Genack describes Rabbi Goldzweig, who served as rav of a small shtiebel in his home (Congregation Tifereth Moshe, named for his late father), as “a kosher Columbo,” an allusion to the iconic 1970s TV detective, whose rumpled raincoat and disarming “aw shucks” style disguised an incisive professionalism. He was a fleshand-blood kashrut database, a mentor to generations of younger kashrut supervisors. “The [OU] ‘computer’ was Chaim Goldzweig’s brain,” says Rabbi Genack. “The OU’s Kosher Division was built on his shoulders.

I once visited a plant with him,” recalls Rabbi Genack. “We found a box without kosher certification on it or any indication of what it contained. The plant manager hadn’t a clue as to what it was. Rabbi Goldzweig eyed the assorted numbers on the package and nonchalantly said, ‘Don’t worry; it’s a Durkee code (a manufacturer of spices and condiments).”

What motivated Rabbi Goldzweig?

“A tremendous sense of loyalty to Torah and to halachah,” Rabbi Genack says. “He wanted to make sure it was done right.”

“I dream about ingredients,” Rabbi Goldzweig once said. “I believe it’s a mitzvah to help people eat kosher food.”

Despite his modest title at the OU, Rabbi Goldzweig played a major role in promoting kashrut observance and adherence. “He knew it like nobody else,” says Rabbi Ephraim Nisenbaum, son-in-law of Rabbi Goldzweig and author of The Chief: The World-Changing Life of Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig (New Jersey, 2020). “He put kashrus on the map in many ways.” (“The Chief” was how Rabbi Goldzweig was known to many people in kashrut circles.)

“There’s no question that Rabbi Goldzweig was a pivotal player in the

Rabbi Chaim Goldzweig with a plant manager during an inspection in the 1970s. Courtesy of Rabbi Ephraim Nisenbaum

development of kashrut in America,” Rabbi Israel Paretzky, an OU RC told Jewish Action in a 2011 interview. “He was the OU.”

Growing up in an Orthodox family in Chicago and earning his rabbinical ordination from the Telshe Yeshiva, Rabbi Goldzweig was a self-made expert in all aspects of the kosher food industry, starting as an OU Kosher RFR in an era when kashrut standards were lower than they are today. “The public didn’t know about ingredients in those days. As long as the ingredients panel didn’t list lard, everybody [in other words, people who cared about adhering to a kosher diet] thought it was fine,” he would say.

The rabbi would typically receive his week’s assignment on a Sunday morning. By that evening he was on

the road or in the air (he reportedly accumulated hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles, which he donated to indigent travelers). With few exceptions, he was back with his family in time for Shabbat.

In far-flung international venues, where bearded, black-hatted Orthodox Jews were a rare sight, Rabbi Goldzweig found himself explaining the intricacies of kashrut and the fundamentals of Judaism. When the personnel at one plant failed to understand that a rabbi does not render food kosher by “blessing” it, Rabbi Goldzweig rested his hands on the walls of the building and blessed the company.

To his serious kashrut dedication, the rabbi brought an open, optimistic personality. He was noted for the personal relationships he built with non-Jewish plant managers and other personnel, often bringing them a salami—kosher, of course—or chocolates, or a bottle of wine, as an

ice-breaking gift. “He won them over,” says Rabbi Nisenbaum. “And they trusted him.”

He also had a wry sense of humor. A woman called him one day in the weeks before Pesach and asked if her husband could take a certain medicine, which contained chametz, during the yom tov. “Well, that depends,” replied Rabbi Goldzweig. “Do you want him to die?” The woman got the message; her husband took the medicine.

Once, while shopping in a Chicago supermarket with his son, he picked up a product to look at the ingredients. A woman who did not recognize him ran over. “Rabbi Goldzweig said you’re not supposed to use that item!” To avoid embarrassing her, he did not identify himself. He put down the item and walked to the next aisle. “At least,” he said, “I know people are listening to me.”

Rabbi Chaim Yisroel Belsky zt”l

By Rabbi Menachem Genack

The Rambam writes about the Ri Migash that “his intellect, in its knowledge of the entire Talmud, was frightening.”

Rav Chaim Yisroel Belsky, too, had a frightening intellect, which included not only knowledge of kol haTorah kulah but also the scientific and mathematical background necessary to understand the Torah and to apply halachah to reality. (For a while, he even taught mathematics at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas.)

Rav Belsky, who served as a halachic advisor to OU Kosher for nearly thirty years, was the nexus between theoretical, abstract knowledge and practical, applied knowledge. He didn’t just know Shas, he was a mohel; he wasn’t only a master of the halachot as written, he also knew how to shecht (slaughter animals) and perform nikkur (the process of making an animal kosher by removing the cheilev, forbidden fats, and the gid hanasheh, sciatic nerve). In fact, during the summer months, Rav Belsky would bring boys from Camp Agudah to a plant in Goshen, New York, to show them how nikkur is performed on a deer.

Rav Belsky had a scientific inclination and a curious mind, both of which led him on a constant search for truth. If we were dealing with a she’eilah regarding bitul b’shishim, he would effortlessly calculate the volume of room-sized containers. (Bitul b’shishim applies when a non-kosher food gets mixed into a kosher food; in many cases, if it’s less than one sixtieth of the portion, it can be considered nullified.)

The OU was once dealing with a complicated she’eilah regarding a tank of oil imported from Asia. Rav Belsky bravely climbed a tall, narrow ladder to peer into the tank of oil and calculate its properties! When the highly controversial issue arose regarding the permissibility of certain types of fish that are often infested with worms, Rav Belsky’s knowledge, along with the kabbalah he had received from his rebbeim, lent him the confidence to permit the continued ingestion of fish. Rav Belsky posited that the anisaki worms migrated from the flesh of the fish to its gut and therefore did not render the fish unkosher. He cited an earlier conversation he had had with Rav Moshe Feinstein in which Rav Moshe had said, “It is permitted, and the halachah is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be written.” Rav Belsky’s conclusion was scientifically borne out by scientists at New York City’s Museum of Natural History employing the latest technology of DNA barcoding analysis using DNA sequencing with capillary electrophoresis.

Steve Lipman, who lives in New York, is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.

As always, in the face of opposition, he stood for the truth as he saw it. Absent his courage and knowledge, we wouldn’t be eating fish today.

But in addition to Rav Belsky’s knowledge, what was unique about him was his concern for the most forlorn elements of society. In his combination of towering intellect with a capacious heart, Rav Belsky followed the model of Rav Chaim Brisker, zt”l. Rav Chaim was the greatest mind of his era, who single-handedly revolutionized Torah study with his analytical method. Yet, as my rebbi, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, described him, Rav Chaim was the paramount ish hachesed: his home was open to those rejected by everyone else, the poor and the sick but also the mother who gave birth out of wedlock, for whom Rav Chaim found a wetnurse. Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan asked a number of rabbanim to describe the essence of the job of a rabbi. The Aruch Hashulchan answered that the job of a rav is to pasken she’eilot. Rav Chaim Brisker responded: to do chesed. When Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, Rav Chaim’s son, first entered the rabbinate, his father told him two things: one, to rule that one who is considered ill from a halachic point of view and must eat on Yom Kippur may eat a full shiur; and two, to remember that the job of a rav is to care for widows and orphans. Indeed, on Rav Chaim’s epitaph, the words inscribed are “Rav Hachesed.”

This was Rav Belsky. He, too, fought heroically for the underdog, the lonely, the embattled, those for whom no one else would care. He put his reputation on the line, time and again, to stand up for what he felt was right. Whenever he was aware of an agunah situation, he would take the lead in trying to help. With the wave of Jewish immigration from the Former Soviet Union to the US, Rav Belsky learned Russian on his own in order to be able to communicate with those who had been cut off from their religion for so long. He was the advocate for Russian Jewry, for the homeless and impoverished, and for those he felt were innocent. He always stood his ground in the pursuit of justice.

There is a story told about the Beit Halevi. As a little child, he was deathly

ill with diphtheria; the family didn’t think he would survive. Then, suddenly, his fever broke and he was on the way to recovery.

The Beit HaLevi once explained his miraculous recovery. As a child, he had a melamed who favored the students from wealthy families over the poor ones. One day, there was a bit of a ruckus in the classroom, and the rebbi blamed a poor orphan named Dudele. The rebbi hit the young boy as a punishment even though he was completely innocent. The Beit Halevi, who was a student in the class at the time, stood up and said, “I will not learn in the class of a person who is me’aneh yetomim [causes orphans pain].” He left and never came back. From that point on, he learned with his father.

The Beit HaLevi related that when he was deathly ill, he had a dream. The malach hamavet was just about to grab onto him, when Dudele’s father suddenly appeared and stood between the angel of death and the young Beit HaLevi and declared, “This boy stood up for my son.” And the malach hamavet disappeared. At that moment, the Beit HaLevi said, the fever broke.

That was Rav Belsky. He stood up for the most forlorn people in the Jewish

community, people who everybody gave up on, and he did it at enormous risk. He wasn’t necessarily always right, but he did it because he loved truth. He was willing to fight for what he felt was right—regardless of popular opinion. Once, standing in the OU office, whose windows overlooked the Statue of Liberty, he wistfully remarked, “I can swim from here to the Statue and back.” He was a powerful swimmer who never hesitated to swim against the current.

Rav Belsky once related that when one of his younger children was born, the doctor asked, “Why do you have so many children?” To which Rav Belsky replied on the spot, “We Jews are an endangered species!”

Rav Chaim Yisroel Belsky was truly an endangered species; he was sui generis Mi yiten lanu temuraso? He is indeed irreplaceable.

Rabbi Menachem Genack is CEO, OU Kosher. This essay was adapted from an article entitled “HaGaon HaRav Chaim Yisroel Belsky, zt”l: An Appreciation” that first appeared in the Yated Ne’eman

Rabbi Belsky (right) speaking with OU Kosher Posek Rabbi Hershel Schachter at an OU Kosher conference. Photo: Gifter Photos

From Our Archives

A Collection of Ads from the Past & Present

1. OU National Convention program, 1927. Courtesy of Yeshiva University Archives 2. Jewish Life, 1949. 3. “The Orthodox Union” Passover issue, 1942. Note the OU’s original logo on the bottom right of the ad. 4. Jewish Life, 1962. 5. Ibid., 1971. 6. Ibid., 1973. 7. Jewish Action, 1986. 8. Ibid., 1989. 9. Ibid., 1992. 10. Ibid., 1992. 11. Ibid., 2000. 12. Ibid., 2006. 13. Ibid., 2007. 14. Ibid., 2013. 15. Ibid., 2021.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD:

Trends

Special thanks to the following OU Kosher rabbinic coordinators for helping to prepare this article: Rabbi Dovid Bistricer, Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman, Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, Rabbi Nosson Neuberger, Rabbi Gavriel Price, Rabbi Daniel Sharratt, Rabbi Mordechai Stareshefsky, Rabbi Avrohom Stone and Rabbi Shimon Yoffe.

that are shaping the kashrut of tomorrow

Digitalization and What It Means for Kashrut

By JA Staff

We live in a world where it seems as if practically everything is going high tech. Many of us communicate with our smartphones, check our video doorbells to see who is on the porch, and have fallen in love with the convenience of futuristic appliances that let us preheat our ovens and turn on our air conditioners from afar. Digitalization (which simply means using a host of new digital technologies) can be a game changer, so it should come as no surprise that a growing number of manufacturing plants have made the leap into digitalization as well, creating new realities in the world of kashrut supervision.

“More and more food companies are moving in this direction,” explains Rabbi Yitzchak Friedman, a veteran OU Kosher rabbinic field representative (RFR). “They are increasingly interested in taking advantage of the unique benefits of digitalization.”

Leveraging existing technology can help factories increase their efficiency and quality in multiple ways. In addition to creating a system of meticulous cyber record-keeping, computer-automated production circumvents the potential for human error. Smart technologies record useful data, which simplify inspections for mashgichim while the many reports generated streamline kosher inspections Mobile barcoding is another useful tool, allowing for real-time inventory tracking through

traceability software that closely monitors every ingredient in the plant. Traditionally, one of the biggest areas of concern for a mashgiach was what raw materials might be located in a company’s warehouse. A mashgiach would walk up and down the aisles to verify that only items appearing on the list of approved ingredients were being used in kosher production. But factories that have turned toward digitalization function very differently, explains Rabbi Gavriel Price, an RC for the flavors industry.

“Everything is controlled by software— what is coming in, what is permitted to come in, where it gets put in the warehouse, how much of an ingredient there is and even when and where it is being used,” says Rabbi Price. “Everything needs to be approved, and the systems are regulated intensely and rigorously.”

Some advanced food companies that have gone digital connect all of their systems via one platform. In other words, everything from recipe formulation to quality control to product packaging becomes interconnected. Having all machines and processes integrated can be especially helpful to mashgichim Rabbi Friedman recalls one incident where a large company received a shipment of an ingredient that contained non-kosher grape juice. Upon discovery of the issue, it didn’t take more than twenty minutes to track down all the products containing that ingredient. They caught it in time, ensuring that those

products didn’t get into the kosher market. “This could have been a grave mishap, but the fact that the plant was a smart factory made all the difference,” says Rabbi Friedman.

Another facility under Rabbi Friedman’s watchful eye had just one supervisor signing off on a significant amount of equipment changeovers (steps required to use the equipment for a product of a different status; for example, a line running dairy would require an equipment changeover to run a pareve product), a situation that often led to errors. Appreciating that going high tech would eliminate those issues, Rabbi Friedman urged the company to take the leap into digitalization, which it ultimately did.

