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Thursday, September 07, 2006

NYT on Monsey Treif Chicken Scandal


Pretty detailed piece, complete with picture (left) of the frantic kashering of dishes and utensils that is described in the article:
MONSEY, N.Y., Sept. 6 — Since sundown on Saturday — when the Jewish Sabbath ended — men, women and children have been scrubbing kitchen counters and stoves, and dipping pots and utensils in scalding water.

“My husband and I had to leave everything we were doing,” said Esther Herzl, 61, a Hasidic grandmother who lives here, “and all we did was scrape and scrape and scrape — from the cutlery to the glassware to the countertops, oven and stove. I’m beat. We’re truly religious, so we don’t cheat in the cleaning.”

The cleansing ritual, which is prescribed by Jewish law, became necessary after a Hasidic butcher was accused of stocking the shelves of a kosher grocery store here with nonkosher chicken and selling it to thousands of Orthodox Jewish families.

Now a group of rabbis is debating the fate of the butcher.

Catch all the intrigue here.

16 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can someone please clarify the picture?
It looks like they're kashering china (I did hear that they're being maikil with that) but the water is nowhere near scalding - the person in the picture is in it up to his elbow! I would have guess this was really a picture of toiveling, except it doesn't look like a mikivah...

12:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can someone please clarify the picture?
It looks like they're kashering china (I did hear that they're being maikil with that) but the water is nowhere near scalding - the person in the picture is in it up to his elbow! I would have guessed this was really a picture of toiveling, except it doesn't look like a mikivah...

12:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry for the double comment - I tried to fix a typo and I didn't cath it quickly enough!

12:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

please note halacha requires after you kasher in hot water you should dip it or out it under cold water in order that the belious don’t reenter the utensils .This picture shows someone dipping into cold water
if you are unaware of this halach consult your rabbi
P.S please not with china wait a few seconds for it to cool before placing it in cold water so it doesn't crack from the temperature change

12:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think some ppl are not kashering China with hot water, but rather letting it soak in water for 24 hours, as one might do with glass.

That was my take when I saw the photo this AM in the paper.

3:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Under what circumstances does one dip in cold?

How can china be kashered?

What about non-kasherable items such as woods and plastics?

Many are going to have to discard or give away much of their fleishig utensils, cookware, and dishes, no?

What about dishwashers?

On another topic, the NY Times page had a link to a story regarding Zoroastrians dying out. It seems a very Jewish story, in many ways: a monotheistic, ethical, non-proselytizing religion is seeing its population dwindle greatly, in large part due to persecution, assimilation, intermarriage, and low birth rates.

11:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Now a group of rabbis is debating the fate of the butcher"

Shades of Taliban. The best punishment is the Market Place. No one is ever going to buy from this guy again.

12:33 AM  
Blogger Orthonomics said...

Anon 11:28--The halacha is a lot more "lenient" than "what is done." Halacha considers the financial hardship and I see no reason why the Rabbis would be strict after such a terrible story.

9:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

SL: Thanks. Though, one can only be lenient to a certain degree, no? What doubts might allow for leniency? This being a matter of kashrut, people's tendencies will probably lean towards being more strict, both for reasons of family tradition of being strict and because of the "ick" factor.

2:49 PM  
Blogger Orthonomics said...

In cases of significant loss, the halacha is pretty clear as far as I can tell.

People will need to get over the "ick" factor and just rely on the halacha. The halacha doesn't call for waste either.

(But, I know what you are talking about because I witness it all the time with my neighbors).

6:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Digging up my memories about kashering from when I went to sem... There is room for leniency in permitting the kashering of ceramics because in the heating process of making it a layer of glass forms on the ceramic. And many people hold you can kasher glass.

9:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think Corelle is always considered kasherable as non-porous material, perhaps for the reasons stated by the previous commenter. And I have heard of other ceramics being allowed to be consdered kashered if they happened to be out-of-use for years -- the "family china" idea.

Glass, yes, that's why the drinking glasses can go back and forth. I didn't know that not everyone held that way. Though, our Pesach meat dishes are glass and we don't use them for dairy at all.

But, anyway, woods and plastics? I don't see leniencies for obviously porous materials.

Dishwashers, I don't know. Isn't this why many people buy new dishwashers upon moving into a home and use only for dairy or meat but not both? While some people do use a dishwasher for both, running a cycle in between, and some feel that a treif dishwasher can be kashered, I would think that those who bought new and/or do not use for both did/do so because the existing ones they considered totally unkasherable, so why would that change now?

10:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder what the quoted woman was scraping and scraping! What form of kashering involves scraping? Maybe schmutz baked-on a casserole dish, or the oven or stove -- but cutlery and glassware? And scraping, as far as I know, is not kashering, thouhg it might be a necessary cleaning process priorto kashering.

10:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I bet you a loving this scandal you ortho anti semite

12:38 PM  
Anonymous viagra online said...

They have really weird costumes I think they're wrong in some things they doing actually they should change their mind.

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