kosher food

Original Article at The Jerusalem Post

Every November, the entire kosher food industry descends on the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, for two exhausting, invigorating days of Kosherfest, the central kosher food event of the year, which attracts 6,000 industry professionals.

Caterers, distributors, chefs, restaurant, camp, nursing home and hotel owners, kosher supervision agencies, and companies of all sizes selling products ranging from gefilte fish to Matzola to pistachios to grills and aprons work their way down seven long aisles featuring 325 exhibitors.

They taste dozens of food and beverage products, view cooking demonstrations, exchange business cards and get new ideas for the upcoming year.

Kosherfest is truly unique among trade shows. Which other trade show cautions visitors to sample carefully, as both dairy and meat products are on display, and reminds them of times of morning and (nearly continuous) afternoon minyanim? Kosherfest features small booths and larger displays of both old favorites and newcomers. Streit’s and Manischewitz, best known as matza companies, display such relatively new matza-derived products as Matzola (matza granola) and matza s’mores. A & B Famous has proudly evolved from just a gefilte fish company to one that features new items such as tricolor gefilte fish (original, salmon and spinach!), parve kishke and salmon and trout franks.

Gabila’s Knishes, a four-generation business that has sold over a billion knishes in 90 years, displays sweet potato and several varieties of cheese knishes, alongside classic potato knishes.

While newer companies such as Paravella (high-quality Italian chocolate spread), Nongshim (minestrone and classic chicken cups of soup and mushroom alfredo), DumaSea Surimi (fish cakes) and Katz’s Gluten Free (doughnuts and bagels) are examples of the yearly increase in numbers of kosher products hitting the shelves, several booths in Aisle 700 offer a clue to a very important development in the global kosher world.

Kosher products (photo credit: Courtesy)

Aisle 700 is home to pavilions of Japan, the Czech Republic, Korea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India. How and why have companies and trade organizations from these countries, as well as from Turkey, South Africa, Argentina and Chile, come to Kosherfest? “The reality is that kosher is expanding!” observes Rabbi Moshe Elefant, executive rabbinic coordinator and chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union. Faraway countries are grasping that reality. “We reach 9,000 plants and certify products in over 90 countries.”

Joe Regenstein, PhD, professor of food science at Cornell University and head of Cornell Kosher and Halal Food Initiative, observes, “If you are going to export to the United States, where 40% of goods are kosher certified, you can’t get into the market without mainstream kosher certification.”

Many of the products certified kosher by the OU are not ready-to-eat foods consumers will find on the supermarket shelves. Rather, they are ingredients from abroad. Rabbi Menachem Genack, administrator and CEO of the Orthodox Union, notes, “Thirty-five years ago, all ingredients were produced in the United States. Now, most ingredients come from abroad – sodium caseinate, citric acid from China, even yak’s milk from Tibet!” The OU has invested millions of dollars in a registry of ingredients which is continuously updated.

To Genack, it is clear that “the biggest trend in kashrut has been the globalization of the economy.”

Importing raw ingredients is big business. While the use of such products in mainstream food production has generally helped bring food prices down, Genack notes, “We wonder whether the Trump victory will affect trade in the United States. We have to see.”

For now, foreign countries are hopeful.

Representatives from many countries offer unique stories of how and why their companies have discovered the world of kosher and the Kosherfest trade show.

Winemaker Jean van Rooyen is here from Paarl, South Africa, to introduce his OU-certified line of Unorthodox Wines to the US market.

Trevor Shevil, CEO of Sally Williams Fine Foods, is here with his honey nougats and Belgian chocolates and is looking to expand his market. “We export to 22 countries, and the kosher market is hugely successful. We have been kosher for all 20 years of our existence – and we give back to the Jewish community.”

Rabbi Menachem Genack (left) and Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the Orthodox Union (photo credit: HOWARD BLAS)

Rasmin Narin, vice chairman of a company in Mersin, Turkey, which produces Okka brand tehina, playfully notes, “The market brought me to Kosherfest!” Ten years ago, Narin had never heard of kosher. “Customers approached me and told me I need to be kosher. They liked my tehina a lot and told me they couldn’t use it unless I was kosher.” Narin offers a lesson in tehina production and distribution, explaining that most of the world’s tehina comes from Lebanon, Greece and Israel.

“Turkish tehina is not well known in the trade. It is like us supplying sushi from Turkey to Japan – it is very difficult!” Narin remains hopeful and is proud that his family business’s use of high-quality Ethiopian humera sesame seeds has led to contracts with Sabra Dipping Company.