“I promised the quality control manager that if the plant went for an entire year without any discrepancies, I would throw them a breakfast,” says Rabbi Friedman. “They shifted to become a smart factory, and I was able to throw that breakfast for them several months ago. Due to smart technology, there were no more mistakes when the equipment was changed between runs.”

Other innovations in factories include having robots pull ingredients off shelves, which adds another layer of integrity to the process because only correctly barcoded items can be retrieved and scanned. One OU-certified beverage plant has an electronic sensor that adds a bittering agent to the recycled water used for pasteurization in order to ensure the water’s kashrut, as the company produces both pareve and dairy beverages. (The bittering agent makes the water undrinkable, thus nullifying any dairy that may be present so that pareve beverages retain their status.) Both the company and the OU are notified automatically if the level of bittering agent in the water drops below a certain threshhold. In other plants, retinal scanners are used to add an extra layer of security, ensuring that only authorized individuals can gain admission to those facilities.

It is important to note that computers are only as good as their programming and even ironclad protocols can

sometimes be circumvented. Rabbi Price received a phone call from a worker at one plant under his supervision who needed to add a minute amount of a particular ingredient that was out of inventory. Since the supplier would only sell a full drum of the item, an investment of several thousand dollars, the worker wanted to know if she could use a similar product from the company’s research and development area instead, explaining that she could circumvent the barcode controls by scanning the barcode from the ingredient that was normally used.

“She told me she wanted to check with me first,” said Rabbi Price. “It turned out to be fine, but it was a reminder that anyone could have made the swap.”

While digitalization may offer tremendous benefits in the world of kosher certification, mashgichim have to understand how to interpret the data the factories produce, and to remember that even when programmed correctly, technology isn’t infallible and is only as effective as the person who is operating it.

“There are many different pieces to the puzzle, and nothing can ever be assumed,” notes Rabbi Avrohom Stone,

an OU Kosher senior RFR. “A computer is great when you understand what is going on, but if not, it is as difficult as not having any computer at all. It is a tool, and the biggest mistake that people make is thinking that because something is automated, they don’t have to think about it.”

A growing number of manufacturing plants have made the leap into digitalization . . . creating new realities in the world of kashrut supervision.

Meet the New Meat: Plant- and Cell-Based Alternatives

By Merri Ukraincik

Two decades ago, the food industry heeded growing demand for new sources of sustainable protein and set out to identify substitutes to swap out the meat, chicken and fish on consumers’ dinner plates.

The motivations behind this thrust for change are varied. There is ideology, for example, such as veganism, and concerns about the environmental impact of factory farming. Some take up clean eating for the health benefits. On a broader, non-consumer level, research into non-meat alternatives is part of an effort to tackle global issues of food accessibility and affordability, as well as obesity and hunger.

Today, the alternative meat movement is booming. But fear not. These are not the mushy veggie burgers of yore, a patty assembled from mashed canned green beans or peas.

Startups and well-established companies are now offering a menu of flavorful, affordable options—many of them kosher—that mimic the taste-totexture experience of eating the real thing. Plant-based hamburger patties are changing the culinary landscape. Burger joints offer them. Gourmet chefs elevate them to high-end cuisine. Cellbased meat, however, which originates with a live animal, has not yet become widely available commercially.

To be clear, alternative meat— whether plant based or cell based— begins in a lab, not a kitchen. Both options are as much about technology

as they are about cookery. Both have kashrut implications. And both have the goal of redrawing the picture of how humans eat.

Building an Alternative Burger

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO, OU Kosher, says that most plant-based alternative meat products are “pareve, and therefore, relatively straightforward from a halachic perspective.”

But how does a company go about building an alternative burger?

According to Rabbi Nosson Neuberger, an OU Kosher RC who oversees supervision at several ingredient companies, the process begins with the same genetic modification used in thousands of other products.

“The possibilities of genetic modification are endless,” Rabbi Neuberger observes. “If you take the right organism, tweak its DNA and give it the right feedstock, you can have it produce virtually whatever natural chemical you want.”

Here’s a classic example of how genetic modification (GMO) works:

Let’s say a company decides it wants to produce raspberry flavoring. Researchers isolate the specific gene in the DNA of a raspberry that instructs for raspberry flavor. It then inserts that gene into the gene sequence of a yeast cell, enabling it to produce raspberry flavor. Once there is a sufficient quantity of yeast cells producing it, voila!—the

company has the capacity to produce raspberry flavor on an industrial scale. The final product—a syrup, for example—will have a raspberry taste, though no actual raspberries will have been used in its manufacture.

“We at the OU, through our broad window into the food ingredients industry, see this kind of process being pursued now in a large spectrum of ingredients, from orange flavors to sweeteners to non-dairy whey protein,” says Rabbi Gavriel Price, an RC for the flavors industry. “In each of these cases, the companies producing the ingredient are taking advantage of our knowledge of DNA and the industrial processes that essentially replicate the original plant or agricultural material.”

Almost the Real Thing

Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman, who set up Impossible Foods for certification in 2018, says that heme “is the substance that makes the company’s plant-based burger look and taste almost identical to the real thing without being the real thing.”

Impossible Foods researchers discovered that heme, which gives meat its iron-y, tasty flavor, is also found in soy plants. As in the raspberry example above, they replicate the gene, insert it into a yeast cell that, under very specific industrial conditions, divides and grows through fermentation. Ultimately, it produces enough heme for Impossible Foods to manufacture its Impossible Burger—a burger that contains neither soy nor meat.

An OU Kosher RC and regional director for Latin America, Rabbi Gutterman observes that it is a sign of the expanding market for alternative meat that one of Impossible Food’s biggest clients is Burger King. He also notes that Impossible Chicken is cooked on non-kosher equipment in a separate plant and is, therefore, not OU certified.

A quick point about Impossible Pork. Rabbi Genack points out that the OU chose not to proceed with certification because of the protracted debate surrounding it, not because it was an issue of kashrut. Rabbi Gutterman adds that Impossible Pork was immediately rejected by its halal certifier.

To be clear, alternative meat—whether plant based or cell based—begins

The OU currently certifies several plant-based meat products, among them Nestlé’s Sweet Earth brand’s Awesome Burger, Fazenda Futuro’s popular Futuro Burger in Brazil and ADM’s line of pea protein–based meats.

The New Beef

Cell-based meat—also known as cultivated, cultured, synthesized or clean meat—is, like its plant-based counterpart, also produced under lab conditions. But their stories diverge there.

When Rabbi Price first began to unpack the intricacies of meat cultivation, he was amazed. He explains that the process hinges on cell division, which can produce a multicellular organism when the right growth factors are present. This scientific discipline, called tissue engineering, has for decades supported innovations in medicine, like the grafting that allows tissue cells to regrow over a wound. Food companies have only more recently applied the same principles to develop edible tissue that is identical in cellular structure to meat. In the case of lab meat, companies start the process with muscle tissue from an animal—a cow, a chicken, or fish, for example—and then under very specific conditions allow the cells in that tissue to essentially “grow” through cell division. The original muscle tissue can, under these controlled circumstances, yield a significant amount of meat.

Rabbi Price points out that “this ‘meat’ is essentially just a mass of cells. There’s no fat, no sinew, no blood. It lacks the taste and texture of real meat, though it has the potential to be crafted with the right flavoring and know-how.”

Merri Ukraincik has written for the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, Hevria, the Wisdom Daily, Tablet and other publications, including Jewish Action. She is the author of I Live. Send Help, a history of the Joint Distribution Committee.

“The possibilities of genetic modification are endless,” Rabbi Nosson Neuberger observes. “If you take the right organism, tweak its DNA and give it the right feedstock, you can have it produce virtually whatever natural chemical you want.” Courtesy of Impossible Foods, Inc.

From a technological perspective, there is no precedent for this, so OU Kosher has been consulting with its posekim over a multitude of fascinating halachic questions. For example, the process can begin with something akin to a biopsy from a live animal. According to Rabbi Genack, they would then have to decide whether this qualifies as eiver min hachai (eating a limb from a live animal). Similarly, OU posekim need to determine: Is the final product pareve? Is it fleishig?

When the product originates with actual tissue from an animal, bird or fish, the OU has taken the position that the identity of that tissue would

carry through to the final product. For that reason, it has stipulated that if a company were interested in developing, for example, a beef product, the original muscle tissue must be obtained from a kosher-slaughtered animal and the process must be performed under OU supervision.

The very first lab-to-table hamburger, which consisted of tens of billions of lab-grown cells, was served in London amid great hoopla in 2013. As reported by Reuters, the 250,000-Euro price tag was underwritten by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

For now, however, wide-scale commercialization of cultured meat

in a lab, not a kitchen.

is on the distant horizon. Production costs remain prohibitive, and science cannot yet produce that kind of volume. Singapore is currently the only country where lab-grown chicken is available on a restaurant menu.

Still, investors continue to bank on cultivated meat as the food of the future. According to the Cellular Agriculture Investment Landscape Report, it took five years to reach the $1 billion investment milestone in 2020, an amount that already doubled by 2021.

There’s Cellular Fish, Too

Dr. Aryé Elfenbein, a cell biologist and cardiologist based in California’s Bay Area, is the co-founder of Wildtype, a cellular agriculture company that produces clean salmon. He spent time with Rabbi Price to elucidate the process of developing cell-cultured fish, which parallels that of cultivating meat.

Everything Wildtype produces originates from the cells harvested from one salmon three and a half years ago. The results are pieces of sashimi, just muscle and fat, which is what you’d get with an order of sushi. “We only grow the parts of the fish that we eat. We don’t produce a whole fish with fins,” Dr. Elfenbein explains. There is zero waste, while about 40 percent of a whole salmon is discarded. Plus, it’s free of mercury, antibiotics, pathogens and microplastics. It is not vegan, however, and anyone with a fish allergy is cautioned not to partake.

While a graduate student in Japan, Dr. Elfenbein became interested in how the heart muscle repairs itself after a heart attack. He was also intrigued by a groundbreaking discovery that stem cells could be created from skin cells, obviating the ethical challenges of gathering them from embryos.

It got him thinking. “We could use our understanding of how cells grow to address myriad problems, including the increasing challenges of sustainability and pervasive contamination of our seafood supply,” he reflected. Together with his Wildtype co-founder Justin Kolbeck, he applied some of the latest medical technologies to alter the paradigm of how we produce seafood, adding that “neither wild-caught nor farmed fish can catch up with worldwide demand. We need a new source.”

Wildtype now awaits word from the FDA to tip the scales into the mainstream market. It already has agreements with several retailers that will move forward once the FDA approval goes through.

Cost remains a hurdle, however. When the company launched about five years ago, the per-pound price was $400,000. They’ve gotten it down to $40–$50 for two pieces of nigiri—still beyond the reach of most consumers. But Dr. Elfenbein’s ambition is to achieve price parity in the coming years. He also envisions a future in which folks might be able to cultivate their own salmon at home.

“Who knows? Maybe cell-cultured fish will become the new bread maker,” he says.

As my father planted for me, so will I plant for others…

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Don’t Let It Bug You

By Barbara Bensoussan

Eat six servings of fruit and vegetables a day!” repeat nutritionists, and our appetite for produce has expanded in response. But consumers don’t just want more produce. They want produce that uses minimal pesticides, is attractive and tasty, and is free of infestation. For the kosher consumer, however, being able to purchase produce that is free of infestation is critical, as the Torah strictly prohibits the consumption of insects.

Fortunately, new solutions for growing insect-free produce are emerging through technological advances. Innovative techniques for growing plants, as well as new surveillance technologies, are now helping farmers produce crops that are cleaner, free of bugs and pesticides, and can be grown anywhere, lessening the distance to markets.

In the Field

It would seem obvious that traditional farms, which are exposed to the elements, would be the most vulnerable to insect infestation and the vicissitudes of climate. But that isn’t always the case.

“An outdoor field can be completely clean, especially in cold climates,” says OU RC Rabbi Dovid Bistricer, who specializes in produce, among other areas. “Or you can have one section of a field that’s fine, while the rest is infested.”

Rabbi Shimon Yoffe, an OU RFR, says he’s seen fields located just a few minutes’ drive from each other where one is infested and the other is not.

When Rabbi Yoffe goes out to the fields to check produce for infestation, he takes baskets from each field to sample (each field can produce hundreds of pounds of produce). If the sample basket is clean, chances are high the entire field is clean. Rabbi Bistricer worked closely with Dr. Bruce Bukiet, an associate professor of mathematical sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, who helped the OU devise statistical models to predict with over 90 percent-or-more accuracy whether a field’s harvest of herbs is less than ten percent infested (the halachic limit for acceptability).

Some forms of produce can be industrially washed to effectively clean off bugs, although that technique is generally used with vegetables that are frozen. “Some foods, like raspberries, turn to mush if you wash them,” notes OU RC Rabbi Daniel Sharratt. “The advantage of freezing is that vegetables from faraway places like China last longer.”

The US government limits the use of pesticides and will even refuse produce from overseas that’s been too heavily sprayed. (Incidentally, the US government’s tolerance rate for insects on US-grown vegetables is “very high,” says Rabbi Yoffe, a lot higher than pesticide allowances.) When chemical solutions to pests are insufficient, natural solutions can save the day. For example, farmers sometimes combat aphid infestation with other insects. Rabbi Yoffe explains that farmers buy “beneficial pests,” such as ladybugs, in packs of 100,000 (the cost

runs about $180 for 50,000 ladybugs), which they release over their fields. The little critters gobble the aphids in short order. When they’re done, the ladybugs can be attracted into a cage or washed off the produce.

