Or: happy Elul!
So when will the OU withdraw certification entirely from Rubashkin's? When the case goes to court? When a conviction is handed down? When the sentence is served? How many "weeks" will this take? 1? 2? 6? 12? 52?
And why does there need to be a change in management? After all, these are just goyish legal structures we're talking about (ערכאות של גוים). "The law of the land is the law" is just Conservative liberal halachah, right?
Maybe there needs to be another trip to Iowa, company-paid. Make sure one of the rabbis involved "knows some Spanish." Look, the cafeteria is awful clean!
Showing posts with label kashrus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kashrus. Show all posts
5/23/08
A letter to Sholom Rubashkin
Read the letter here. ("Effective June 15, 2008 we will stop patronizing any restaurant which serves your meat.")
1/14/08
The Moral Imagination
Steven Pinker's essay on the moral sciences (Adam Smith, anyone?) in the Times is written in the excited tone of a true believer, and I'm a heretic. The claim is that morality is hard-wired into the brain, and that experimental psychology (with its LiteBrite phrenology, the fMRI) is the window into that wiring.
The main problem I have, grosso modo, is lightly touched upon by Pinker about midway through his article where -- in the context of categorizing the moral priorities of various cultures -- he tosses off a brief disclaimer about whether a given anthropologist is a "lumper or a splitter." The implication is that, if one lumps enough, one can find a useful number of moral categories whose distribution can be predicted by presumed psychological laws.
But morality (which Pinker, if you notice, never gets around to defining) is the very art (or science, or discipline-of-thought) of making such distinctions. Recourse to broad generalities of human behavior (that millions of people around the globe tend to respond the same way to a an Internet survey about counterfactual trolley accidents) is not the same thing as discerning the sources - let alone the definition or guiding principle - of morality. That various approved opinions or behaviors are "moralized" (smoking) or "demoralized" (premarital sex) does not mean they are indicators of changing boundaries of morality, merely that high dudgeon is fungible.
Lumping and splitting is particularly tricky when it comes to religion. This is important, because comparative religionists like to lump. I don't know about the details of many religions, but when "the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of [...] Orthodox Jews" (that 'Orthodox' drives me nuts, but never mind) is taken as an exemplar of the moral categorization "purity," I raise an eyebrow. The same mistake is made here by which Chomsky facilely lumps all languages into the same hard-wired diagram. Which "holy ablutions" are meant exactly? There are a number in the Torah, and they don't all serve the same purpose. The aim of kashrut, in the Biblical worldview, is a vexing question. I think Milgrom has it right with his proposal that the dietary restrictions are a way to separate out the Jewish people in holiness from the nations. But this is a crucial distinction and something different from "purity."
I don't deny that moral psychology is a science that will contribute to our understanding of morality. But definitions, and fine distinctions, make morality a very tangled tissue to see with any scan.
The main problem I have, grosso modo, is lightly touched upon by Pinker about midway through his article where -- in the context of categorizing the moral priorities of various cultures -- he tosses off a brief disclaimer about whether a given anthropologist is a "lumper or a splitter." The implication is that, if one lumps enough, one can find a useful number of moral categories whose distribution can be predicted by presumed psychological laws.
But morality (which Pinker, if you notice, never gets around to defining) is the very art (or science, or discipline-of-thought) of making such distinctions. Recourse to broad generalities of human behavior (that millions of people around the globe tend to respond the same way to a an Internet survey about counterfactual trolley accidents) is not the same thing as discerning the sources - let alone the definition or guiding principle - of morality. That various approved opinions or behaviors are "moralized" (smoking) or "demoralized" (premarital sex) does not mean they are indicators of changing boundaries of morality, merely that high dudgeon is fungible.
Lumping and splitting is particularly tricky when it comes to religion. This is important, because comparative religionists like to lump. I don't know about the details of many religions, but when "the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of [...] Orthodox Jews" (that 'Orthodox' drives me nuts, but never mind) is taken as an exemplar of the moral categorization "purity," I raise an eyebrow. The same mistake is made here by which Chomsky facilely lumps all languages into the same hard-wired diagram. Which "holy ablutions" are meant exactly? There are a number in the Torah, and they don't all serve the same purpose. The aim of kashrut, in the Biblical worldview, is a vexing question. I think Milgrom has it right with his proposal that the dietary restrictions are a way to separate out the Jewish people in holiness from the nations. But this is a crucial distinction and something different from "purity."