Several Japanese companies sat at the Kosher Japan booth, eager to introduce fine Japanese foods to the American market. Joseph Edery, nephew of Rabbi Binyomin Edery, the current chief rabbi of Japan and Chabad rabbi who came to Japan 15 years ago, explains, “The Japanese have a very disciplined culture. They are devoted, particular, and their products are very healthy and high end.”

Rabbi Yehuda Benchemhoun, also at the Kosher Japan booth, is a scribe, shohet (kosher slaughterer), a botanist (currently working on koji, a filamentous fungus which provides a fragrant taste in the making of miso) and a professor of French at Brooklyn College in New York. Benchemhoun travels to Japan two or three times a year for two weeks at a time. At Kosherfest, he serves guests sake and a delicious sweet-potato dish, offering careful instructions on how to warm the sake glass with two hands, and where in the mouth to get most enjoyment from the sweet potato. “The Japanese have a very strong connection to nature and a strong natural pride.

Nature feeds us and we have to have respect. This is very Jewish!” Benchemhoun reports, “Without kosher certification, it is hard to enter the US market – it is better to have it.”

He and his colleagues at Kosher Japan are working hard to help Japanese manufacturers export their products.

Alexander Stevenson, manager and professional engineer for Lequios Japan, is an enzyme specialist and former US marine who lives in Okinawa, Japan.

Stevenson is wearing a traditional Japanese shirt as he mans the All Zen company booth and hands out samples of vegan soup and Matcha green tea.

“When we would go to the fancy food shows, buyers would ask us if we were kosher. When we said ‘no,’ they would walk away.

“We went home and saw there were other products which were halal certified but not kosher, so we went kosher. It was consumer driven!” The company started with soups and teas and has now expanded to matcha powder and ramen powder – with no monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer that many believe causes headaches and feelings of discomfort in large doses. Stevenson reports proudly, “We found the Orthodox Union and they give us a lot of support.”

In the nearby Korea pavilion, the Dong Bang company displays many varieties of sesame oil and perilla oil.

Manager Kang Mu Ku explains, “It is our first time here. We believe kosher certification opens opportunities for other markets.” Others in the Korea pavilion note, “Kosher has strict management and people believe kosher is a more high-quality product.”

The Chongga company is offering samples of kimchi, a Korean dish consisting of fermented chili peppers and vegetables. Korean-born Bongja Ziporah Rothkopf, CEO of the KOKO Food Kosher Korean who converted to Judaism 36 years ago, offers samples of her Kosherfest 2016 New Product Winner, Koko Gochhujang (fermented red hot pepper paste). Rothkopf manufactures in Korea and splits her time between Lakewood, New Jersey, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

Nearby, the Betula Pendula company, from the Czech Republic, is enthusiastically showing a most unique product, goat colostrum – the first milk secretion of the goat – which comes in both capsule and cream form. Company consultant Andrea Jelinkova notes, “It is good for health and skin rejuvenation.”

Ladislav Smejkal, COO and co-owner, reports, “Some customers had the idea that we would be wise to make our products kosher certified. We did and we are now trying to enter the Israel market.”

Fromin, another kosher-certified company from the Czech Republic, displays a more conventional product – bottled water – in gorgeous glass bottles of various shapes and sizes.

Todd Bentley, overseas trade director for Fromin (and himself based in Thailand), proudly notes, “Kosher is our new market. In January, I am going to Israel to negotiate.”

Rabbi Aaron Gunsberger, born in Prague and a lifelong resident of the Czech Republic, supervises 65 factories in the Czech Republic. He answers questions from curious visitors and hands out a “Catalogue of Czech Stand at Kosherfest 2016,” featuring write-ups, color photos and contact information of the seven Czech companies at Kosherfest. “Our goat products are very rare and unique,” reports Gunsberger proudly, “and they are halav Yisrael.”

Thushara Rajapakasha, director of SRS Fruit N Spices Ltd., exporters of dessicated coconut and spices, traveled a very long way from Negombo, Sri Lanka, to get to Kosherfest. “I first heard about kosher in 2000. Customers and distributors asked if we are kosher. They told us we needed to be kosher. His products are now under the supervision of the Star-K, the Baltimore-based kosher supervising agency.