Sometimes, even seeds create problems. “You can find insect eggs in seeds,” Rabbi Yoffe says. “That happened about eighteen years ago in fields near the Canadian border with swede midges. It was a huge job to get rid of them.” Some insect eggs are so tiny they’re not a halachic problem—eggs in flour, for example. But if a product made with them is left in a warm place too long—think of a box of pasta in a warm kitchen—they may later hatch into worms (definitely a problem).

Once produce is gathered, cameras are used industrially to check for impurities. Some factories have as many as fifty camera “eyes” surveying the produce rolling down the conveyor belts, searching for anything that looks different from the peas, corn kernels, beans and such, en route for packaging. If the cameras detect anything divergent, such as a pebble or stick, the belt opens up to let the offending piece fall through. But Rabbi Sharratt, who at one point owned and operated a kosher fresh-vegetable company, warns that those cameras are not effective for catching every problem. They may fail, for example, to detect bugs that are the same color as the vegetables.

Climate Control

While outdoor farming is subject to variables such as drought, storms, frost, insects and predators, greenhouses— in which plants are grown in pots or raised beds ensure greater control in protecting crops.

While greenhouses are more protected from the elements, and presumably from pests as well, the actual outcome depends on how carefully they’re sealed and on the quality of the soil and seeds. “There can be breaches in a greenhouse’s netting or windows, or bugs in the soil,” Rabbi Bistricer warns. A well-sealed greenhouse would be like one that Rabbi Yoffe visits in North Carolina,

Innovative farming techniques are producing crops that are cleaner, healthier and best of all, largely bug-free.

Courtesy of Aerofarms/Wilson Gibbons

Hydroponic farming, used in both greenhouses and vertical farms, is great for some crops, like lettuces, and less effective for others (think strawberries).

Hydroponic vegetables generally suffer less infestation from aphids and thrips. “The plants sometimes do get flies,” Rabbi Bistricer says, “but they’re easier to see and wash off.” One OU client grows over sixty varieties of microgreens that are so clean no checking is required.

There has been discussion as to whether hydroponically grown produce requires the berachah of Ha’adamah or not, since it doesn’t grow in the ground. Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, zt”l, was of the opinion that if the same type of vegetable is commonly grown in the ground, the proper berachah to be recited is Ha’adamah, even when it is grown in an indoor setting. Nevertheless, since there are dissenting views, Rav Belsky thought it was proper to recite the berachot of Ha’adamah and Shehakol first on other food items instead.

While the indoor farming industry is still in its infancy, Rabbi Daniel Sharratt and others in the world of kosher certification believe it could bring about a real revolution for kosher consumers, whose options are limited when it comes to fresh produce because of infestation issues. Courtesy of Aerofarms/Wilson Gibbons

with double-zippered plastic doors at the entrance and a basin for dipping one’s feet at the entrance.

A more recent innovation in the world of farming, known as vertical or indoor farming, entails growing crops hydroponically (in nutrient-enriched water) or aeroponically (in a growth cloth substance and nourished with mist) in indoor structures with the plants placed on shelves under artificial LED lighting. Plants are stacked in vertical rows that sometimes reach twenty or thirty feet in height. Because vertical farms rely on technology to optimize growing conditions, they can be built almost anywhere—“even in a Manhattan basement,” Rabbi Sharratt says. While such farms are very expensive to build, they may be the wave of the future.

How does an indoor farm differ from a greenhouse? “Greenhouses use natural sunlight, while other indoor farming techniques don’t,” Rabbi Sharratt explains. “Indoor farms use an artificial lighting system and manipulate climate, temperature, humidity and even carbon dioxide levels.” Through scanners and artificial intelligence, growers have learned they can control indoor conditions to influence the growth process. “Based on the nutrients the growers give the plants, they can affect the taste of the product—more sweet, more bitter,” says Rabbi Sharratt. “If you hold back on water, making the plant ‘thirsty,’ some will flower faster, which benefits the growers of edible flowers.”

Interestingly, the indoor farming industry expanded when cannabis was legalized; recreational marijuana is so lucrative that much money was poured

into research and development of indoor farming to produce it.

Rabbi Sharratt points out that indoor farms reduce water use by 90 percent, which in California, with its frequent droughts, is critical. About 90 percent of the lettuce in the US is produced in Salinas, California, but being able to produce it more locally through indoor farming cuts down transportation emissions and ensures a fresher product. Indoor farms also use about half the amount of fertilizer and don’t need to use pesticides.

Surprisingly enough, however, pests can infiltrate even this kind of highly controlled environment, which would, of course, compromise the kosher status of the product.

How do bugs enter?

“There are three major ways,” Rabbi Sharratt explaines. “People themselves can unwittingly bring in bugs, pathogens or diseases, which is why most indoor farms have gowning procedures for employees (putting on

lab coats, et cetera) before entering the grow room. Additionally, pests can be dormant, hiding in the grow media (the mixtures of components, such as peat moss or sand, that provide water, air, nutrients and support to plants).”

Dormant pests can even be found in the seeds. “This is why most vertical farm companies are very particular about their seeds,” he says. “They don’t want to bring in pathogens. Many vertical farming companies will only purchase seeds that are tested and certified.”

As part of the process to determine if an indoor farm company can become OU certified, Rabbi Sharratt will look at the company’s standard operating procedures for biosecurity measures. He’ll ask: How robust are the procedures? Is there a gowning procedure before entering the grow room? What sort of filters are they using for the HVAC system? He also looks to see what kind of pest management program the company has in place, and he evaluates the risk

Mishkenot Yaakov (Rabbi Yaakov ben Aaron of Karlin, d. 1844) rules that fruits, vegetables or berries that are on average found to be infested at a rate of 10 percent or more always require checking beforehand. This 10 percent-or-higher probability of an unfavorable outcome is termed miut hamatzui. A less-than-10 percent likelihood of an unfavorable outcome is considered statistically and halachically insignificant in this area. Dr. Bruce Bukiet, professor of mathematical sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, used basic probability methods in order to determine the criterion the OU could use for vegetable checking. He created a progressive statistical model to determine a field's acceptability with an accuracy level greater than 90 percent. Dr. Bukiet wrote a series of reports and met with Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, zt”l, who approved the statistical sampling methods as OU policy.

By Rabbi Dovid Bistricer

Indoor farming can bring about a revolution for the kosher consumer. If it’s done correctly, the vegetables could be grown bug-free and won’t require washing.

Barbara Bensoussan is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action

factors of an outbreak. Finally, he will take samples and analyze whether or not the product is clean. “Even after certification, mashgichim need to check systems and controls and take samples in indoor farms,” he says.

What happens if an insect outbreak occurs? Many vertical farming companies will resort to buying “beneficial pests” such as the ladybugs mentioned earlier. “The challenge of getting rid of the beneficial pests depends on the type that was released,” says Rabbi Sharratt. “Some pests are genetically modified to east each other if there's nothing else left to eat. So, to some extent, they clean themselves up.”

Plant Intelligence

Even more intriguing are new technologies that pick up on plant communication. “Shlomo Hamelech was said to have understood the language of plants,” Rabbi Sharratt says. “Today we can actually pick up their signals by putting electrodes into them to monitor their electric currents, and we’re learning to decipher their signals.” For example, if a match is lit near a plant, the plant emits higher electrical

activity. When menaced by too much heat, cold or predators, plants emit chemical compounds that alert each other, and mount their own collective defense: they produce leaves or fruits that are more bitter, contain insectrepelling compounds, or are more hairy. There’s evidence that the roots of plants also emit chemicals that serve as messages to neighboring plants. Even plants of different species “talk” to each other.

Artificial intelligence is now being used to figure out how to read these messages and diagnose plant problems. Brown spots on a leaf can signal a variety of things: disease, rot or insects that suck the juices. The faster farmers can determine what the problems are, the better their yields will be.

Artificial intelligence is also being used for predicting climate events that affect crop yields. One company, for example, which grows soy and corn in South America and Africa, uses AI to create robust predictive models for climate. This allows farmers to be proactive when crop-threatening events like floods, droughts and pests are imminent.

Drones are another high-tech means of keeping an eye on the status of fields.

Rabbi Sharratt notes, “They can give great input about the condition of acres and acres of fields, with zero human labor involved.”

While the indoor farming industry is still in its infancy, Rabbi Sharratt and others in the world of kosher certification believe it has extraordinary potential for kosher consumers, whose options are limited when it comes to fresh produce because of infestation issues.

“Indoor farming can bring about a revolution for the kosher consumer. If it’s done correctly, the vegetables could be grown bug-free and won’t require washing,” says Rabbi Sharratt. “Today most produce that is ‘prechecked’ for insects generally goes through an intense washing system, but when produce is washed so intensely, the quality of the product often suffers. Fragile produce like basil, for example, can’t be pre-washed in this manner.

“In a few years, we are going to finally have fresh raspberries and blackberries that we can eat,” he says. “As the industry grows, this will open up whole new possibilities for kosher consumers.”

Vertical farming is expected to grow to $9.7 billion worldwide by 2026, from $3.1 billion in 2021, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com, a data analysis firm. nytimes.com/2022/04/06/business/vertical-farms-food.html

The Technology Behind OU Kosher

By Rachel Schwartzberg

There is no better way to demon strate how sophisticated the field of kashrut has become than to consider the technology behind OU Kosher.

One critical component of OU Kosher’s cutting-edge technology platform is the Ingredient Approval Registry, which keeps track of approved ingredients used in manufacturing food products. “This includes some 1.3 million products that are OU certified, and roughly another one million that are certified by other agencies whose standards we trust,” explains Miriam Greenman, chief information officer for the OU.

“It isn’t only retail consumers who rely on us, the world’s largest kashrut agency, for OU-certified products; food industry companies and even other kashrut agencies the world over also de pend on the OU,” says Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO, OU Kosher.

Thousands of OU clients enjoy the ac cessibility of OU Kosher’s customer por tal known as OUDirect, cumulatively using the site approximately one million times each month. “Our client portal is a game changer, empowering com panies to easily manage their kosher

program online at their convenience,” says Greenman. “With just a few clicks, OU clients can change ingredients in a product, submit new products, print kashrut certificates or simply pay an in voice. Easy access to our large Univeral Kosher Database helps companies find acceptable ingredient sources that the OU or partner agencies have already approved.” For example, if a factory needs to add or replace an emulsifier in a product, its staff can easily find an OU-approved option. This allows for a streamlined approval process so they can begin using the ingredient with out jeopardizing their kosher status or interrupting production. Using already approved ingredients expedites a prod uct’s release to the market.

“OUDirect’s client portal helps with customer management of their kosher program any time of day or night,” notes Rabbi Moshe Zywica, OU Kosher executive rabbinic coordinator (RC). “In our fast-paced global business world, accurate, up-to-date information is essential.”

“Years ago, every kosher certification agency managed its information inde pendently,” says Rabbi Avraham Juravel, OU Kosher’s RC for technical ser vices. “Every customer had to provide kosher certificates for each ingredient they wanted to use in an OU-certified product. This was a long and tedious process.” Today, with participation and additions by the major kosher agen

cies, OU personnel and clients have access to current information for over 2.4 million kosher-approved products and ingredients.

Tech with a Mission

At the core of OU Kosher are the more than 850 rabbinic field representatives (RFRs), the largely unsung heroes who are charged with conducting site inspec tions in plants all over the world.

OUDirect enables RFRs to easily track their plant assignments, plan their site visits and conduct inspec tions. Gone are the days when an RFR would have to print reams of paper before visiting a facility. Armed with a mobile device, RFRs can now use the mobile-friendly website to complete their inspection reports in real time, answering the questions and annotat ing relevant information as they move through a plant. Every RFR also has access to the products and ingredients of each company he is inspecting, and can manage updates that surface during the inspection as well.

“Kosher certification technology is a journey,” says Greenman. “As technolo gy in general becomes more complex and nuanced, we have to stay ahead of the curve in terms of both systems and security. Our goal is to use technology to help our clients and our team, and of course, to ultimately help the kosher consumer find kosher products wherever they may be.”

Rachel Schwartzberg is a writer and editor who lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.

THE CHEF’S TABLE

Warming Foods for the Wintry Soul

By Naomi Ross

Gloves, hats and boots have all made their way to the front of my hall closet. Like little soldiers lined up before battle, they’re at the ready for a cold winter. For me, staying out of the cold and minimizing shopping trips becomes a priority. As such, my pantry and fridge also hunker down for the long hibernation, with pantry staples and the best of whatever produce is available in the wintertime. Warming, homey foods to serve up for dinner or share with friends and family are always much appreciated. Our bodies crave “comfort foods” during these cold months, even better when they are nourishing, too

Enjoy the following recipes, bound to satisfy your winter cravings, from my new book The Giving Table, published and reprinted with permission from Menucha Publishers. Now available in bookstores or online!

Triple Mushroom, Meat, And Barley Soup Yields 12 servings

While this soup can be made with only white mushrooms, I’ve found that a combination of mushroom varieties—both fresh and dried—will add significantly more depth of flavor. Cremini and/or any wild mushrooms are wonderful choices, in addition to white mushrooms.

Naomi Ross is a cooking instructor and food writer based in Woodmere, New York. She teaches classes throughout the country and writes articles connecting good cooking and Jewish inspiration.

