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Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History
Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food
Kosher USA follows the fascinating journey of kosher food through the modern industrial food system. It recounts how iconic products such as Coca-Cola and Jell-O tried to become kosher; the contentious debates among rabbis over the incorporation of modern science into Jewish law; how Manischewitz wine became the first kosher product to win over non-Jewish consumers (principally African Americans); the techniques used by Orthodox rabbinical organizations to embed kosher requirements into food manufacturing; and the difficulties encountered by kosher meat and other kosher foods that fell outside the American culinary consensus. Kosher USA is filled with big personalities, rare archival finds, and surprising the Atlanta rabbi Tobias Geffen, who made Coke kosher; the lay chemist and kosher-certification pioneer Abraham Goldstein; the kosher-meat magnate Harry Kassel; and the animal-rights advocate Temple Grandin, a strong supporter of shechita, or Jewish slaughtering practice. By exploring the complex encounter between ancient religious principles and modern industrial methods, Kosher USA adds a significant chapter to the story of Judaism's interaction with non-Jewish cultures and the history of modern Jewish American life as well as American foodways.
388 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 12, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 17, 2021
This book is good and full of history that I definitely didn't know before. It has really well written explanations of complex kashrut laws, the history is interesting, the oral history components are well situated in context. Sometimes it felt a bit too personal (e.g. a comment on Rabbi Genack's office) but generally it was good and well written. I do wish that it had spent a little more time situating the timelines in more general American history, especially as so much of the history of Kashrut is tied to the rise (and decline) of Conservative Judaism and the influx of Hasidim in the post war period.
May 8, 2016
This book was not exactly what I anticipated it to be. Although there are some interesting insights I found there was a lot of detail about rabbinical arguments regarding Kashrut and two chapters about the slaughter of meat is more than any vegan can handle!
September 26, 2016
An absolutely fascinating book about the kosher industry written in a very readable fashion and interspersed with personal anecdotes from the author. Kudos to the author for making a heavily researched book so accessible to the reader. Horowitz illuminates the history of the kosher industry in the USA and if you've ever wondered about the Kosher marking on food items, wonder no more. Be forewarned that there is a lot about the meat industry, but there's also jello and coca cola. If you're Jewish and you know it.... read this book
November 12, 2017
I enjoyed this book very much. Some of the critiques I have read mention it’s technical detail. Although a valid criticism, it is something I enjoyed about the book. I also think the author did a good job reviewing both sides of the controversy regarding kosher meat. The book answered some questions for me and brandende my view of the various sides of the arguments/issues selected for discussion in the book. Nicely done.
June 24, 2017
The histories being told are interesting enough but the writing is so dry that it took a lot to push through it. I liked the parts about Horowitz's family the best, arguing over sturgeon and kosher-for-Passover Coke.
December 16, 2021
Book Review
5/5 stars
"A well crafted narrative arc around a technical / complex topic."
This is a brilliant/fascinating book, and it is the second one of these types that I have read--the first being Timothy Lytton's book. ("Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food")
This book does have some recapitulation of the information contained in the aforementioned book, but there is other value-added information that is unique to this book:
1. This book seems to cover almost entirely only the 20th century.
2. The discussion on the process to come up with a hechsher features a slightly different cast of characters.
3. There is more use of narrative arc (stories/interesting controversies), which is then used to reverse engineer the politics/circumstances around the choice of one arbitrary decision versus another. (Jello was a chapter about gelatin, but also about the split between the Conservative and Orthodox movements AND about the actual Chemistry that goes into making gelatin.)
Thoughts:
1. It is well known that the process behind certifying a product as kosher (or not) is 99.999% political, but after reading this book I come up with the impression that it is also quite arbitrary: It may have worked out THIS particular way in THIS case, but with a very slightly different confluence of events it could well have worked out otherwise.
Horowitz gave us the sturgeon controversy: Jews who lived in some areas of Europe had been eating it in a matter of fact way for some number of centuries, and no one ever thought about "clarifying" the definition of scales in such a way that sturgeon became treif. (For the record, the conclusion that was arrived at is that: scales that can be taken off by hand without tearing the fish are kosher scales.)
And, overnight sturgeon went from being kosher to being treif.
There were a variety of opinions even with respect to its status and the fact that some were accepted and others rejected seems..... stochastic.
2. A lot of rabbis who make rulings about what is or is not kosher are really not too well trained in food science (or anything else practical) TO SAY THE LEAST.