Tonette Salazar, county manager of PS Kosher Philippines, tells a similar story of why companies in her country are seeking kosher supervision. “Reaching potential markets is a major key.” She has been working with Rabbi Joel Weinberger of Star-K for more than 15 years. “I wanted someone to help the Philippines, someone who is global, someone with a fine reputation.” She proudly hands out an 18-page spiral bound “Kosher in the Philippines” directory of kosher certified products and other activities that aim for kosherkeeping Jewish travelers.

Menachem Lubinsky, founder and co-producer of Kosherfest and the CEO and president of Lubicom Market Consulting, understands exactly why so many companies from around the world have discovered Kosherfest.

“If you produce an ingredient and want to sell to the US market, it needs to be kosher – otherwise, companies like Danon and Coca-Cola won’t buy from you. Kosher is a $30-billion business between the US and Israel alone. Around the world, they want to get a piece of the kosher food industry.”

This year, more than a dozen countries, from Argentina to Sri Lanka, discovered Kosherfest. Perhaps next year, even more countries, including representatives from the Arab world, will attend. A crazy idea? Not really.

“This year, we gave supervision in Saudi Arabia,” notes Elefant. “An ingredient company approached us, and a rabbi in our office traveled there. That story says what kosher is – when a company in a non-friendly country realizes they can’t succeed without the OU!” 

Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey (photo credit: HOWARD BLAS)

The business of being kosher

Restaurants and companies producing ingredients, edible products, beverages, foil and other kitchen products, vitamins, medicines, even medical marijuana have many national, regional and local options if they choose to seek kosher supervision.

According to the Brooklyn-based Kashrus Magazine, there are 1,371 Kosher supervision agencies worldwide listed in their 2017-18 guide.

Kosher certification is big business. In the United States, companies may apply for kosher supervision from one of the “big four” kosher certifying agencies which operate throughout the country and the world, or from local, regional or country-based certifying agencies.

The largest agencies include the OU (Orthodox Union), Star-K (and Star-D, the Star-K dairy division), KOF-K, and OK (Organized Kashrus Laboratories).

These symbols are registered trademarks of kosher certification organizations, meaning they cannot be placed on a food label without the organization’s permission.

Most states in the US have one or more kosher certifying agencies. Kashrut supervision operates in countries ranging from Argentina and Australia to Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. While most communities hold by the kosher standard of the “big four,” support of local agencies varies by community. Nearly all are under Orthodox auspices, though some operate under supervision of the Conservative movement (an example is KINAHARA, Kashrut Initiative of the New Haven Area Rabbinical Assembly in Connecticut).

In all countries except for Israel, the process of certifying kashrut takes place apart from the government. In Israel, where many feel kashrut has become political and divisive, the High Court, in June 2016, ruled that businesses can present themselves as kosher only if they have a certificate from the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate.

Most major American supervision agencies have user-friendly applications on their websites in languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian and German. This is an acknowledgment that so many ingredients and products are produced around the world.

The process of obtaining certification through a major kashrut certifying organization usually involves first completing an application online (including information about the company and plant, as well as a list of the products to be certified and their ingredients).

A rabbinic coordinator, who will serve as point man throughout the process, is assigned, and a rabbinic field representative then visits the plant and works with the certifying organization to determine if products are eligible for supervision. Kosher certification organizations charge manufacturers a fee and a contract is signed by all the parties, and the company can begin placing the kosher certifying agency symbol on its products.


Read more

Original Article in The Times Of Israel:

NEW YORK — Sports fanatic Jeremy Posner and his wife Rabbi Paulette Posner have one rule for their three boys when going to a baseball game: “You can’t eat your hot dogs until you finish your ice cream.”

Just because the Posners keep kosher — adhering to the Jewish dietary laws that forbid mixing meat and dairy — doesn’t stop them from being, and eating, like diehard baseball fans.

Recently, the Posners left their apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan to get to Citi Field early enough to watch their beloved NY Mets — currently in first place of the National League East division — take batting practice before their game with the Philadelphia Phillies. It was also before the crowds started filing in so they could grab an assortment of kosher classics, including hot dogs, knishes and pretzels, before the lines got too long.

Just a Matt Harvey arm’s throw away at the US Open underway in Flushing Meadows, Jonathan Katz, owner of the Open’s Kosher Grill behind court 17, had already sold nearly 500 hot dogs and all of his wraps to avid, yet hungry, tennis fans.

In between matches — where top Israeli player Dudi Sela crashed out in the first round — the Solomon family of Long Island waited patiently in line at Katz’s popular food stand. With them were their strictly observant cousins Yona and Uri Walfish of Queens, who were delighted they could attend a sports event and not worry about buying food.