4 cups dried porcini or wild mushrooms

1½ 2 pounds beef flanken, cut into 6 8 pieces

1 beef bone

3 quarts (12 cups) water

2 medium onions, chopped 2 large stalks celery, sliced 2 large carrots, peeled and diced

3 large cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)

2 pounds (32 ounces) fresh mushrooms (mixed varieties: white, cremini, oyster, et cetera), roughly chopped or thinly sliced

1 cup pearled barley

1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1 cup chopped parsley, for garnishing

Soak dried mushrooms in hot water to cover for 15 20 minutes. Strain mushrooms in a sieve, reserving the water. Coarsely chop dried mushrooms; set aside.

Place flanken, beef bone and 3 quarts water in a large soup pot (at least 8-quart) over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and skim off the foam that rises to the surface.

After all the impurities have been removed, add vegetables, garlic, fresh mushrooms, barley, salt, chopped dried mushrooms and reserved mushroom water. Stir soup and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer partially covered for 1½ 2 hours, or until flanken are very tender and soup is slightly thickened. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper and more salt if needed. If soup is too thick, adjust consistency by adding a little additional water.

Ladle soup into bowls, giving each serving a generous portion of the flanken. Garnish with a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

Chef’s Note: Use your food processor to help with chopping or slicing; using the pulse button will give you the best control to get the size you want.

Roasted Garlic Za’atar Chicken Yields 4–6 servings

A wicked roasted garlic spread smeared under the skin boosts the flavor while preventing the chicken from drying out. Any leftover spread is a terrific accoutrement on challah or toast—our favorite roasted garlic dip!

6 whole heads garlic 4–7 tablespoons olive oil, divided, plus more as needed 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste 1½ teaspoons za’atar spice, plus more for sprinkling Freshly ground black pepper

8 chicken thighs

Preheat oven to 350°F. Working with each garlic head, peel away the excess outer layers of paper, being careful to keep the garlic heads intact. You should now have very lean-looking garlic heads. Slice approximately 1/8to ¼-inch off the top of each head so that the tops of the individual cloves are exposed.

Place the garlic heads on a large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Drizzle 1 2 tablespoons oil liberally over the top of the cut garlic heads. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon kosher salt over the heads.

Triple Mushroom, Meat, And Barley Soup

Photos: Baila Gluck

Wrap tightly with foil like a crimped package. Bake for 1 hour or until garlic cloves are golden and soft when pierced with the tip of a knife. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Working over the bowl of a food processor fitted with an S blade, carefully squeeze each garlic clove out of its peel into the bowl—gloves are a plus for this messy job! Repeat with all garlic heads.

Add 2 3 tablespoons olive oil and 1½ teaspoons za’atar spice. Process until mixture is smooth, adding more oil to thin as needed. Season to taste with salt and pepper, or more za’atar if desired. Scrape paste into a small bowl and set aside. Raise oven temperature to 400°F.

Rinse chicken and pat dry. Gently run your fingers underneath the skin, creating a pocket of space. Spoon 1 2 teaspoons garlic spread under the skin; press skin down over spread, smoothing out to distribute spread. Repeat with remaining chicken thighs; transfer them to a roasting pan.

Rub skin with 1 2 tablespoons olive oil. Generously sprinkle thighs with za’atar spice and black pepper; lightly sprinkle with salt. Roast uncovered for 1 hour, until skin is nicely browned and crisp.

Chef’s Note: Garlic spread can be prepared up to one week ahead. Double and use some as a dip!

Winter Citrus Fruit Salad

Yields 4 servings

Wonderfully refreshing and beautiful to the eye, this is an impressive upgrade from a sectioned grapefruit as an appetizer. It’s also delicious served over Greek or coconut yogurt for a healthful breakfast or brunch!

2 ruby red grapefruits

3 large navel oranges

2 cups pomegranate seeds (about 1/3 pomegranate)

2 tablespoons flaked coconut ½ teaspoon grated lime zest (from about ½ a lime)

Juice of 1 lime

Juice of ½ lemon

3–4 teaspoons honey, or more to taste (depending on the sweetness of the fruit)

1/8–¼ teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons triple sec or orange-flavored liqueur

1–2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger

Cut off the polar ends of the grapefruits with a sharp serrated knife. Following the curvature of the fruit, slice the peel off, being careful not to cut away too much fruit. Trim away the white pith.

With a gentle sawing motion, make incisions along each membrane, only going as far as the center of the fruit. Working over a large bowl, gently release the grapefruit sections into the bowl. (You will be left with the empty membranes in your hand; discard.)

Repeat the same process with the oranges, adding the orange segments to the bowl.

Add the pomegranate seeds and coconut.

In a small bowl, combine lime zest, lime and lemon juices, honey, cinnamon and liqueur. Whisk until well blended. Pour this mixture over the segments; mix to blend. Set aside to marinate for 10 15 minutes. Spoon into dessert cups and top with a little sprinkling of chopped crystallized ginger. Serve and enjoy!

Chef’s Note: This salad has gorgeous color contrasts. For an even bolder look, replace some navel orange with blood orange.

Chocolate Gingerbread Thumbprints

Yields 4 dozen cookies

This spiced cookie has all of winter’s warmest spices, infusing intense gingerbread flavor through and through. My favorite time of year to make these is the week after Thanksgiving when we have some cranberry sauce lying around. Its sweet and tart flavor is the perfect counterbalance to chocolate and ginger.

2½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup Dutch cocoa

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup unsalted butter or margarine (1½ sticks), room temperature

½ cup light brown sugar

½ cup sugar

½ cup molasses

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 can whole-berry cranberry sauce

3 ounces bittersweet baking chocolate, chopped (about ½ cup)

Combine flour, cocoa, spices, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl; whisk together until well combined.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter (or margarine) and sugars together for 1 2 minutes until a fluffy paste forms. Add the molasses, egg and vanilla; mix until well combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Slowly add the flour mixture and blend until just combined. Cover and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour, or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls; place on prepared sheet pans, spaced 1 2 inches apart. Using your thumb (or back of measuring spoon), press down into the center of each cookie to make a deep well in the cookie. Fill each cookie with one teaspoon of cranberry sauce.

Bake the cookies for about 10 12 minutes, until edges are set and the cookies begin to crack slightly. Remove cookies from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Melt chopped chocolate in a small microwaveable bowl, stirring at 30-second intervals until melted and smooth (or melt over a double boiler). Lightly drizzle chocolate over cookies; let stand until chocolate sets.

Chef’s Note: Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks, though thumbprints are best eaten within the first week; freeze for up to three months.

Roasted Garlic Za’atar Chicken

OU Press

The Light That Unites: A Chanukah Companion

Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider’s engaging illumination of this beloved holiday, accompanied by Aitana Perlmutter’s original artwork, offers a teaching for each candle of Chanukah and a new appreciation for the light of Chanukah’s message.

I Believe: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

Rabbi Sacks’ I Believe, the final cycle of Covenant & Conversation essays written before his untimely passing, gives us a personal and intimate demonstration of how he came to see the world through listening attentively to the Torah and its message for the present and for all times.

The Akeidah: The Epic Confrontation of Din and Rachamim

With his close analysis of the Biblical text as well as an impressive array of commentators, Michael Kaiser reveals a creative and original interpretation of this haunting saga of faith which has intrigued the world for millennia.

Beurei HaTefillah: A Guide to Jewish Prayer

Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth was a legendary teacher at the Maimonides School in Brookline. This expanded and revised edition of his work makes his captivating teachings on the siddur available for all to experience. Edited by Rabbi Asher and Rashie Reichert.

The Covenant Kitchen: Food and Wine for the New Jewish Table

Acclaimed winemakers

Jeff and Jodie Morgan take kosher dining to a new level of sophistication – the ultimate kosher cookbook for food-lovers, with detailed suggestions for wine pairing.

PROGRAMS OF THE ORTHODOX UNION

INSIDE OUthe

How Do You Learn?

By Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph

As the excitement recedes from the recent Chanukat Habayit for our new global headquarters at 40 Rector Street in Manhattan, and as we welcome the festival of Chanukah, I’ve been giving some thought to the root at the heart of those words, chet, nun, chof; lechanech: to educate, initiate, establish, dedicate. And this has led me to think about my own initiation, education, and experiencing of learning. Allow me to share my journey.

As early as I can remember, my curiosity led me to act first and seek to understand later. I jumped out of the crib at ten months, climbed on the stove and played with the knobs at fifteen months, dove off a seventeenfoot-high diving board at barely three years old, rode my bicycle down a steep hill into a wall at six, and so on. Although my mother wasn’t pleased by this search for sensory input and concrete experiences—often ending in emergency room visits—experiential learning has always been at the core of my educational process. In Thoreau’s framing, knowledge consists of physical learning like the “sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow.”

A shift in high school transformed my learning. Our teachers

endeavored to make us think, to get us to hypothesize and delve into the abstract, leaving me overwhelmed: how was I to learn to work with all of this new data? As Ken Robinson explains, education should be about helping the learner uncover passions and interests, while matching them with skills development to help students find their element. So I had to learn to care about it, to become an emotional learner, to experience it as a passion.

But from whence the passion for learning? There was the high school math teacher who would regale us with his stories; the history teacher with her animated retelling of events and stories of others; and, in the summer, NCSY counselors with their stories of inspiration. The constant throughout was my parents, their modeling of curiosity and love of learning, my father teaching from the pulpit and at the dining room table on Shabbat afternoon; my mother at the university rostrum, and successfully pursuing her doctorate after we were mostly already out of the house. It was my parents’ focus on us—on me—that resonated when I encountered two graduate students with a similar approach who led courses I took in college. These students spent time helping me find my own voice and story, my own history and philosophy.

Perhaps my parents’ encouragement informs my readiness, and possibly overeagerness, in sharing my own

stories in these pages and when I speak publicly. My hope is that it not seem self-focused or self-centered; rather, I wish to model the effect of their approach which prepared me for the deepest learning I would then engage in, with rebbeim and older chavrutot in yeshivah who added inspiration through words of Torah to the other elements of my learning approach. All of these aspects— experiential learning, curiosity for others’ stories, and the development of my own personal engagement with the material—led me to find my passion and to pursue supervisors, mentors and colleagues at work who possess the same approach and ability. I’ve been blessed for many years with an abundance of learning experiences thanks to them.

With that in mind, the last several months have afforded me the opportunity to “know” the OU by experiencing the OU—through its programs, as well as its people, be they laypeople, professionals,

HAPPENINGS

INTRODUCING The Global OU Headquarters

Celebrations for the OU's new office space at 40 Rector Street in

exclusively for OU Board Members. It concluded in early

members,

Continued from page 91 participants or community members. Just a small sampling includes:

- Spending Shabbat, together with my family, with 166 Yavneh leadership fellows from fifty-one university campuses;

- Joining Yachad’s IVDU schools for a training, where faculty and leadership engaged in professional development;

- Participating in OU Israel’s Shabbat Gibbush, a team-building weekend of learning and inspiration for all its Israel-based professionals;

- Recording a yearlong cycle in our All Parsha app on the writings of my father, z”l, based on the Netziv’s Haamek Davar. I feel

blessed to have accomplished this with the guidance and support of our All Torah team, and of course, our wonderful listeners.

I continue to grow through these and other experiences across the various programs and projects. Indeed, my ongoing experience at the OU consists of working with missionoriented, passionate professionals who are motivated to grow and learn and influence the diverse and expanding populations we serve. At the heart of this experience has been the mentorship, guidance, Torah and—perhaps best of all—the stories that our president, Moishe Bane, has shared with me over

the last few years of his six-year tenure, which will sadly soon reach its conclusion. His impact has been immeasurable, both for my own learning as well as for the direction of the OU, during his tenure and as we launch the organization forward. As Chanukah begins, may we utilize the opportunity to understand how we each learn so that we might rededicate and re-initiate ourselves into Torah learning. This, then, is how I learn. How about you? How do you learn?

downtown Manhattan began in late June with a Keviat Mezuzah Ceremony

September with a Chanukat Habayit celebration with lay leadership, Benefactor Circle

Board Members and community leaders. The Chanukat Habayit included an elegant reception; a tour of the two-floor premises; a performance of the Birkat Habayit tefillah by singers Rivie Schwebel and Yossi Sonnenblick; remarks by OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer, OU Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph, and OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane as well as a video presentation highlighting the work of each OU department.

AROUND THE OU By Sara Goldberg

Above: OU Kosher CEO Rabbi Menachem Genack affixing the mezuzah to the entrance of the new OU headquarters at the Keviat Mezuzah Ceremony in September. From left: Rabbi Genack; OU President Mark (Moishe) Bane; OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer; Chairman of the Board and Co-Chair of the Youth Commission Mitchel Aeder; OU Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph; and OU Kosher COO Rabbi Moshe Elefant. Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography

Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph is OU Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer.

Mr. Aeder (left) and OU Chief of Staff Yoni Cohen.

Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography

Teach NYS Co-Chair Cal Nathan (left) and Managing Director of Public Affairs Maury Litwack.

Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography

From left: Former OU President Steve Savitsky; Director of Donor Engagement and Board Liaison Hannah Farkas; and OU Senior Vice President Barbara Lehmann Siegel. Photo: Abbie Sophia Photography

Rabbi Dr. Joseph giving a tour of the premises at the Chanukat Habayit.