Example #1: Of these many molecules that make up living things, they can be sliced and diced in ways that make it such that they have no resemblance to their source of origin--and that *was* the halaka all the way until the 1950s (ponim chadashot- this was the position of the Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodinski) but for some arbitrary/ political reason, his position was rejected.
Jello was kosher/ muttar/ halachic.
Until it wasn't.
-It used to be that insulin was taken directly from pigs for human use until recombinant DNA made it such that people could just splice insulin producing genes into bacteria.
No one of intelligence would suggest that a patient who consumed insulin that was made directly by a pig (let alone by bacteria with pig spliced DNA) was really eating pork.
But, for some reason.....recombinant DNA insulin is fine to eat but cheese produced by recombinant bacteria is not okay.
Example #2: There's not one single sentence in this book about the Cholov Yisroel Scam. (That's the idea that, all of a sudden, R'Moshe Feinstein did not rule what he did - - which is that dairy products in the United States are only cow milk by law, and therefore milk products there can be trusted.)
Somebody somewhere (who has likely never filled out a job application) ruled that there is the abstract possibility that somebody could mix pig milk in with cow milk (because producers are not afraid of government inspectors because they don't show up enough), and therefore it would not be kosher.
I don't think any person who has ever worked on a farm has ever considered milking a pig--or, if they did try then they learn why..... "Ain't nobody got time for that!"
And then, there is that *small issue* of quality control by the manufacturer in order to protect his brand. (Manufacturers go through a lot of trouble to make sure that every single package of their product is absolutely identical anywhere in the world. And if it is different one place in the world to another, it is deliberately so.)
But, why let a bit of multi-billion dollar industrial practice/practical knowledge get in the way of rabbinic quibbling?
3. Policy ultimately rises and falls on rabbinic bickering: Horowitz gives us the cautionary tale of Abraham Goldstein.
He was one of the pioneers in negotiating with companies to put kosher products out, but somehow he offended the wrong person and has disappeared from history.
4. The Orthodox position that they are the guardians of halaka whose function is to keep it from changing even one. single. iota. (and that non-Orthodox are filthy, heretical innovators) is to stand reality on its head.
It's not hard to find *any number* of examples where the longest chain of tradition was held by Masorti Judaism. (For instance: Hilchot Geirut were perfectly consistent from about the time of the destruction of the Second Temple all the way up until the time of Moshe Feinstein. Alas, those days are long over and it changes every year or two now since then.)
5. It *really is* extremists who are trendsetters, and they can be such not with any radical proselytization... but only by holding their own ground.
To wit: Some small business wants to get that last 10% of Jewish consumers, so they just make everything kosher.
Another business wants to get that last bit of an already small market of kosher consumers-- and therefore they just change their entire operation over to glatt kosher.
(I can foresee a day where Cholov Yisroel will become the standard--much in the same way that regular kosher was the standard, and then it was suddenly not good enough when glatt kosher came onto the scene.)
6. It seems like the process of manufacturing stringencies is never ending. Once people have worked out the logistics of getting this or that kosher product to market, then all of a sudden a new stringency comes out of nowhere and then it's not good enough anymore--even though it was just a fortnight ago. (p. 234--It was good enough to slaughter cattle in an inverted position until the Israeli Chief Rabbinate disagreed. You read that right: Take a cow, and rotate it 180° and suddenly it becomes non kosher.)
7. Church and state in bed with each other is never a good idea, and it's hard to believe that New York City actually chose one side over the other in an internal debate within Judaism (p.206). All the way up until 1992, no less.
Heaven help Medinat Israel, with its inextricable links between the rabbinate and the government.
It is interesting that the kosher certification industry in the United States is all private, and it seems to function in a pretty matter of fact way.
But, there is nothing but acrimony in the State of Israel where kosher certification is a state function.
Questions:
1. We all know about the superior Ashkenazi Jewish brainpower/organizational ability.
It is interesting to speculate the mechanism of action of this genetic endowment: every Mark Zuckerberg started out several generations back as the children of Orthodox Jews / rabbinic scholars.
And yet: religious observance and practical skills seem to be inversely proportional. (I can't tell you how many 22-year-old Haredim that I have met that have no driver's license and don't even know how to operate a washing machine. Or how many men with four kids who have never held any type of real job. Or even organized/submitted a CV, for that matter.)
How / why is one the genesis of the other?
2. Men of Words in a given society are a double-edged sword: people who were primarily talkers managed to hold the Jewish people together in between the destruction of the Second Temple and the rebuilding of the State of Israel. (But, for some reason they had no part in the actual physical building of the State.)