“People from all over the world buy kosher hot dogs, people who don’t even know what kosher is want kosher,” said Katz, who manages seven workers every day of the tournament except for Friday night and Saturday.

Katz, who worked on the New York Stock Exchange before starting in the kosher food business, remembers growing up in Queens and going to games where there was no kosher food, except for ice cream. Now you can find it pretty much at any major sporting event.

Katz began serving kosher food in 2003 at New York Giants football games. He then went on to found Kosher Sports Inc., which operates concession stands in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Miami and elsewhere. His company has even provided kosher food at the Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League.

Strawberries and parve cream

Dan Eleff, a self-described foodie and founder of dansdeals.com, recently compiled a roundup of 31 professional sports teams that have a kosher food stand, noting the recent addition of one at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. The Dodgers are now one of 10 baseball teams — in addition to seven football, seven basketball and seven hockey teams — that offer kosher food across the US and Canada.

But kosher food is not just restricted to North America. You can even find it across the pond in England at Wimbledon, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of four Grand Slam events with the US Open as well as the French Open and Australian Open.

In 2009, Rabbi Dovid Cohen of the Chabad of South London started Kosher Court, a kosher truck located outside the stadium.

“We sell several hundred hot dogs, burgers and baked potatoes over a two-week period,” said Cohen, who is particularly proud of serving a Wimbledon classic — strawberries and cream, stressing that the cream is parve and contains no dairy ingredients.

Cohen is unaware of Chabad colleagues selling kosher food at the French or Australian Opens, though he noted that the Jewish movement provided kosher food at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and at various cricket tournaments.

Seventh-inning prayers

Menachem Lubinsky, founding publisher of trade magazine Kosher Todayand creator of Kosherfest, the world’s largest kosher food trade show, observes an increase in kosher food options at sports events throughout the US. In his view, kosher food at sports events is more than a community service to observant Jews.

“It is a recognition of the fact that more and more people require kosher food,” he said.

Food stands, according to Lubinsky, also offer more than just food. The kosher vendors in some stadiums serve as a gathering point for daily prayer services during baseball’s seventh-inning stretch or between periods at NY Rangers hockey games.

“In places like NY, you may find a minyan [prayer quorum] of up to 50 or 60,” he said.

Yet the food stands face challenges, too — kosher vendors close on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and sporting events can be infrequent or short-lived.

“Despite the challenges of running a food stand according to halacha [Jewish law], in the end, it is worth it,” Lubinsky said.

And it certainly has been worth it for the Kosher Grill at the US Open as Katz and his staff work in the 92°F (33°C) heat grilling up hotdogs for his Jewish and non-Jewish customers alike.

“We expect to sell up to 600 a day,” he said with a smile.

Read more

Original Article Published On The Jerusalem Report

Muslims account for about a fifth of the kosher food sales in the United States. But while Jewish dietary laws are similar to Islamic halal – there are some obstacles to full-scale cooperation.

Sometime in 1997, the Muslim and Jewish chaplains Mt. Holyoke College had to deal with an emergency. The tiny kitchen in Eliot House, which served kosher meals to Jewish students and halal food for Muslims, was taxed beyond capacity.

The emergency took three years and one anonymous donor to solve, but on September 13, 2000, a new $250,000 dining hall serving certified kosher and halal meals opened at Mt. Holyoke, a liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. “We are all sitting and eating three meals a day together,” says Sister Shamshad Sheikh, the college’s Muslim chaplain. It involved mutual concessions: the Jews agreed avoid anything cooked in wine sauce, which would violate the Islamic prohibition on alcohol, and the Muslims accept what they call al-kitab meat, from animals slaughtered by “People of the Book,” which Islam permits, although their own ritual slaughter is preferred. The program serves as many as 200 students, including some who are neither Jewish nor Muslim, daily.

After the September 11 terror attacks and the subsequent wave of anti-Muslim sentiment, Sister Sheikh observes, “Jewish students were asking what they could do to help Muslim students and giving 100 percent support.” The joint dining program, says Melissa Simon, 19, of Brookline, Massachusetts, “opened a dialogue for theological discussions and explanations. Sometimes, though, we are just students wanting to eat.”