I don't deny that moral psychology is a science that will contribute to our understanding of morality. But definitions, and fine distinctions, make morality a very tangled tissue to see with any scan.
6/13/07
Justice, justice, shalt thou eat
A blog about the "social justice hechsher." (Hat tip to S.B. of Louisville.)
A blog about the "social justice hechsher." (Hat tip to S.B. of Louisville.)
8/4/05
Hospital Food
It's always lunchtime somewhere.
Here's Medicine Mensch 8. Dig in!
MEDICINE MENSCH: Doctor's Orders: Fruit Salad and a Cheese Sandwich
By Zackary Sholem Berger
August 5, 2005
Despite the superpowers previously described in this space, medical students are normal people. They need places to lay their heads, white medical coats to keep out the rain, and three meals a day. Since their time for breakfast and dinner is sacrificed to sleep, three meals often means only one: lunch.
What's for lunch, and where do I eat it? On the ground floor of the hospital I'm working in, there's a diner with the same wishful-thinking menu of other diners — many things can be ordered and some of them are even available. I eat there occasionally. That is, I go with some other medical students, order an iced tea and a fruit salad, and eat my kosher bread and cheese from a bag I hide under the table. No one throws me out, and the iced tea is good.
The fruit salad, in a securely-fastened plastic box easily opened by surgeons or other coordinated people, is the same that's available just next door, over the partition at the hospital's coffee shop. But there, rules are different, and the hospital's stern hierarchy is topsy-turvied. Attending physicians and patients' cousins alike wait in line to grab the attention of the blue-shirted guys who take orders, man the cash registers and bag coffees and tuna wraps with frightening speed, calling women mi amor and discussing soccer with each other in Spanish. A sign over the cash register explains enigmatically: "All Kitchen Items Cannot Be Ordered Express." In practical terms, this means that the blue shirts have complete control over what they pack up quickly and what they prepare in their own good time. I'm not sure how long it takes to become a regular in their eyes, but if I go there often enough and order a homemade iced tea, no sugar, I hope eventually they'll start to recognize me.
As you move upstairs, the options change. There are vending machines with sweet and salty snacks, from a company that either has a dark sense of humor or doesn't realize how many patients here are suffering from diabetes or heart failure. On the 12th floor there's a dining room with a cafeteria that I've never seen open, a phalanx of vending machines, and a row of microwave ovens; at lunchtime the place is packed with nurses speaking Tagalog, Chinese and Spanish. Outside, above the door, there's an inviting Dante-esque sign: "Patients Not Permitted."
This is because patients are expected to stay in their rooms, awaiting care. Their care, like everything else in this hospital, is dependent on the combined efforts of thousands. And when something goes wrong, such mistakes are discussed exhaustively over lunch. At morbidity and mortality conferences, mishaps are analyzed over bagels and coffee. In line at the coffee shop, people whisper about the surgeon who operated on the wrong leg. These days, hospital administrators are terrified of the survey commission that's about to come through town, flashing remorseless, efficient smiles and catching careless errors in every chart. Some mistakes don't cost anyone's life or limb — they merely make the patient's dinner late. But even this can be a serious blow. As one resident told us students, "The best way to piss a patient off is not to feed them."
A couple of nights ago I was in the E.R. A patient had been sent there with an unexpected heart problem after what he had assumed would be an uneventful checkup. I took his history, did a thorough physical, and then thought: What more can I possibly do for this person before the resident has time to come see him? I had already done his EKG, and I'd already apologized to him for the confusion in the E.R., which, to the untrained eye, is the natural state of the big-city emergency rooms. (That particular night, the air conditioning wasn't working, a dozen or so cops were guarding their charges and the guy in the stretcher next to my patient was screaming, more out of churlishness than pain.) I asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?" The man looked at me, thought a bit, and said tentatively (in Spanish), "Well, I'm awfully hungry."
It was a rare privilege to lay down a hot meal in front of this sick man. I didn't stick around to see whether he liked the spaghetti, or, after he finished, how he managed to get his tray off the stretcher while staying attached to his heart monitor. I was too busy getting up to the 17th floor, where I would tuck into a saag paneer and drink some mango lassi. It was 9:15 p.m., finally time for lunch.
Zackary Sholem Berger looks forward to breakfast and dinner, too. Medical-student recipes and tales of past mistakes are available at doctor@forward.com.