Photo: Ulrich Studios

Performers Rivie Schwebel (center) and Yossi Sonnenblick (right), accompanied by Shamshi Fried (left), sing the Birkat Habayit tefillah

Photo: Ulrich Studios

EMPOWERING WOMEN in Leadership

Continuing its founding mission to create women’s programming that supports leadership, personal and professional growth, and Torah study, the OU Women’s Initiative (WI) introduced the Foundations of Community Mental Health Support Fellowship in May. Geared to women leaders who serve on the front lines of Jewish communities—from rebbetzins to kallah teachers, Jewish outreach professionals and educators—the seven-week program, hosted on Zoom, provided education and tools to assist participants in caring for the spiritual, social, emotional and intellectual needs of the wide variety of individuals and families with whom they interact daily. This first-of-its-kind fellowship, which received nearly 100 applications for thirty slots, culminated in WI’s two-day, inperson inaugural conference at the end of July, attended by 120 women. Titled “Understanding Our Communities,”

and held in Stamford, Connecticut, the conference featured experts who presented on topics relating to contemporary communal challenges, many of which have been exacerbated in the wake of the pandemic and the current social and economic uncertainty. "There is no greater investment we can make than in the women who act as the first responders to critical issues facing individuals and families in our communities,” noted WI Director Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman. “The OU sees it as our responsibility to help women fill their toolbox with the resources and relationships that will assist them in supporting others with confidence and sensitivity.”

Above: Women in communal leadership roles networking at the WI’s “Understanding Our Communities” conference in July.

Building on the theme of Elul as a time of personal development and closeness to Hashem, in September, OU Torah launched “B'himatzo: Finding Hashem Through Prayer,” a program to enhance and elevate prayer. The program’s site includes a wide array of brand-new, short, digestible content on prayer from leading Torah personalities. On Tzom Gedaliah, a livestream event was held with OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer, Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, and Rabbi Moshe Weinberger.

“For us, a successful tefillah would be an experience where we feel like we were really standing in the presence of Hashem and communicating with Him, imbued with a sense that what I’m saying matters,” said Rabbi Hauer. Explore the offerings at outorah.org/tefillah.

Rabbi Hauer Appointed to DHS Faith-Based Security Advisory Council

In

“I am very grateful to be included in this important group advising Secretary Mayorkas on these critical issues,” said Rabbi Hauer. “The OU advocates for the security of Jewish and other

September, OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer was appointed by US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the agency’s Faith-Based Security Advisory Council (FBSAC). Rabbi Hauer is one of twenty-five members of the newly appointed FBSAC. The Advisory Council will provide advice to the Secretary on a range of homeland security matters, with a particular focus on protecting houses of worship, increasing access to DHS resources, and preventing and responding to acts of targeted violence.

faith-based communities on a daily basis, and this opportunity greatly amplifies our ability to do so.”

New NCSY Summer Programs in 2022

NCSY CHAI, a project of NCSY Israel, is an eighteen-day adventure for tenth through twelfth-grade boys. The camp was specifically designed for Israeli Anglo teens, who have few summer camp options. Located in Chispin in the Golan Heights, the inaugural program, held in July, gave campers the opportunity to connect to Torah, Eretz Yisrael and Am Yisrael in a fun and exciting environment. A parallel NCSY Chai program for girls will be launching for summer 2023. “NCSY Chai made my summer,” said fifteen-year-old Ometz Shmidman of Alon Shevut.

Pictured on right: Israeli-Anglo teens at Camp NCSY Chai.

CAMP IMPACT, formerly RTC, launched this past summer as a partnership between NCSY Summer and Camp Kaylie. The three-week program for fifth through ninth-grade boys, based in a New Jersey hotel, featured high-caliber sports, amazing trips and top-tier learning opportunities.

Pictured on right: Camp Impact campers with a group of Chassidic boys, who were part of a retreat sharing the New Jersey hotel on Camp Impact's final Shabbos, Shabbos Nachamu. "I wasn't sure how the two groups would mesh, but throughout Shabbos, some of the Chassidic men and boys joined us for learning and singing,” said Rabbi Avi Rosalimsky, Director of Camp Impact. “What greater nechamah could we possibly achieve after Tishah B’Av than having Jews from different backgrounds singing to Hashem together?”

More than 1,000 people joined the OU Israel Center in October for the fourth annual “Torah Yerushalayim,” a day of inspiration and learning in preparation for Yom Kippur. Held at the Hotel Ramada in Jerusalem, the program, in memory of David and Norma Fund, z”l , featured a blue-ribbon list of thirty rabbinic scholars, educators and Jewish communal leaders.

Seen here, OU Israel Executive Director Rabbi Avi Berman addresses attendees at Torah Yerushalayim.

Federal Programs Support Shuls, Schools and the Environment

A new federal grant program and a newly available tax deduction, both advanced in Congress by OU Advocacy, have the potential to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings to shuls, schools and other nonprofits around the country in 2023, while simultaneously lowering energy costs and emissions. Applications will be available in early 2023 for the Nonprofit Energy Efficiency Act, a Department of Energy program funded with $50 million to award grants to nonprofits to subsidize the purchase of the new energy system materials. The legislation for this program was crafted by OU Advocacy in partnership with Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) and incorporated into the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was signed into law by President Biden in November 2021. This past year, OU Advocacy worked with key Democratic allies—including Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—to amend an existing federal tax deduction supporting energy efficiency building upgrades (known as 179D deductions) so that it can be used by nonprofit entities when they upgrade their buildings. The law’s revision was included in the “Inflation Reduction Act” enacted in August 2022 and will enable nonprofits to use the deduction by making its value transferable to the contractor designing and installing the building upgrades. If the project yields a 25 percent improvement in energy efficiency, the shul or school will receive a credit worth fifty cents per square foot. The transferable tax credit is available for projects starting in January 2023, and the IRS is releasing guidance presently.

Photo: Chaim Tuito

.

PROMOTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Welcome to...

. . . Rabbi Yaakov Glasser, returning to the OU as Managing Director of Communal Engagement. In this role, Rabbi Glasser will work with the Executive Vice Presidents to build collaboration between the community-oriented departments, including Community Projects and Partnerships, Synagogue Initiatives, Torah Initiatives, Women’s Initiative, the Center for Communal Research, and the Impact Accelerator, creating a powerful synergy for all our community-focused efforts. Rabbi Glasser, known for his warmth, creativity and passion, has been the Rav of the Young Israel of Passaic-Clifton since 2005. He has extensive experience with the OU, previously serving as Regional Director of New Jersey NCSY and the NCSY International Director of Education. Most recently, Rabbi Glasser served with distinction as the Dean of Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future.

. . Rabbi Ezra Sarna, Director of Halacha Initiatives. Rabbi Sarna aims to solve halachic challenges that face North American Jewry and to support smaller organizations in their work to enhance halachah observance. He is currently involved in creating new systems, technology and partnerships that will affect various areas of halachah, and his door is always open to new ideas that could benefit mitzvah observance. Prior to joining the OU, he served for four years as a communal rabbi in Dallas, and subsequently for three years as Head of School of a high school in Houston. Originally from Montreal, Rabbi Sarna is a musmach of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore.

. . . Ilana Weinberger, who joins the OU as Assistant Director of Public Relations. Working with Director of Public Relations Jennifer Packer, Ilana is responsible for highlighting the work of the OU and its myriad departments and programs, to inform both the media and the community about the many services and offerings the OU provides to the Jewish community and beyond. Ilana joins the OU with five years of experience working at New Yorkbased public relations agencies primarily focused in the technology realm. She graduated from NYU with a major in applied psychology and minors in media culture and communication, and creative writing. She is currently completing a master’s degree in corporate communication at Baruch College.

. . . Morgane

is responsible for planning, implementing, creating and monitoring content for all of OU Kosher’s social media channels to increase awareness of the organization and improve its marketing strategy. She holds a bachelor’s in psychology with a minor in business and liberal arts from Queens College.

Rothschild, Social Media Coordinator, OU Kosher. Morgane

PROMOTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Congratulations to...

. . . Liz Offen, who has been promoted to National Director of Strategic Partnerships for Yachad. Liz has served for the past ten years as Regional Director of Yachad’s New England Region and brings more than thirty-five years of experience in nonprofit and government management to the newly created role. As National Director, she will focus on building new partnerships with foundations and federations, maximizing and expanding financial opportunities for Yachad across all of its programs internationally, while also seeking to develop new and creative projects that support children, teens and adults with disabilities. Liz will remain closely connected to the New England region as its Director of Development and Fundraising, building on her decade-long success.

. . . Jeremy Chernikoff on his promotion to Director of Digital Content. Jeremy helps tell the myriad OU stories to the Jewish world on the OU's digital platforms, whether via the soon-to-be redesigned OU.org website; a growing network of social media channels; and the OU's broad range of emails—including the popular Shabbat Shalom weekly email sent out each Thursday (subscribe at ou.org/shabbatshalom!). Jeremy served as Senior Marketing Manager, Marketing and Communications, for the past eight years.

. . . Rabbi Eliyahu Krakowski on his promotion to Executive Editor of OU Press. In this new role, he will run OU Press's operations in addition to continuing his role as Book Editor. Rabbi Krakowski served as Associate Editor of OU Press for the past nine years.

. . . Rebecca Kurz on her promotion to Associate General Counsel. In her new role, Rebecca will assist the General Counsel in navigating the OU’s legal and compliance work in the United States and around the world. Rebecca has been working at the OU for five years. She received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia College and her law degree from Fordham University School of Law. Rebecca is thrilled to embark on this new role and to continue working with the OU team.

. . . Sara Liba Schrager on her promotion to Director of Donor Communications. In this role, Sara Liba will be responsible for crafting an ongoing communications strategy for donor engagement, working closely with the Donor Services and Marketing and Communications departments. Prior to joining the OU’s Institutional Advancement department last year as Donor Communications Manager, she had spent over five years in various marketing and administrative roles at Yachad.

COMING SOON FROM OU PRESS

Masters of the Word: Traditional Jewish Bible Commentary from the Twelfth Through Fourteenth Centuries (Volume III)

By Rabbi Yonatan Kolatch OU Press and KTAV Publishing

In Masters of the Word, Rabbi Yonatan Kolatch surveys the biographies, historical contexts, and works of Judaism’s greatest Biblical commentators—including, in this exceptional volume, Rambam (Maimonides), Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi), Ramban (Nachmanides), Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, and Ralbag (Gersonides).

Each chapter in this book begins with the historical context and biography of the figure under discussion, followed by an extensive analysis of the respective author’s works and his outlook and methodology. After this overview of the commentator and his works, Masters of the Word provides numerous examples of each author’s comments on a particular parashah. This volume begins its selections with comments (of Rambam) relating to Parashat Shemot and concludes with selections (from Ralbag) on Parashat Yitro. (Although Rambam did not write a work devoted to Biblical commentary, Rabbi Kolatch correctly notes that Rambam’s rich philosophical and halachic works provide ample material for one seeking to reconstruct Rambam’s methodology and approach to Biblical interpretation.)

Rabbi Kolatch’s depiction of the commentators is both thorough and nuanced, leaving no major theme in each work untouched and providing abundant illustrative examples. In addition, Rabbi Kolatch makes use not only of the commentators’ own works but of the gamut of scholarly contributions on the subjects at hand. We discover the commentators’ views about central questions such as: their approach to peshuto shel mikra and the derashot of Chazal, their attitudes toward rationalist philosophy and kabbalah as tools for Biblical exegesis, and internal textual and thematic issues. This information is presented while taking into account historical contexts for example, Rabbi Kolatch discusses the presence of interreligious polemical material in these commentaries, and the various controversies over philosophy that roiled Jewish culture during much of the period under discussion. If you are interested in parshanut hamikra (Biblical commentary) or the history of Jewish ideas, or you are just looking for an unconventional but highly informative book with which to study the parashah, Masters of the Word: Volume III is highly recommended.

By Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider

Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider’s latest work achieves the noble goal of “uniting”—by bringing together in one volume— the resonant teachings of a chorus of distinct voices, thus creating an unexpected Torah symphony. For every parashah, Rabbi Goldscheider presents three essays in which he offers insight into a fundamental concept related to the parashah, based on the writings, teachings and lives of Rav Kook, Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik and the masters of the Chassidic tradition.

To give one brief excerpt from this bountiful volume: In Parashat Vayigash, Rabbi Goldscheider cites the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s explanation of areyvut, the responsibility that each Jew has for another, which has its basis in this parashah: Yehudah’s soliloquy is the moral climax of the entire Yosef story. Near the end, Yehudah says about himself, “your servant took responsibility for [arav] the youth”— Binyamin—“from my father” (Genesis 44:32). This echoes the language of the actual promise he made to Yaakov in Parashat Miketz, “I will take responsibility for him [e'ervenu], you can demand him from me” (Genesis 43:9). The Lubavitcher Rebbe cited these verses as the earliest sources of the foundational principle of arevut, mutual

responsibility, formulated in the Talmud as “all Jews are responsible for one another” [kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh]. . . . The Rebbe explained that the Hebrew term “arevut” has a number of senses. . . . Beyond duty, there is the sweetness [arevut] that Jews display to one another. The fact that we are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing and happiness of our neighbor is what permits us to correct them when they are not living up to their religious responsibilities. . . . Arevut also refers to a mixture. Physically the Jewish people consists of separate individuals, but our souls are interconnected, part of a single entity. . . . Yehudah, out of his deep love and loyalty for his youngest brother, personified arevut. It is up to us as a people to live up to his example, by striving to go beyond the formal obligation and demonstrate genuine compassion. We must remember that in our unique spiritual fraternity, every one of us is literally our brother’s keeper.

