By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
Keeping a kosher kitchen in America has never been an easy undertaking. But in a simpler time, complications could be minimized by using the known neighborhood kosher butcher and buying basic ingredients for home cooking from known merchants. Moms were often at home and had the day to prepare meals from scratch.
But in the 21st century, in a world where assimilated Jews shop in über-markets for processed foods that are run through a microwave oven after both parents get home from work, and the kids are always in need of a ride to a class or to soccer practice, it’s much more difficult to be sure that what goes from kitchen to table to mouth has been properly kashered.
The problems faced by individuals and families is compounded across the community. In a world where food is processed through ever-changing technologies in a myriad of plants scattered across the world, there is no way that the rabbinical kashering agencies such as the Orthodox Union or the local rabbinate can begin to monitor the entire food supply chain and give direction.
Into that breach steps individuals such as Rabbi Simcha Smolensky and his colleagues at Global Kosher Consulting.
Combining religious training and knowledge with the expertise of food technologists, chemists and industrial engineers, Global Kosher Consulting works with the kashering agencies, which authorize use of a hechsher on products, as well as with local organizations such as the Va’ad HaRabanim of Seattle, to assure that dietary laws have been observed in the preparation of foods both on the grocery shelves as well as in restaurants, delis and bakeries.
“Something as basic as fruit juice can present challenges,” Smolensky said in a public meeting hosted by the Seattle Va’ad at Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island on Jan. 9. Smolensky’s talk was titled “Bubbe Didn’t Worry About This… Changes in Food Processing Affecting Kashrut.”
“Commercially produced and packaged juices are pasteurized,” he said. “That process in the food industry uses a complicated piece of machinery that is used for a variety of products. If a plant does a batch of grape juice one day and then orange juice the next, that can raise issues.”
The passage of grape juice through the equipment renders it unfit to process other juices that would be packaged with a hechsher until it has been properly cleansed, Smolensky said. Therefore, Smolensky and other consultants visit the plants and work with the processors to develop standards that will allow the production of acceptable product for distribution.
Smolensky and his partners travel the world to assure that an adequate selection of products are available to the Jewish community. Through that work, some clearly unanticipated issues have arisen.
“I had a colleague working in New Zealand,” he said. “He noticed that tanker loads of lactose, derived from the large dairy industry there, were being shipped to Ireland. He asked about it and it turns out that in Ireland the lactose was being added to the distillation process of Irish whiskey, making it a dairy product.”
In Seattle, GKC has entered into an agreement with the Va’ad to advise on dietary practices, particularly in terms of local bakeries and restaurants. That includes working with mashgichim, or inspectors, who monitor kashrut in such commercial operations.
“We don’t set policy,” Smolensky said. “We advise the rabbis and work within guidelines they have set. They have decided not to work to the lowest common denominator, nor to the highest, either. They want to provide the broadest opportunities to the community and still maintain the integrity of dietary practices.”
The Va’ad and Smolensky are hoping to make the community forums such as the one on Jan. 9, to discuss issues surrounding dietary practices and challenges presented in the modern world, available on a regular basis.
One piece of news Smolensky did make public that affects the local community is that cholov Yisroel dairy products — a designation in which a mashgiach is on hand at a non-Jewish-owned dairy farm to ensure no milk from non-kosher animals can interfere with the would-be kosher milk — which currently command a high price in local dairy cases due to the shipping costs from the Midwest, may be about to become more affordable due to efforts to establish a dairy farm and plant in Oregon to process certified products.
“The rabbis of Portland and Seattle are in negotiations to establish a facility that will produce cholov Yisroel products to serve Washington and Oregon,” he said.
No date was announced, but Smolensky was confident that the efforts could bear fruit in the relative near future.