It's always lunchtime somewhere.
Here's Medicine Mensch 8. Dig in!
MEDICINE MENSCH: Doctor's Orders: Fruit Salad and a Cheese Sandwich
By Zackary Sholem Berger
August 5, 2005
Despite the superpowers previously described in this space, medical students are normal people. They need places to lay their heads, white medical coats to keep out the rain, and three meals a day. Since their time for breakfast and dinner is sacrificed to sleep, three meals often means only one: lunch.
What's for lunch, and where do I eat it? On the ground floor of the hospital I'm working in, there's a diner with the same wishful-thinking menu of other diners — many things can be ordered and some of them are even available. I eat there occasionally. That is, I go with some other medical students, order an iced tea and a fruit salad, and eat my kosher bread and cheese from a bag I hide under the table. No one throws me out, and the iced tea is good.
The fruit salad, in a securely-fastened plastic box easily opened by surgeons or other coordinated people, is the same that's available just next door, over the partition at the hospital's coffee shop. But there, rules are different, and the hospital's stern hierarchy is topsy-turvied. Attending physicians and patients' cousins alike wait in line to grab the attention of the blue-shirted guys who take orders, man the cash registers and bag coffees and tuna wraps with frightening speed, calling women mi amor and discussing soccer with each other in Spanish. A sign over the cash register explains enigmatically: "All Kitchen Items Cannot Be Ordered Express." In practical terms, this means that the blue shirts have complete control over what they pack up quickly and what they prepare in their own good time. I'm not sure how long it takes to become a regular in their eyes, but if I go there often enough and order a homemade iced tea, no sugar, I hope eventually they'll start to recognize me.
As you move upstairs, the options change. There are vending machines with sweet and salty snacks, from a company that either has a dark sense of humor or doesn't realize how many patients here are suffering from diabetes or heart failure. On the 12th floor there's a dining room with a cafeteria that I've never seen open, a phalanx of vending machines, and a row of microwave ovens; at lunchtime the place is packed with nurses speaking Tagalog, Chinese and Spanish. Outside, above the door, there's an inviting Dante-esque sign: "Patients Not Permitted."
This is because patients are expected to stay in their rooms, awaiting care. Their care, like everything else in this hospital, is dependent on the combined efforts of thousands. And when something goes wrong, such mistakes are discussed exhaustively over lunch. At morbidity and mortality conferences, mishaps are analyzed over bagels and coffee. In line at the coffee shop, people whisper about the surgeon who operated on the wrong leg. These days, hospital administrators are terrified of the survey commission that's about to come through town, flashing remorseless, efficient smiles and catching careless errors in every chart. Some mistakes don't cost anyone's life or limb — they merely make the patient's dinner late. But even this can be a serious blow. As one resident told us students, "The best way to piss a patient off is not to feed them."
A couple of nights ago I was in the E.R. A patient had been sent there with an unexpected heart problem after what he had assumed would be an uneventful checkup. I took his history, did a thorough physical, and then thought: What more can I possibly do for this person before the resident has time to come see him? I had already done his EKG, and I'd already apologized to him for the confusion in the E.R., which, to the untrained eye, is the natural state of the big-city emergency rooms. (That particular night, the air conditioning wasn't working, a dozen or so cops were guarding their charges and the guy in the stretcher next to my patient was screaming, more out of churlishness than pain.) I asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?" The man looked at me, thought a bit, and said tentatively (in Spanish), "Well, I'm awfully hungry."
It was a rare privilege to lay down a hot meal in front of this sick man. I didn't stick around to see whether he liked the spaghetti, or, after he finished, how he managed to get his tray off the stretcher while staying attached to his heart monitor. I was too busy getting up to the 17th floor, where I would tuck into a saag paneer and drink some mango lassi. It was 9:15 p.m., finally time for lunch.
Zackary Sholem Berger looks forward to breakfast and dinner, too. Medical-student recipes and tales of past mistakes are available at doctor@forward.com.
12/1/04
Thanksgiving leftovers
and Denver relations.
There were traditional family greetings: the opening gambit of my lawyer-philosopher uncle that he had (yet again) found a great proof for the non-existence of God (nice try!); discussions of poetry with the other uncle who was there (who also, in jovial greeting, pumped my baby's hand many times, pump-handle style, to her great amusement); my daughter's discovery of the fun that can be had with a pair of grandparents.