Inspiring and uplifting, Torah United is a unique work that allows us to appreciate the contributions of the great individuals whose Torah it so magnificently unites.

Torah United: Teachings on the Weekly Parashah from Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the Chassidic Masters—The Wintman Edition

Inside PHILANTHROPY

$1.1 MILLION GIFT DEDICATED TO NEW HOME FOR SDEROT’S YOUTH

By Aviva Engel

Beyond typical adolescent stressors associated with school, peer pressure and self-image, Israeli teens living in Sderot face far greater daily challenges: the constant barrage of rockets, missiles and incendiary balloons that stem from Gaza, located less than a mile from the southern city in Israel’s Negev.

Throughout the past twenty years of violence and upheaval in the region, there was always one place that its teens, many of whom are suffering from PTSD, could count on for much-needed respite and support: the local OU Israel–run youth center, housed in temporary facilities.

This spring, Sderot’s teens will finally have a permanent club to call home, thanks to a $1.1 million gift donated by a family living thousands of miles away in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jeff and Wendy Kohn and their children, Jordan and Tessa, made the transformative donation to OU Israel to establish the Toni Kohn House in partnership with the Sderot municipality. The new facility will be named in memory of their daughter and sister

Toni, a”h, who passed away suddenly at age twenty-six while newly married and expecting her first child.

In the years before her passing, Toni was deeply involved with a community program in Los Angeles dedicated to the advancement of young women at risk. “Toni was passionate about making a difference any way she could, and providing those less fortunate with the opportunities, resources and tools to make a better life for themselves,” says her younger sister Tessa. “She made sure these girls knew that they were loved, that they were important and that they mattered, and that they too could be happy and fulfilled.”

Upon visiting Sderot in 2019 and learning about the myriad physical and emotional challenges affecting the city’s youth as a result of the dire security situation, the Kohns concluded that funding a permanent youth center would be the perfect way to continue Toni’s work and honor her legacy.

“Many people listen to the news and hear what’s happening in Sderot and with Israeli teenagers in periphery towns,” says Rabbi Avi Berman, OU Israel’s

Above: The Toni Kohn House is dedicated by Jeff and Wendy Kohn and their children, Jordan and Tessa, in memory of their daughter and sister Toni, a”h.The center, which will provide a permanent club space to at-risk community members in Sderot, is expected to be completed by Pesach 2023. Courtesy of David Barel

Executive Director. “Many know how much help is necessary. But there are those who decide to [go above and beyond] and love these children like their own. The love that Jeff and Wendy continue to show the children of Sderot is remarkable.”

For over two decades, OU Israel has empowered more than 56,000 at-risk youth living on the country’s economic margins. Since many are children of single parents who live paycheck to paycheck, they often lack access to quality education and extracurricular opportunities that could foster their potential and equip them to secure gainful employment to break the cycle of poverty as adults.

At weekly after-school programs under the auspices of Makom Balev and Jack E. Gindi Oraita clubs, OU Israel supports and engages over 2,100 youngsters ages twelve to eighteen annually at twenty-one OU Israel Youth Centers.

Exciting activities include tiyulim, Shabbatonim, and programs centered around Jewish values, history and culture. Leadership development is paramount, and the importance of giving back to the community is highlighted through volunteerism with seniors, the needy, and the sick. Advisors, social workers and Sherut Leumi (National Service) volunteers mentor participants and encourage them to stay in school and complete their Bagruyot (high school exit exams), serve their country by joining the IDF or performing Sherut Leumi, and pursue higher education.

Participants emerge with a heightened sense of pride, self-esteem, and connection to themselves, their communities and Medinat Yisrael. With improved confidence, leadership and life skills, they look forward to promising futures marked by socioeconomic mobility.

Like the Makom Balev and Oraita clubs, the Toni Kohn House in Sderot will provide services and care, while also offering a photo therapy course, a music room, personal and group mentoring, and empowerment activities.

“The Kohn family’s generosity goes far beyond the monetary value of their multi-year gift,” says David Barel, OU Israel’s Director of Development. “They are giving Sderot’s youth the timeless gift of leadership. With the loss of their daughter Toni, the Kohn family teaches us that to overcome times of great adversity—a reality Sderot’s youth have endured for the last twenty years—you must help others, not just by giving money but by giving with everything you have—your time, your attention, your empathy and your love.”

A dedication ceremony for the Toni Kohn House was held in Sderot in July, and the center is expected to be completed by Pesach 2023. Along with the Kohn family, attendees included Rabbi Berman, OU Executive Vice Presidents Rabbi Moshe Hauer and Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph, OU Israel Director of Programs Chaim Pelzner, and Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi, who was inspired by “the kindness and care shown by Jews from distant Canada for their brothers in Israel.

“Living here in Sderot, one mile from Gaza, we’ve suffered for over twenty years from terrorism, both via the sky and underground,” said Davidi. “It’s very difficult. The idea that a family has decided to honor their daughter’s legacy here gives us strength to continue our journey.”

The Toni Kohn House in Sderot is the third support program for at-risk community members established by the Kohns in Toni’s memory; the other two are in LA and Calgary.

“Toni is still making a difference every day,” says Rabbi Hauer. “What she stood for, what mattered to her, is still moving her parents, family, friends and every one of us who hears her story, to do more in her way, in her spirit, to be there for each other.”

From left: OU Israel Executive Director Rabbi Avi Berman; OU ExecutiveVice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer; Jeff Kohn; Wendy Kohn; and OU ExecutiveVice President/Chief Operating Officer Rabbi Dr.Josh Joseph in front of the mockup of the new Center.

Aviva Engel is an award-winning journalist living in Jerusalem.

Members of the OU Benefactor Circle lead through their philanthropy. Each has donated in support of the OU and its many impactful programs in the 2021 or 2022 calendar years*. We applaud them all—those whose names appear as well as those choosing to remain anonymous—for their commitment. We invite you to join them in making a difference.

To learn more about the OU Benefactor Circle or to become a member, please call Alexander Jonas, at 212.613.8379 or email jonasa@ou.org.

*Donors are recognized based on date of donation payment

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DR. EDWIN AND CECILE GROMIS DR. STEVEN AND LISA GRONOWITZ ARYEH AND GOLDIE GROSS MERIDIAN CAPITAL GROUP ARIEL AND ALETA GRUNBERG DR. ELI AND SORA GRUNSTEIN MICHAEL HADDAD JOSH AND MARJORIE HARRIS

HC STAFFING AND PAYROLL SOLUTIONS

CHAIM AND ARIELLA HERMAN

CHANI AND DANIEL HERRMANN

DOV AND LAURA HERTZ

DR. GARY AND CHERYL HOBERMAN

CATHY AND DAVID HOFFMAN

NORMA HOLZER

SHLOMO AND DORIE HORWITZ

DR. SHALOM AND LORI HUBERFELD

DR. DAVID AND BARBARA HURWITZ

DANIEL JACOB

MOTTY AND HADASSA JACOBOWITZ

STANLEY AND PHYLLIS JASPAN

MORRIS AND SUSAN KALICHMAN

LEORA KAMINER

STUART KARON AND DR. JODI WENGER

AARON AND JILL KATZ

RABBI ETHAN AND DEBORAH KATZ BENJAMIN KELLOGG

DOV AND AMY KESSELMAN

AVIGDOR KESSLER STEVEN KIMMELMAN

MARTIN AND SARAH KORNBLUM

HARRY KOTLER JOSH KRAFT

RACHEL KRAUT

ARMAND AND ESTHER LASKY

PINCHUS AND DEBORAH SCHICK LAUFER

ARYEH AND ELANA LEBOWITZ

IN MEMORY OF JUDY LEFKOVITS

JOSHUA AND ERICA LEGUM

MARK AND ETA LEVENSON ADAM LEWIS

SHULLY LICHTMAN

GERALD AND EILEEN LIEBERMAN

HYLTON AND LEAH LIGHTMAN

MORDECHAI AND PENINA LIPTON

MAURY AND ELINOR LITWACK

CHAIM AND BARA LOEWENTHAL

EDWARD LOWY

JEREMY AND TAMAR LUSTMAN

EVAN AND EVI MAKOVSKY

ADRIA AND JEFFREY MANDEL

DAVID MANDEL

DR. DAVID AND STACI MARGULIS

SHARI AND YAAKOV MARKOVITZ

TZACHI AND ELISHEVA MEISEL

BENAY AND IRA MEISELS

RONEET MERKIN

ADAM AND FRANCINE MERMELSTEIN LEONARD AND BEVERLY MEZEI YALE AND GAIL MILLER

STEVE AND MALKA MIRETZKY

ETAN AND VALERIE MIRWIS AND FAMILY

DR. DANIEL AND STEPHANIE MISHKIN

MARSHALL AND JEAN MIZRAHI HARRY AND ROBIN MORTKOWITZ

ELLIOT AND AVA MOSKOWITZ

MICHAEL AND MICHELLE NACHMANI

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RABBI YAAKOV AND SARA NAGEL

JONATHAN AND MINDY NEISS

ELI AND TALIA NEUBERG

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JAY AND PAULA NOVETSKY

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MORDECHAI AND ALIZA POLSTEIN

MR. AND MRS. DAVID PORUSH

GAIL PROPP

RICHARD AND ORA RABINOVICH

DR. STEVEN AND BELINDA RAIKIN

GEORGIA

RAVITZ

REGALS FOUNDATION

YARON AND LISA REICH

DRS. CRAIG AND JACKIE REISS

JASON AND SHANI REITBERGER

GAIL AND BINYAMIN RIEDER

RALPH AND LEAH RIEDER

DR. JAY AND MARJORIE ROBINOW

YITZHOK AND TAMAR ROSENTHAL

MARC AND ALISSA ROSSMAN

ROBBIE AND HELENE ROTHENBERG HENRY AND GOLDA REENA ROTHMAN

RABBI DANIEL AND ELISHEVA

RUBENSTEIN

IDELLE RUDMAN

ZVI AND SHARONNE RUDMAN

LARRY AND SHELLY RUSSAK

MILTON AND SHIRLEY SABIN

KENNETH AND MINDY SAIBEL

MARVIN AND ROZ SAMUELS

SAPPHIRE WEALTH ADVISORY GROUP GENIE AND STEVE SAVITSKY

TOBY MACY SCHAFFER

ROBERT AND ANDREA SCHECHTER

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SHLOMO AND GITTY SCHWARTZ TIBERIO AND ELLYSE SCHWARTZ

SCOTT AND JAMIE SELIGSOHN

ALEXANDER SELIGSON

ARI AND SHOSHANA SHABAT

RALPH AND SARAH SHAMAH

LOUIS SHAMIE

BENJAMIN AND MOR SHAPIRO

JAYNE SHAPIRO

MICHAEL AND TALI SHAPIRO

SHEFA BRACHA FUND

TAMAR AND AARON SHEFFEY

YAAKOV AND SARI SHEINFELD

NEIL SHORE

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IRIS SMITH

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BARRY AND JODIE SOBEL

GABRIEL AND SARA SOLOMON

JONATHAN AND DODI SPIELMAN

RUTH BRANDT SPITZER

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MICHAEL STEINGER

STEINIG FAMILY: ESTATE OF MELVIN AND MIRELE STEINIG A”H GREGORY AND LISA STORCH

RACHELLE AND ZEV STERN AARON AND ARIELLA STRASSMAN

TED AND LINDA STRUHL

ABRAHAM SULTAN

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TAMPA JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTERS AND FEDERATION

JONATHAN AND RACHEL TIGER

SAM AND TZIPI TRAMIEL

SHLOMO AND RONNI TROODLER

EPHRAIM AND AVIVA VILENSKI ADINA WAGMAN

IN MEMORY OF DOVID BEN REB YOSEF WEINBERG A”H

TOVA AND HOWARD WEISER

AMNON AND RONIT WENGER

DAVID AND NATALIE WOLF

ARIEL AND BETH ZELL

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List updated as of October 2022

We apologize for any omissions. If you wish to be acknowledged please contact Alexander Jonas at jonasa@ou.org.

Uplifting, Motivational, Real-Life Stories of Ordinary People Making a World of Difference: It’s called a “Kan Tzipor” Moment!

The author describes “Kan Tzipor moments” as sacred opportunities that suddenly present themselves, and that lead to life-transforming acts of chessed.

19 Amazing, True Stories that demonstrate & celebrate the incredible power of chessed to transform lives forever. Overflowing with faith, hope, heart, and humor, this remarkable collection will excite, enrich, and entertain you from first page to last.

BIBLE DYNAMICS: CONTEMPORARY

TORAH COMMENTARY (4 VOLS)

By Dr. Pinchas Polonsky Translated by Betzalel Shandelman 2019

386 pages

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem

In 1986, I had the great privilege of traveling to the Soviet Union as a shaliach of the State of Israel to teach Torah to refuseniks, with an emphasis on training underground Torah teachers in Moscow, Leningrad and Riga. In Moscow I encountered several active groups of underground Torah study, with one of the most dynamic being the Religious Zionist group Machanaim, which was led by a young mathematician, Pinchas Polonsky. I had gone to the USSR prepared to teach shiurim in the area of taharat hamishpachah, which a prior shaliach had informed me was an area of ignorance in the fast-growing ba’al teshuvah community in Moscow. Upon meeting my first contact in the Machanaim group, I presented my “credentials” and announced my plans. He retorted, “Yes, that used to be an issue, but Pinchas Polonsky delved into it and has already written a handbook!”