Another joint kosher-halal program, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, evolved out of the institution’s competition with MIT for the best and brightest engineering students. When the school was about to lose an extremely promising grad student because it had no kosher food, an admissions officer raced to the office of Prof. Barry Simon, the Orthodox Jewish head of the math department for advice. The result was a $70,000 kitchen, certified by the Rabbinical Council of California and the Islamic Center of Southern California, serving about a dozen students. One of its specialties is late-night suppers for Muslims who fast during daylight hours in the holy month of Ramadan.

Caltech and Mt. Holyoke represent part of a growing collaboration -and a parallel competition – between observers (and certifiers) of Jewish and Muslim dietary laws in the U.S. For one thing, Muslims account for 20 percent of all kosher food sales, paying $1.15 billion to do so, according to Menachem Lubinsky, who produces the highly successful annual KosherFest trade show. Kosher food is a $5.75 billion a- year market, growing by 15 percent year. The largest chunk comes from Jews, who spend $2.5 billion and account for 45 percent of sales. But according to a recent survey, only 16- 18 percent of America’s 5.7 million Jews say they keep kosher. So who else is buying kosher? Oreo eaters, kosher hot-dog lovers, vegetarians and the food allergic (a category that buys $570 million a year), Seventh-Day Adventists- and Muslims, to name a few.

Under Koranic halal law, Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork or pork products, also barred by kashrut, gelatins from pig bones, which may be a problem, and alcohol and alcohol derivatives.

“Kosher symbols are not enough,” says Muhammad Munir Chaudry, an Illinoisbased food scientist who in 1984 formed the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of North America. In a telephone interview, Chaudry told The Report that “some rabbis, including the California kashrut committees, accept pork gelatins.” California rabbinical groups say no kashrut supervisors in their area currently certify pork gelatin as kosher. But such a certification is not impossible under certain interpretations of the dietary laws, says Joe Regenstein, professor of food sciences at Cornell University. “The most liberal view,” he says, “holds that the gelatin, being made from bones and skin, is not from a food.” This view holds that in processing, gelatin goes through a stage where it is “not edible by man nor dog, and as such becomes a new entity,” says Regenstein.

Regenstein, whose column in Kashrus magazine states that he is a food scientist, not an authority on Jewish law, notes that rules on gelatin – which can also be derived from fish, beef bones or skin – may vary. That’s not surprising, given the existence of over 400 kashrut-supervising agencies and symbols worldwide. Despite his misgivings on the gelatin issue, notes Chaundry, “Most Muslims purchase some kosher products… Kosher is considered quality in the marketplace.” Of course, Chaudry would prefer that Muslims consume only halal foods.

Beyond the divergence on alcohol, kashrut and halal dietary laws are far from identical: Another major difference is the list of restricted animals: Jews and Muslims agree that pork is banned – treif for Jews and haram for Muslims; but Jews can only eat ruminants with split hooves while Muslims are permitted to eat a wider range of animals and sea creatures, including shellfish. Species acceptable (halal) for consumption include not only goats, beef, sheep, deer, all acceptable for Jews, but also rabbits and camels, which are treif. Excluded (haram) are beasts of prey which have talons and fangs, including lions, wolves and foxes, as well as cats and dogs – and the milk and eggs of prohibited species.

Each religion has its own method of slaughter: Jews must eat meat killed by a shohet who checks the halef (sharp knife) frequently to make sure the cutting edge is smooth. (Empire, a leading provider of kosher poultry, employs a “roving knife inspector” to check blades for nicks, which would make the slaughter unkosher.) The shohet also says a blessing asking forgiveness from God before the ritual killing. Meat must then be thoroughly checked for imperfections, then soaked and salted.

Under Muslim law, at the moment of slaughter, the tasmiyah and takbir blessings are said over each animal or bird by a trained, religiously observant Muslim slaughterer – and the name of Allah is uttered. Princeton University Islamic scholar Mark Cohen notes that “Sunni law took a permissive position on the eating of animals slaughtered by People of the Book. Even the Prophet Muhammad was said to have ‘eaten of their food.’” Law of Shi’ite Muslims, Cohen says, “was stricter, as non-Muslims, meaning Jews and Christians, are held to be impure.”

Chaudry accepts the Sunni view. “There is a provision in our religion that says if halal meat is not available, we can eat meat slaughtered by any God-fearing person. It can be a Jew or a Christian, but not a Communist,” he says. Theoretically then, Muslims could eat kosher meat. But Chaudry feels that this leniency clause no longer applies since halal meat is readily available throughout the U.S.