There were traditional activities done in non-traditional ways: a Shabbos spent at two shuls (Friday night at this shul, at whose previous incarnation my Mom and Dad were married -- it labels itself as traditional but seems to be moving ever-rightward, or, with the mechitzah height, upward; Shabbos morning with the Reconstructionists, the shul my grandmother attends).
There were activities afforded by opportunity: two Scotch-on-the-rocks at my aunt and uncle's place, part of my graduate-student mental-health regimen. (I suppose the only true guarantor of graduate-student mental health would be a fifth of Scotch, neat. But I digress.)
There was the brined turkey. I had read about brined turkeys but never yet consumed one, which I did in Denver with gusto, brio, and relish. (Not to mention panache and afan. And ganas.)
On the airplane from snowy Denver to chilly New York City, I gnawed at the turkey leftovers in satisfied fashion while our daughter slept. The woman on my left murmured, "Your baby's so good!" That was before Blanca woke up and fussed for the last forty-five minutes of the flight. Repeat after me, ma'am: Keyn eynore. Keyn eynore.
and Denver relations.
There were traditional family greetings: the opening gambit of my lawyer-philosopher uncle that he had (yet again) found a great proof for the non-existence of God (nice try!); discussions of poetry with the other uncle who was there (who also, in jovial greeting, pumped my baby's hand many times, pump-handle style, to her great amusement); my daughter's discovery of the fun that can be had with a pair of grandparents.
There were traditional activities done in non-traditional ways: a Shabbos spent at two shuls (Friday night at this shul, at whose previous incarnation my Mom and Dad were married -- it labels itself as traditional but seems to be moving ever-rightward, or, with the mechitzah height, upward; Shabbos morning with the Reconstructionists, the shul my grandmother attends).
There were activities afforded by opportunity: two Scotch-on-the-rocks at my aunt and uncle's place, part of my graduate-student mental-health regimen. (I suppose the only true guarantor of graduate-student mental health would be a fifth of Scotch, neat. But I digress.)
There was the brined turkey. I had read about brined turkeys but never yet consumed one, which I did in Denver with gusto, brio, and relish. (Not to mention panache and afan. And ganas.)
On the airplane from snowy Denver to chilly New York City, I gnawed at the turkey leftovers in satisfied fashion while our daughter slept. The woman on my left murmured, "Your baby's so good!" That was before Blanca woke up and fussed for the last forty-five minutes of the flight. Repeat after me, ma'am: Keyn eynore. Keyn eynore.
2/3/04
In which I answer to a lower authority
The next time I go to the Associated grocery store on 23rd Street and Second Avenue, I can either buy the premium kosher meat that's recently appeared there -- a variety of tempting cuts, quite pricey, but a lot more convenient than the nearest proper butcher -- or I can eat something I've never eaten before: Hebrew National.
I have mixed feelings about this new possibility. For many years, Hebrew National was considered kosher enough to eat by an ever-shrinking slice of the Jewish pie. I don't know how long Hebrew National has been a brand unto itself, though now it seems to be part of some food monolith with the unappetizing name of ConAgra. In any case, though, until recently, it was possible for a product to be kosher without being certified by some large national organization. Indeed, kosher certification by those organizations (e.g. the O-U), is only eighty-some years old, if this on-line history is reliable. Widespread use of these hechsherim as the gold standard is even more recent.
What is the effect of this ever-broadening appeal to organizational hechsherim? As with any organizational convergence, the end result is more conservative (with a small "c") -- the national supervising organizations are more liberal than some other alternatives (like some ultra-Orthodox hechsherim often seen on Israeli products), and more stringent than others.
The problem for Hebrew National is that, for whatever reason, what one might call the "stringency curve" for traditional Jewish religious observance is sharply right-shifted. In English: most observant folks are on the rightward end of the spectrum. It used to be that the imprimatur of Rabbi T. Stern (the name on Hebrew National products until the recent change) was enough for many people who kept kosher. But as this right-shift began to take effect over the past few decades, a premium was placed on mass-market hechsherim. Loyalty to rabbis known personally in one's community ceded pride of place to brand loyalty, rigorous attention to the most stringent halachic detail, and a new industry of kosher supervision. One proof of this can be brought from the reasons I heard given for people refusing to eat Hebrew National when good old Rabbi Stern was its certifying rabbi -- the only evidence adduced was darkly whispered "leniencies," and rarely anything more specific than that.