And they look just as likely to be instrumental in causing a rift that tears the country apart. (For the third time.)
Men of Words had to be the tool that convinced food manufacturers to pay for their opinions. But, the same professional talkers took hundreds of years to get kashrut standards right in North America. And they have also been unable to reach any lasting conclusions about marriage or conversion in the State of Israel proper.
3. It really is amazing how anything can be repurposed into a Social Justice Tool: Reform and Conservative Jews argue with Orthodox about the humane standards of kosher slaughtering as part of certification the foods that they don't even care about, because none of them keep kosher.
Is it really what I imagine.... That potential objects for social justice battles are bound only by the imagination?
Of the book:
267 pages of prose over 11 chapters. (More properly, 9 chapters + 1 prologue and 1 epilogue.)
Average of 24 pages per chapter.
369 individual citations. 41 per business chapter. 1.4 per page.
Chapter synopses:
1. A case study of a family argument about whether or not sturgeon is okay to break a Yom Kippur fast leads to a brief synopsis of the foundational sources of kashrut and also shows the extreme stochastic/ fluctuant nature of what is ultimately kosher. Or not.
2. When Coke came out, One Rabbi In Particular had to figure out how to approach companies and get lists of confidential ingredients in order to communicate to the Jewish Community whether or not something was kosher. And it was a two-way street, because Coca-Cola was the first company to make substitutions in order to maintain kosher customers. (Who knew that glycerin could be such a sticking point?)
3. Jello was Kosher for several decades.
Until it wasn't.
There is a lot of very subtle reasoning employed in determining the chemical transformation of a a substance from one form to another really is a chemical transformation to a totally different substance.
The position on Jello is actually a sharp dividing line between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism.
Believe it or not.
4. Discussion of the process and politics by which OU became the leading kosher label.
5. Discussion of industrial kashrut, with several specific case examples.
6. Manischewitz wine has been with us since Prohibition, but actually the largest number of their sales are to black people. An excellent way for Kedem to smear its competitor, Manischewitz, was to just point out that "you don't want this wine, because it's drunk by black people." (p. 152)
(This book is the first time I have ever heard a person outside of the South / white person actually use the word "scuppernong.")
7. Discussion of the rise and fall of kosher slaughterhouse industry. Horowitz observes that putting kosher meat right next to non kosher meat - - with according price differentials - - was enough to sway Jews toward buying the non kosher version of the same thing. (p. 189 "I'll be a fool no more").
Neat vocabulary terms: Sirchas. Beit Yosef. Begissing meat.
Sephardim's differing version of "What is glatt kosher?"
Cryovac saves the day.
The labor intensiveness of glatt kosher: Only 30% of animals will pass the glatt test, and then only the front half of those animals can be used. Meaning that kosher consumers have to pay for the sorting away of 85% of meat.
8. Attempts of outside people to make sure that animals were slaughtered in a humane way. Also, some details of the awesomely corrupt Agri-processors business of Shlomo Rubashkin.
Conclusion. (This could have properly been another chapter.) Discussion of certifying agencies reevaluation of their certifications in light of "humane slaughter" requirements. (What they concluded is that for purposes of cost-effectiveness, they need to limit their area of concern to no more than is absolutely necessary. Social justice organizations, the Orthodox certification agencies are not.)
Verdict: Strongly recommended and worth every penny.
The book can be read one chapter per sitting until it is finished.
And, it is probably worth it to reread the book several years later to try to glean those last bits of information.
5/5 stars
"A well crafted narrative arc around a technical / complex topic."
This is a brilliant/fascinating book, and it is the second one of these types that I have read--the first being Timothy Lytton's book. ("Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food")
This book does have some recapitulation of the information contained in the aforementioned book, but there is other value-added information that is unique to this book:
1. This book seems to cover almost entirely only the 20th century.
2. The discussion on the process to come up with a hechsher features a slightly different cast of characters.
3. There is more use of narrative arc (stories/interesting controversies), which is then used to reverse engineer the politics/circumstances around the choice of one arbitrary decision versus another. (Jello was a chapter about gelatin, but also about the split between the Conservative and Orthodox movements AND about the actual Chemistry that goes into making gelatin.)
Thoughts:
1. It is well known that the process behind certifying a product as kosher (or not) is 99.999% political, but after reading this book I come up with the impression that it is also quite arbitrary: It may have worked out THIS particular way in THIS case, but with a very slightly different confluence of events it could well have worked out otherwise.