In fact, many U.S. Muslims are not so strict about halal. LeonWeiner, since 1947 owner of the American Kosher butcher shop in Mattapan, a Boston suburb, reports that “Muslims do buy a lot of kosher meat and have been loyal customers for years.” Ali Syed, a Bangladeshi cab driver who has lived in Brooklyn, New York for more than 20 years notes that he doesn’t look for halal certification on meat. He looks back fondly on life in his native country where people bought live chickens and slaughtered them themselves. “Here,” says Syed, “people are making money off other people.” What does following halal mean to Syed? “I buy meat and say the blessing myself in my house. If a product says ‘alcohol’ in big letters, I won’t buy it, but won’t go with a magnifying glass.” Right now, Chaudry says, there are about 60 halal certifying agencies in the U.S. alone – mostly dealing with products exported to Muslims in such countries as South Africa, Fiji, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan. “The domestic market,” says Chaudry, “is still in its infancy.” If Chaudry is correct, the number of Muslims buying kosher groceries and meat may go down in the near future as more halal- certified products appear on the shelves of U.S. stores. Kosher butcher Weiner will deal with decreased sales if and when that day comes. “For now,” he reports, “there is no one with halal certification in the Boston area.”

Mary Anne Jackson of Chicago stands at the confluence of kashrut and halal in North America. Her “My Own Meals” line of all-natural, refrigeration-free pre-packaged meals has both kosher (since 1991) and halal (since 1995) certification. Her products are consumed by Jewish businessmen in China, North American Jewish Boy Scout troops on camping trips, Jewish members of the U.S. armed forces and will soon be eaten by Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut on the Space Station.

Jackson recently convened an all-day meeting for Jewish and Muslim leaders in search of one agreed-upon standard of meat slaughter and processing. While this concept is theoretically possible, it is more difficult in practice due to differences about blessings, salting, etc. The always creative Regenstein suggests the use of “Muslim-supervised katabi meat,” where a Jew does the slaughter but a Muslim is present.” Katabi refers to non-Muslim “People of the Book,” a class to which Jews belong under Muslim law). “Even Rabbi Moshe Heinemann [of the super-strict Star-K Kosher Certification Agency in Baltimore] accepts Muslims present and saying (the tasmiyah and takbir) prayers,” says Regenstein. But if Jews might accept such solution, it’s not clear whether Muslims, interested in supporting local halal efforts, would take a similar stand.

Still, collaborations between Jews and Muslims in the food production and certification industry are not new. Avrom Pollack, president of Star-K, proudly describes the successful joint Jewish- Islamic campaign to get the steel industry in the United States to stop using a pork derivative as an industrial grease to coat the stainless steel from which food-storage cans are made.

And cooperation now appears to be extending beyond Mt. Holyoke and Caltech to other campuses. A Dartmouth College delegation led by Yousef Haque of Al-Nur, the Muslim student organization, and Jason Spitalnick of Hillel recently traveled from the school’s New Hampshire campus to see Mt.

Holyoke’s program, but has encountered difficulties raising the $300,000 needed to set up a kitchen that meets both Muslim and Jewish dietary needs. There’s also a joint kosher-halal kitchen at UCLA for dietary law-abiding students of both faiths. And Cornell, in Ithaca, New York, where Regenstein teaches Food 250, a course dealing with kosher and halal rules, says that its Multi-Cultural Kosher Food Program is designed “to meet the dietary needs of students who are kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan, allergic, Hindu, Seventh-Day Adventist, alcohol avoidant, Catholic or simply curious.” Regenstein would like to take the cooperation at least one step farther. He feels kashrut-supervision agencies could add extra inspections to their certification process to deal with the needs of Muslims and other groups with special dietary needs. He’s even proposed a new symbol, “Hook-R,” which he says would “hook together” the needs of these consumers.

That revolutionary step does not seem to be on the cards quite yet, partly because of the skepticism present on both sides. Muslim certifiers want people to buy halal and support local Islamic marketers, while some hard-liners talk about “paying a Jewish tax” and supporting Jewish community institutions when they buy kosher food.

On the other hand, there are Jews who will, in private, speculate that scattered halal certifiers may be acting as fronts for radical Islamic groups, and kashrut organizations who quietly admit that their regular supporters would object to the idea of joint supervision. Despite the need in both camps to shy away from cooperative efforts, the evidence points to increasing culinary collaboration. If the trend continues, some day we may see the first joint halal and kashrut-certified McDonald’s – if not in Jerusalem, then perhaps in Brooklyn.

Read more