All this means that for the duration of Rabbi Stern's Hebrew National hechsher there was a gap between national brand-name hechsherim and a smaller-scale, non-hegemonic definition of kashrut. It would have been perfect for the Conservative movement to take advantage of, an opportunity to explain the difference between Jewish law and tradition and standardized Orthodox stringency. National kashrut organizations encourage stringent observance - but that is not the only variety of kashrut. There is a community standard, independent of the kosher industry, which has not yet been completely coopted. Unforunately, while many Conservative Jews probably did eat Hebrew National, they weren't the sort that were likely to keep kashrut in general. Thus, while I approved theoretically of Rabbi Stern's hechsher, I never ate of it myself, since I never found a kosher-keeping community that approved of it.
With not a completely light heart, then, but with a curious palate, I'm going to buy myself some Hebrew National hot dogs next time I'm in the store, with the triangle-K brand of hechsher. For those of you who find these fine distinctions faintly ridiculous, consider them another reason to be vegetarian.
Postscript: The Kosher Blog has links to more information about the late Rabbi T. Stern, the lone certifier. (I got his name wrong, but I've corrected it above.) Also, it seems I missed the number-one reason why the right-shift rendered Stern's certification not kosher enough: it wasn't glatt kosher.
Enentation comments
The next time I go to the Associated grocery store on 23rd Street and Second Avenue, I can either buy the premium kosher meat that's recently appeared there -- a variety of tempting cuts, quite pricey, but a lot more convenient than the nearest proper butcher -- or I can eat something I've never eaten before: Hebrew National.
I have mixed feelings about this new possibility. For many years, Hebrew National was considered kosher enough to eat by an ever-shrinking slice of the Jewish pie. I don't know how long Hebrew National has been a brand unto itself, though now it seems to be part of some food monolith with the unappetizing name of ConAgra. In any case, though, until recently, it was possible for a product to be kosher without being certified by some large national organization. Indeed, kosher certification by those organizations (e.g. the O-U), is only eighty-some years old, if this on-line history is reliable. Widespread use of these hechsherim as the gold standard is even more recent.
What is the effect of this ever-broadening appeal to organizational hechsherim? As with any organizational convergence, the end result is more conservative (with a small "c") -- the national supervising organizations are more liberal than some other alternatives (like some ultra-Orthodox hechsherim often seen on Israeli products), and more stringent than others.
The problem for Hebrew National is that, for whatever reason, what one might call the "stringency curve" for traditional Jewish religious observance is sharply right-shifted. In English: most observant folks are on the rightward end of the spectrum. It used to be that the imprimatur of Rabbi T. Stern (the name on Hebrew National products until the recent change) was enough for many people who kept kosher. But as this right-shift began to take effect over the past few decades, a premium was placed on mass-market hechsherim. Loyalty to rabbis known personally in one's community ceded pride of place to brand loyalty, rigorous attention to the most stringent halachic detail, and a new industry of kosher supervision. One proof of this can be brought from the reasons I heard given for people refusing to eat Hebrew National when good old Rabbi Stern was its certifying rabbi -- the only evidence adduced was darkly whispered "leniencies," and rarely anything more specific than that.
All this means that for the duration of Rabbi Stern's Hebrew National hechsher there was a gap between national brand-name hechsherim and a smaller-scale, non-hegemonic definition of kashrut. It would have been perfect for the Conservative movement to take advantage of, an opportunity to explain the difference between Jewish law and tradition and standardized Orthodox stringency. National kashrut organizations encourage stringent observance - but that is not the only variety of kashrut. There is a community standard, independent of the kosher industry, which has not yet been completely coopted. Unforunately, while many Conservative Jews probably did eat Hebrew National, they weren't the sort that were likely to keep kashrut in general. Thus, while I approved theoretically of Rabbi Stern's hechsher, I never ate of it myself, since I never found a kosher-keeping community that approved of it.
With not a completely light heart, then, but with a curious palate, I'm going to buy myself some Hebrew National hot dogs next time I'm in the store, with the triangle-K brand of hechsher. For those of you who find these fine distinctions faintly ridiculous, consider them another reason to be vegetarian.
Postscript: The Kosher Blog has links to more information about the late Rabbi T. Stern, the lone certifier. (I got his name wrong, but I've corrected it above.) Also, it seems I missed the number-one reason why the right-shift rendered Stern's certification not kosher enough: it wasn't glatt kosher.
Enentation comments
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