Horowitz gave us the sturgeon controversy: Jews who lived in some areas of Europe had been eating it in a matter of fact way for some number of centuries, and no one ever thought about "clarifying" the definition of scales in such a way that sturgeon became treif. (For the record, the conclusion that was arrived at is that: scales that can be taken off by hand without tearing the fish are kosher scales.)
And, overnight sturgeon went from being kosher to being treif.
There were a variety of opinions even with respect to its status and the fact that some were accepted and others rejected seems..... stochastic.
2. A lot of rabbis who make rulings about what is or is not kosher are really not too well trained in food science (or anything else practical) TO SAY THE LEAST.
Example #1: Of these many molecules that make up living things, they can be sliced and diced in ways that make it such that they have no resemblance to their source of origin--and that *was* the halaka all the way until the 1950s (ponim chadashot- this was the position of the Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodinski) but for some arbitrary/ political reason, his position was rejected.
Jello was kosher/ muttar/ halachic.
Until it wasn't.
-It used to be that insulin was taken directly from pigs for human use until recombinant DNA made it such that people could just splice insulin producing genes into bacteria.
No one of intelligence would suggest that a patient who consumed insulin that was made directly by a pig (let alone by bacteria with pig spliced DNA) was really eating pork.
But, for some reason.....recombinant DNA insulin is fine to eat but cheese produced by recombinant bacteria is not okay.
Example #2: There's not one single sentence in this book about the Cholov Yisroel Scam. (That's the idea that, all of a sudden, R'Moshe Feinstein did not rule what he did - - which is that dairy products in the United States are only cow milk by law, and therefore milk products there can be trusted.)
Somebody somewhere (who has likely never filled out a job application) ruled that there is the abstract possibility that somebody could mix pig milk in with cow milk (because producers are not afraid of government inspectors because they don't show up enough), and therefore it would not be kosher.
I don't think any person who has ever worked on a farm has ever considered milking a pig--or, if they did try then they learn why..... "Ain't nobody got time for that!"
And then, there is that *small issue* of quality control by the manufacturer in order to protect his brand. (Manufacturers go through a lot of trouble to make sure that every single package of their product is absolutely identical anywhere in the world. And if it is different one place in the world to another, it is deliberately so.)
But, why let a bit of multi-billion dollar industrial practice/practical knowledge get in the way of rabbinic quibbling?
3. Policy ultimately rises and falls on rabbinic bickering: Horowitz gives us the cautionary tale of Abraham Goldstein.
He was one of the pioneers in negotiating with companies to put kosher products out, but somehow he offended the wrong person and has disappeared from history.
4. The Orthodox position that they are the guardians of halaka whose function is to keep it from changing even one. single. iota. (and that non-Orthodox are filthy, heretical innovators) is to stand reality on its head.
It's not hard to find *any number* of examples where the longest chain of tradition was held by Masorti Judaism. (For instance: Hilchot Geirut were perfectly consistent from about the time of the destruction of the Second Temple all the way up until the time of Moshe Feinstein. Alas, those days are long over and it changes every year or two now since then.)
5. It *really is* extremists who are trendsetters, and they can be such not with any radical proselytization... but only by holding their own ground.
To wit: Some small business wants to get that last 10% of Jewish consumers, so they just make everything kosher.
Another business wants to get that last bit of an already small market of kosher consumers-- and therefore they just change their entire operation over to glatt kosher.
(I can foresee a day where Cholov Yisroel will become the standard--much in the same way that regular kosher was the standard, and then it was suddenly not good enough when glatt kosher came onto the scene.)
6. It seems like the process of manufacturing stringencies is never ending. Once people have worked out the logistics of getting this or that kosher product to market, then all of a sudden a new stringency comes out of nowhere and then it's not good enough anymore--even though it was just a fortnight ago. (p. 234--It was good enough to slaughter cattle in an inverted position until the Israeli Chief Rabbinate disagreed. You read that right: Take a cow, and rotate it 180° and suddenly it becomes non kosher.)
7. Church and state in bed with each other is never a good idea, and it's hard to believe that New York City actually chose one side over the other in an internal debate within Judaism (p.206). All the way up until 1992, no less.
Heaven help Medinat Israel, with its inextricable links between the rabbinate and the government.
It is interesting that the kosher certification industry in the United States is all private, and it seems to function in a pretty matter of fact way.
But, there is nothing but acrimony in the State of Israel where kosher certification is a state function.
Questions:
1. We all know about the superior Ashkenazi Jewish brainpower/organizational ability.
It is interesting to speculate the mechanism of action of this genetic endowment: every Mark Zuckerberg started out several generations back as the children of Orthodox Jews / rabbinic scholars.