Polonsky was born in Moscow in 1958, and as a teenager, he began to study Hebrew and Torah clandestinely, eventually deciding to make aliyah and becoming a refusenik. In 1979, he helped found Machanaim, becoming one of its main teachers and literary activists. He was finally able to make aliyah in 1987, and he continued the work of Machanaim with the

Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem directs the Gershom Scholem Collection for Kabbalah and Hasidism at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. He is the author of Redemptions: Contemporary Chassidic Essays on the Parsha and the Festivals. Dr. Leshem is also a contributor to the Encyclopedia Hebraica, second edition.

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subsequent large wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Polonsky went on to several years of yeshivah study in Israel and earned a PhD in the sociology of religion from Bar-Ilan University, where he also taught; he taught at Ariel University as well. He resides in Beit El.

Polonsky’s literary output is substantial. At first writing in Russian and subsequently in Hebrew, he has seen the beginning of translations of some of his works into English in recent years, including works on the thought

his view, the establishment of the State of Israel and the return of a significant portion of world Jewry to the Land of Israel created a different mindset. No longer concerned primarily with self-preservation, the Jewish people can now turn outward to share its heritage with the rest of humanity. In a parallel development, there is now more openness in the world to the study of the ancient Jewish wisdom of the Bible.

Jewish readers as well have changed. Polonsky writes:

Jewish psychological and cultural integration into the Western world has brought the secular Jewish reader and the non-Jewish reader closer together than ever before. . . . The traditional Jewish reader of the past was mainly interested in observing the commandments. . . . A contemporary student of the Torah . . . is . . . more interested in ideas that will promote his personal development.

of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook and Polonsky’s multi-volume Biblical commentary Bible Dynamics: Contemporary Torah Commentary, which is based upon the work of the French-Israeli philosopher Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi (Manitou, 1922 1996) and his Jerusalem-based disciple Rabbi Oury Cherki.

Bible Dynamics is a compilation of Polonsky’s original, creative commentaries on the Torah. Genesis (two volumes), Exodus and Numbers have already been published (originally in Russian and translated into English), and others are in preparation. In the introduction to the first volume, Polonsky addresses the need for more contemporary Torah commentary. In

While the above may seem to imply that Polonsky’s work is geared exclusively toward a non-observant or even non-Jewish readership, this is certainly not the case, which becomes clear as he defines his exegetical approach based upon the kabbalistic worldview of the above-mentioned Rabbi Ashkenazi and Rabbi Cherki. In doing so, the title Bible Dynamics becomes clear. “[It is] most relevant today to read the Torah as an engaging narrative of uniquely human characters and personalities . . . [that] include[s] the dynamics of development— the evolution of people, ideas and concepts.”

While perhaps challenging some traditional understandings of the personalities in the Torah, this approach is nonetheless rooted in a close textual reading, as well as in traditional and kabbalistic interpretations, and is thus of great significance to the openminded traditional reader as well. Polonsky’s strong Religious Zionist perspective is also evident in his Biblical interpretation.

Polonsky’s approach differs from that of other modern Biblical commentators. Nehama Leibowitz, for example, concentrates on specific

sugyot in the parashah, shepherding the reader through a variety of midrashim, as well as through medieval and modern commentators. By comparing and contrasting these commentators, she was able not only to achieve a close explication of their parshanut (methodologies) but to come to some conclusions regarding the meaning of the Biblical text as well. She read peshat through the prism of earlier commentary. In contrast, Polonsky utilizes midrash and commentaries less frequently, primarily addressing the text itself.

More similar in his approach to Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch or the Netziv, Polonsky exhibits a philosophical bent, and, while indebted to earlier commentary, he shows much creativity in new readings. Like these predecessors, he is deeply invested in a psychological portrayal of Biblical heroes, especially as their characters develop with the progression of the Biblical narrative. All three of these commentators clearly view the Biblical narrative as sacred history that comes to inform us of G-d’s will in the unfolding of human history. Additionally, they all desire to present Biblical commentary in a manner that will be receptive to the contemporary reader. Polonsky, who wrote in Russian, is close to Rav Hirsch, who wrote in German, as both initially sought to reach out to an audience less comfortable in Hebrew. While Polonsky is more overtly kabbalistic than his predecessors, the biggest differences seem to be a function of time and place, as Polonsky writes for a post-Holocaust, State of Israel audience in which the secularism and Reform Judaism of nineteenth-century modernism have been augmented by New Age, postmodernism and post-Zionism.

Let us look at two brief examples. Bereishit chapter 34 deals with the strange story of Yaakov, Lavan and the sheep, which precedes Yaakov’s return to the Land of Israel. Polonsky here skirts the scientific issues of animal husbandry and deals with the story on two levels, the simple meaning and the kabbalistic. For our purposes, it will be sufficient to share some of the insights from the simple interpretation (which includes some kabbalistic insights as well).

The decision to return to the Land begins when Rachel finally gives birth to Yosef. Yaakov had fled to Lavan to build a family, and he chose Rachel as his primary wife. Therefore, Rachel must give birth in order for this aspect of Yaakov’s mission to be complete. Furthermore, Yosef, like Esav, “rules over the material world,” and he can serve as Yaakov’s antithesis; Yosef’s birth enables Yaakov to return to the material life in the Land after the spiritual sojourn in exile. Thus, “Yosef” and “Zion” share the same numerical equivalent (156), and Yosef, also as the future Mashiach ben Yosef, represents the first material stage of the redemption, which will later be completed by the more spiritual Mashiach ben David.

Regarding the sheep trading itself, Lavan (whose name means “white”) receives the white sheep. This symbolizes his “Aramean universality,” which seeks to swallow up all other cultures. Yaakov, on the other hand, opts for spotted sheep since his mission is to carve out an Israelite particularism, a unique culture based upon the values of the Torah

independent of worldly influences when these contradict the Torah.

Other messages that Polonsky finds in the story of Yaakov and Lavan include the importance for Jews, especially when living among the nations, to avoid childish naiveté, and the need to realize when it is time to cut one’s losses and get out before the danger becomes too great.

Jumping ahead to Shemot, Polonsky examines Moshe’s early years through the perspective of peshat and a bit of midrash, but without a kabbalistic perspective. Moshe is born at a time when Pharaoh has decreed the killing of the male line of the Jews, of the zachar, entrusted with the preservation of zachor, collective memory. Amram, deciding that without consciousness of the past there is no future for the Jewish people, decides to separate from his wife. Only when confronted by his daughter Miriam, who represents the future, does he realize that the force that strives for future life cannot be relegated to the past. He then remarries Yocheved, giving birth to Moshe. In this context, Polonsky duly notes the importance of female activism, as opposed to male passivity, in the unfolding of the story of redemption. Similarly, he contrasts Moshe’s ark—made by a woman and lined with tar and clay—with that of Noach—made by a man and lined only with tar; in Polonsky’s reading, tar represents passivity, whereas clay, a major creative material, represents activity.

Moshe’s development and education in the Egyptian court, as opposed to among the Jewish slaves, is a crucial aspect of his development as a leader of the Jewish people. Here, in addition to developing a regal bearing, he is trained in statesmanship and diplomacy. For Polonsky, even the name Moshe, or Moses, represents a dual identity that is crucial for Moshe’s development and future role. Upon witnessing the oppression of the Jews and instinctively siding with them, Moshe makes a strategic decision that his Jewish identity is in fact his primary one. Seeing that there is no “ish” (man), he also recognizes that the entire Egyptian government and judicial system are hopelessly corrupt and decides to act on his own. However, a new identity crisis awaits him almost immediately as he comes to the awareness that the Jews, instead of supporting him, would rather engage in both brawling and informing on him to the authorities.

At this point, Moshe is completely disillusioned by both the Egyptians and the Jews, and he now faces a Pharaoh who is aware that Moshe has no support whatsoever. Moshe decides to flee to Midian, where he hopes that the Midianites, descendants of Avraham through Keturah, will be more receptive to his spiritual and social vision. Moshe saves Yitro’s daughters from the other shepherds, demonstrating that his commitment to social justice is not limited to gentile oppression of Jews or intra-Jewish battles. With this, he begins the next stage in his preparation as the future leader of the Jewish people.

In summation, Polonsky’s books represent a refreshingly new and unique voice in English-language Torah scholarship. His books both enlighten and challenge us to rethink the way we look at the Torah and the world.

Nothing should ever happen. If it does, remember:

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Bridging Traditions:

Demystifying Differences Between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews

By Rabbi Haim Jachter OU Press/Maggid Books New York, 2021

Reviewed by Israel Mizrahi

Bridging Traditions: Demystifying Differences Between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews brings together Rabbi Haim Jachter’s unique background, experience and erudition to create a masterful volume and invaluable book for Jews of all backgrounds. Despite the modest title, Rabbi Jachter guides the reader through the entire halachic process and

evolution, pointing out where and why the various traditions emerged. While the focus is on the differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazic practice, the reader emerges with an understanding of the many different traditions even within the Ashkenazic and Sephardic worlds, as well as a proper understanding of the role of minhag and when local custom overrides one’s personal traditions.

The last century has seen the Jewish people make major geographic shifts in its population. While for many centuries Jewish families lived in the same region generation after generation, the world wars, the founding of the State of Israel and the exile of Jews from Arab lands led Jews from a wide variety of backgrounds to live near each other and encounter other communities’ traditions and customs. The result was often a homogenized new tradition that led to the lapse of many communities’ unique identities and minhagim.

With his Ashkenazic background, coupled with his experience in leading the Sephardic Congregation of Teaneck, New Jersey (itself a melting pot of various Sephardic traditions) for many years, Rabbi Jachter developed a keen eye for noticing even minute differences, which he describes and analyzes in the book. His many years

in the rabbinate have also yielded a wealth of anecdotes, including personal conversations with contemporary posekim, that are interwoven within the book, making it an enjoyable read.

As a Sephardic Jew who learned in Sephardic and Ashkenazic yeshivot and often joins prayers in synagogues with different traditions, I found this book particularly useful, as the author gives pointed suggestions on how to deal with situations such as roommates with different customs or visiting a synagogue with different customs. Aside from differences you will find within the shul experience itself, Rabbi Jachter also covers other aspects of halachah, such as the use of an eruv, warming up food on Shabbat, the various Pesach traditions, the permissibility of gambling, and times for Birkat Halevanah. Each chapter begins with an overview of the subject, followed by the various rabbinical approaches and concluding with practical implications.

One interesting characteristic of this book is the occasional attempt of the author to theorize why different communities gravitated toward certain customs and how social inferences may have had an influence. For example, in the chapter titled “Hashem Imachem,” on the Sephardic custom to declare “Hashem imachem” upon receiving

Israel Mizrahi is the owner of Mizrahi Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, home to over 200,000 secondhand and antiquarian books of Jewish interest.

Rabbi Jachter shows not only the difference between Ashkenazic and Sephardic practice but also the diversity within the Sephardic world.

an aliyah to the Torah, Rabbi Jachter writes: “It is important to convey this lesson specifically during Keriat HaTorah. Unfortunately, some people view the Torah aliyot as an opportunity for social climbing, considering who receives the most and least prestigious aliyah, etc. Perhaps the exchange of Boaz and his workers is recalled at this time to remind us to zealously avoid such destructive behavior, especially in connection with Keriat HaTorah.”

Several chapters are devoted to general halachic concepts that manifest themselves in various scenarios. Rabbi Jachter succinctly details the various opinions and implications. One such chapter is titled “Women Reciting a Beracha on Mitzvot Aseh Shehazeman Gerama (positive time-bound mitzvot).” While all Rishonim agree that women are exempt from such mitzvot (such as sefirat haOmer and lulav), the dispute concerns whether a woman may recite a berachah if she voluntarily performs such a mitzvah. After citing the sources of the original dispute between the Rambam and Rabbeinu Tam, Rabbi Jachter quotes the ruling of Rabbi Yosef Karo in the Shulchan Aruch concurring with the Rambam that it is forbidden. The Chida in the eighteenth century noted that some Sephardic women had begun to recite such a berachah, despite the objections of his teacher, Rabbi Yosef Navon. In a surprising move, the Chida himself approved of this practice, based on the large number of Rishonim that allowed it. Rav Ovadia Yosef, though, was adamant in upholding the position of the Shulchan Aruch forbidding the practice. Rabbi Jachter follows with a list of wide-ranging authorities that did approve of the practice, including the Ben Ish Chai, the Kaf HaChayim and Rabbi Shemtob Gaguine in his Keter Shem Tov, who notes that in the mid-twentieth century, this was the custom of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael, Syria, Egypt and Turkey. The chapter concludes with references to Rabbi Shalom Messas, Rabbi Ben Tzion Abba Shaul and Rabbi Mordechai Lebhar permitting the practice in certain instances. In this case, Rabbi Jachter shows not only the difference between Ashkenazic and Sephardic practice but also the diversity within the Sephardic world.

The author does an excellent job in explaining the origins of diverging opinions and the unique styles and influences of the different posekim. The structure of the Shulchan Aruch and its spread throughout the world, the influence of the Arizal and kabbalah, the Ben Ish Chai’s unification of kabbalah and halachah, and Rav Ovadia’s efforts to scale back the kabbalistic influence and unify Sephardic customs are all discussed at length. The additional chapters on Moroccan and Yemenite Jews detail how their unique traditions developed.

I highly recommend this volume. It will leave the reader with a new perspective on Jewish customs and halachah and a better understanding of one’s own minhagim

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1. Publication Title: Jewish Action. 2. Publication No. 005-239. 3. Filing Date: September 30, 2022. 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly and Passover. 5. No. of Issues Published Annually: Five. 6. Annual Subscription Price: $16.00. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: Orthodox Union, 40 Rector Street, 4th Floor, NY, NY, 10006. Contact Person: Anthony Lugo. Telephone: 212.613.8163. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: Same. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor and Managing Editor: Publisher: Orthodox Union, 40 Rector Street, 4th Floor, NY, NY, 10006. Editor: Nechama Carmel, same address; Managing Editor: Maury Litwack, same address. 10. Owner: Orthodox Union, 40 Rector Street, 4th Floor, NY, NY, 10006. 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds: None. 12. Tax Status (For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at nonprofit rates): The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income purposes has not changed during the preceding 12 months. 13. Publication Title: Jewish Action. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: October 2022.

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17. Publication of Statement of Ownership required. Will be printed in the Winter 2022 issue of this publication. 17. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner: Anthony Lugo, Production Manager. Date: October 1, 2022.

Reviews in Brief

By Rabbi Gil Student

THE POWER OF SHABBOS: SHABBAT AND ELECTRICITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

By Rabbi Chaim Jachter Kol Torah Publications New Jersey, 2022 271 pages

continued evolving. By necessity, these conversations are complex and take place over time. Effectively, we are witnessing the halachic process in action. The average person, however, lacks the background to see the comprehensive picture, to understand the back-and-forth debates and the different views as they unfold. This leaves people knowing that electricity is forbidden on Shabbat but not knowing why. Some have raised questions about the prohibition against using electricity on Shabbat, although most people know that Shabbat would be unrecognizable and its sacredness violated if electricity were allowed.

rabbis while writing the book and includes their original rulings that have not been published elsewhere.

As a reader, you will find yourself involved in the conversation, appreciating the different views and the intricacy of defining the halachic parameters of new technology. You will emerge from this book with a deeper understanding of the complex issues of Shabbat in the modern world.

It is common knowledge that on Shabbat one may not turn on or off anything that runs on electricity. However, most people are not clear why that is the case. The simple answer is that this is not a simple question. The invention of electrical appliances was a new frontier that presented various halachic issues, and the analogies to Talmudic cases depended on interpretation, leading to great debates carried out in responsa and other publications.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through today, halachic scholars analyzed the issues in conversation with engineers and scientists, all while technology

Rabbi Gil Student writes frequently on Jewish issues and runs Torahmusings.com. He is a member of the Jewish Action Editorial Board.

For over thirty years, Rabbi Chaim Jachter has been writing about halachah and electricity for the English-speaking public. His clear prose brings different views into conversation with each other, offering prooftexts and counterproofs, arguments and answers, bringing the words of the great halachic authorities to life. He gives readers a taste of the halachic debate, careful not to overwhelm while providing some depth. With his new book, however, Rabbi Jachter offers a more comprehensive approach to the topic of electricity and Shabbat.

The Power of Shabbos is an unprecedented guide to the halachic process surrounding electricity and Shabbat. It illuminates an obscure conversation that greatly affects the lives of observant Jews. This is a book about halachah and not history, so it follows topics as opposed to chronology, generally omitting the historical context in which the scholars lived and instead focusing on concepts and applications.

The book begins with a discussion of general issues and approaches surrounding electricity and Shabbat. It then surveys the key issues of debate throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. These include: refrigerators, elevators, baby monitors, e-commerce and more. Throughout, Rabbi Jachter focuses on three elements of the conversation: key texts, halachic concepts, and important rulings. He frequently consulted with leading

By design, The Power of Shabbos addresses the many questions that have been raised in the past and does not speculate about unresolved questions that lie ahead. As we move forward and as new technologies emerge, we can expect Rabbi Jachter to continue helping us understand the multifaceted views of the leading halachic authorities.

JACOB KATZ ON THE ORIGINS OF ORTHODOXY

Edited by Giti Bendheim, Menachem Butler, Jay M. Harris and Uriel Katz Shikey Press Massachusetts, 2022 393 pages

Professor Jacob Katz was the founding historian of Orthodox Judaism. He revolutionized Jewish history in two separate ways during two periods of his life. At the same time, he trained a cadre of scholars who have continued his work. Jacob Katz on the Origins of Orthodoxy is a fascinating and surprising tribute to

a pioneering historian who passed away nearly twenty-five years ago.

Katz was born in Hungary in 1904 and received a traditional Orthodox education, culminating in his studies in the famous Pressburg Yeshiva. He then moved to Frankfurt, Germany, immersing himself in the world of Rabbi Joseph Breuer while earning a doctorate at the University of Frankfurt. He left Germany in 1934, settling in Israel and eventually joining the faculty of Hebrew University. In Frankfurt, Katz studied under the great sociologist Karl Mannheim, whose influence can be felt in the first phase of Katz’s scholarship. He studied the medieval and Early Modern Ashkenazic Jewish communities from the perspective of social history, analyzing what life was like in those times. His studies broke new ground in his approach to Jewish history and his use of traditional rabbinic literature, particularly responsa. Some of his most famous studies include the pre-modern shtetl, the attitudes within Jewish law toward Christianity, and the phenomenon of the “Shabbos goy,” a gentile who performs forbidden work on Shabbat for Jews. Effectively, Katz created a new field of study that looked at the timeline of transformations in Ashkenazic life as the world around us changed dramatically.

During the last two decades of his life, Katz changed course and focused on the history and development of Orthodox Judaism. He defined Orthodoxy as a conscious choice to live a traditionally observant Jewish life. Previously, living such a life was taken for granted. With the advent of modernity, Enlightenment and Emancipation, Jews had to choose to live traditionally. Katz had personally lived in two of the key communities that played a role in this historical drama—Pressburg and Frankfurt. He broke important ground with his studies of the development of a conscious Orthodoxy that defended itself against reforms through a variety of methods and asserted itself as a delineated community. Late in life, Katz created the field of study of the history of Orthodox Judaism.

Interestingly, Katz trained students who continued his work and, following the spirit of courage and academic truthfulness he taught them, questioned many of his key findings. This book serves as a tribute in three ways. First, it contains many articles about his life and storied accomplishments. Second, it contains interviews with Katz as well as important articles that he published. Third, the book includes respectful critiques of Katz, particularly by his students. These critiques cut to some of his key methods, definitions and conclusions. As a continuation of his own work, they revise his theories and refine his approaches. However, none of these discussions would be taking place if Katz had not shown us the way. The clear conclusion from reading this book is that Jacob Katz asked the right questions and began the immense work of finding the answers, which his students continue to this day.

THE BOOK OF JEWISH KNOWLEDGE: A MULTIFACETED EXPLORATION OF THE TEACHINGS, OBSERVANCES, AND HISTORY OF JUDAISM

Edited by Rabbi Yanki Tauber

The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute New York, 2022 536 pages

videos, interactive discussions and more. And yet nothing can replace a book you can read on your own and return to time and again for reference. However, for a book to invite today’s reader, it often needs to be comparable to a multimedia experience. The Jewish Book of Knowledge masterfully uses design to educate in an engaging way.

The book provides a beginner’s overview to Judaism, which of course is also useful to those with a strong Jewish education. Five sections divide different aspects of Jewish knowledge: Jewish History, Jewish Teaching, Jewish Practice, The Jewish Year and Lifecycle Milestones. Each section contains an introduction and brief explanations, but mainly consists of quotations from other texts. These texts include a diverse range of Bible, Talmud, Midrash, commentaries throughout the ages, and first-person stories and perspectives from a wide variety of people. Throughout, the book is full of stunning pictures, informative illustrations, helpful charts, timelines and maps. For example, a color-coded timeline, brilliant in its simplicity and breadth, shows many of the great scholars and published works of traditional Jewish scholarship by genre, from the Bible through Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef. Similarly, the book contains a map that uses color, overlaid on geography, to display the spread of the Diaspora throughout the millennia.

Many Jews are thirsty for knowledge about their heritage. In the past, they could only find what they needed through books or in-person encounters. Today, technology has given us many more, varied opportunities—websites,

The book clearly emerges from a Chabad outlook and includes many quotations from Chabad thinkers. However, the editor also uses quotations from rabbinic figures such as the Chatam Sofer and Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik as well as scholars Viktor Frankl, Cecil Roth and many others. Despite containing profound thoughts and covering an enormous amount of material, the book maintains a light touch. Some editorial choices are refreshing. For example, the life cycle section includes a short chapter on work and retirement, which is unusual but quite appropriate. The Book of Jewish Knowledge is a coffee table book that draws you in to survey a panorama of Jewish life, thought and history in dazzling multicolor.

LASTING IMPRESSIONS

My Siddur

By Dr. Moshe Dickman

Like most religious Jews growing up in America in the 50s and 60s, I davened Nu sach Ashkenaz.* True, there were a few shtieblach where Nusach Sefard was the custom, but the overwhelming majority of synagogues had siddurim reflecting the Ashkenaz custom, albeit with a smattering of Sefard siddurim, usually tucked away on an aging wooden bookshelf in the back corner.

During my years in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, I rented a small townhouse apartment. When I did not spend Shabbat on campus, I found myself frequenting a small shul, the only Orthodox minyan in the downtown area. The gabbai, Avraham Bronfeld, would greet me with his thick Polish accent and a warm smile, flash ing his gold fillings, always making sure I had a place to eat.

Shortly after the Second World War, Avraham and his second wife Sarah, both Holocaust survivors, moved to Philadelphia and opened a small children’s clothing store. They never had children.

On my first visit to the shul, Avraham escorted me to the hard wooden seat next to him and handed me a siddur. I recall my consternation when I saw the word Sefard on the cover, undoubtedly causing me to feel even more out of place. I opened the siddur cautiously, not knowing what kind of prayers I would encounter. I can still hear the gentle lilt of words and phrases running the course of the two-hour service from Shacharit to Mussaf as I enunciated them for the first time.

It wasn’t only the sardines and home-baked challah that enchanted me for seudah shelishit, which they invited me to attend weekly. The whole Shabbat atmosphere seemed to impart a magical, old-world, holy aura to the

prayers, something I had never experi enced before. Somehow, it all felt oddly familiar. I remember, as well, asking my new friend Avraham one Shabbat after Maariv if I could borrow a siddur, as I had decided to integrate this new nusach into my daily prayers. When he promptly handed me his siddur, I felt as if he were my own grandfather, my guide, giving me something special and precious on my bar mitzvah day. As I made my way down the cobblestone streets past Colonial-era gas lamps, clutching my new siddur, I felt as if I had acquired something that would help me fill in the mosaic of my family tree, a tradition I was slowly discovering.

For many years, long after I had finished my medical studies and moved out of Philly, long after my friend had died and both the children’s clothing store and the small shul had closed their doors, I continued praying with this siddur, which had become a trusted companion that I turned to three times a day.

I must confess that while I felt more and more familiar with the “new” nusach, I harbored a sense of guilt. Per haps I had abandoned the custom of my father and my ancestors. Perhaps I was not being true to my family tradition.

On one of my trips to my family home in Pittsburgh, I resolved to ask my father what the nusach of our family was.

“Dad, tell me . . .” I inquired, sure I would either be exonerated or totally shamed by his answer.

“Well, I daven Nusach Ashkenaz, simply because that was the tradition in the school I attended,” he said.

“But,” I quickly asked, “what about Zeide . . . what was his nusach?”

“To tell you the truth, son, I don’t really know.”

A few months later, I again returned to Pittsburgh. I had occasion to daven at Congregation Poale Zedeck, the central Ashkenazic shul in Squirrel Hill. I recall reaching the sanctuary early that Friday afternoon. Immediately, I began my ritual, usually futile, of looking for a Nusach Sefard siddur. Within seconds, I heard a penetrating voice in the back ask, “What are you looking for?” When

I explained my quest, the man, wearing Chassidic garb, immediately pulled two siddurim out of the archaic wooden bookshelf in the back corner. “This one is for me—I daven Nusach Sefard, of course. And I save this one for guests. Here, take it,” he offered, “but be sure to give it back.”

With much appreciation, I took the worn, faded orange-covered siddur and sat down. “How eerie,” I thought. “This stranger and I are the only ones in the sanctuary, and here is my cherished prize.”

But what I could never have imagined at that moment was the surprise and implosion of feeling that overtook me as I opened the siddur and found, stamped inside the cover, my Zeide’s name, “Asher Zelig Dickman,” and address, “Wiley Ave, Hill District, Pittsburgh,” in ink as clear and fresh as if stamped only today! I hadn’t seen my Zeide in over fifty years!

I proceeded to daven the Friday night service with tears of devotion and gratitude. I felt as if my Zeide were accompanying me, embracing me firmly and warmly. I wished the prayer service would somehow never end. But it did, and after a sigh and a brief kiss, I dutifully returned the siddur to the bookshelf.

I never again found the siddur, or the old chassid, despite many attempts at rummaging through the old siddurim in the back corner of the sanctuary.

My journey stretched from Pitts burgh to Philadelphia, New York to Jerusalem and back, extending over half a century. Sometimes it takes what seems to be a lifetime to have our prayers answered.

* Chassidut introduced kabbalistic themes into the traditional Ashkenaz siddur. The result became known as Nusach Sefard

Dr. Moshe Dickman currently resides in Jerusalem where he is assistant professor of neurology at the Hadassah Medical Center. He has a clinical neurology practice, specializing in ADHD and movement disorders.

MÉTHODE

HERZOG MÉTHODE CHAMPENOISE | RUSSIAN RIVER VALLEY | BRUT