And yet: religious observance and practical skills seem to be inversely proportional. (I can't tell you how many 22-year-old Haredim that I have met that have no driver's license and don't even know how to operate a washing machine. Or how many men with four kids who have never held any type of real job. Or even organized/submitted a CV, for that matter.)
How / why is one the genesis of the other?
2. Men of Words in a given society are a double-edged sword: people who were primarily talkers managed to hold the Jewish people together in between the destruction of the Second Temple and the rebuilding of the State of Israel. (But, for some reason they had no part in the actual physical building of the State.)
And they look just as likely to be instrumental in causing a rift that tears the country apart. (For the third time.)
Men of Words had to be the tool that convinced food manufacturers to pay for their opinions. But, the same professional talkers took hundreds of years to get kashrut standards right in North America. And they have also been unable to reach any lasting conclusions about marriage or conversion in the State of Israel proper.
3. It really is amazing how anything can be repurposed into a Social Justice Tool: Reform and Conservative Jews argue with Orthodox about the humane standards of kosher slaughtering as part of certification the foods that they don't even care about, because none of them keep kosher.
Is it really what I imagine.... That potential objects for social justice battles are bound only by the imagination?
Of the book:
267 pages of prose over 11 chapters. (More properly, 9 chapters + 1 prologue and 1 epilogue.)
Average of 24 pages per chapter.
369 individual citations. 41 per business chapter. 1.4 per page.
Chapter synopses:
1. A case study of a family argument about whether or not sturgeon is okay to break a Yom Kippur fast leads to a brief synopsis of the foundational sources of kashrut and also shows the extreme stochastic/ fluctuant nature of what is ultimately kosher. Or not.
2. When Coke came out, One Rabbi In Particular had to figure out how to approach companies and get lists of confidential ingredients in order to communicate to the Jewish Community whether or not something was kosher. And it was a two-way street, because Coca-Cola was the first company to make substitutions in order to maintain kosher customers. (Who knew that glycerin could be such a sticking point?)
3. Jello was Kosher for several decades.
Until it wasn't.
There is a lot of very subtle reasoning employed in determining the chemical transformation of a a substance from one form to another really is a chemical transformation to a totally different substance.
The position on Jello is actually a sharp dividing line between Conservative and Orthodox Judaism.
Believe it or not.
4. Discussion of the process and politics by which OU became the leading kosher label.
5. Discussion of industrial kashrut, with several specific case examples.
6. Manischewitz wine has been with us since Prohibition, but actually the largest number of their sales are to black people. An excellent way for Kedem to smear its competitor, Manischewitz, was to just point out that "you don't want this wine, because it's drunk by black people." (p. 152)
(This book is the first time I have ever heard a person outside of the South / white person actually use the word "scuppernong.")
7. Discussion of the rise and fall of kosher slaughterhouse industry. Horowitz observes that putting kosher meat right next to non kosher meat - - with according price differentials - - was enough to sway Jews toward buying the non kosher version of the same thing. (p. 189 "I'll be a fool no more").
Neat vocabulary terms: Sirchas. Beit Yosef. Begissing meat.
Sephardim's differing version of "What is glatt kosher?"
Cryovac saves the day.
The labor intensiveness of glatt kosher: Only 30% of animals will pass the glatt test, and then only the front half of those animals can be used. Meaning that kosher consumers have to pay for the sorting away of 85% of meat.
8. Attempts of outside people to make sure that animals were slaughtered in a humane way. Also, some details of the awesomely corrupt Agri-processors business of Shlomo Rubashkin.
Conclusion. (This could have properly been another chapter.) Discussion of certifying agencies reevaluation of their certifications in light of "humane slaughter" requirements. (What they concluded is that for purposes of cost-effectiveness, they need to limit their area of concern to no more than is absolutely necessary. Social justice organizations, the Orthodox certification agencies are not.)
Verdict: Strongly recommended and worth every penny.
The book can be read one chapter per sitting until it is finished.
And, it is probably worth it to reread the book several years later to try to glean those last bits of information.
July 21, 2017
Not what I thought it would be. When I first heard about this book I thought it would be a great read. I'm no expert at all as to what foods are kosher and really understand the basic tenants of it from school friends. But the title brought to mind of a story from the early 2000's where it was discovered that there were tiny organisms in the tap water causing a debate as to whether it was kosher and the move for people to install filters in their homes, restaurants to advertise they filter their water, etc. Or the stories of how Jewish people often go to Chinese restaurants on Christmas even though sometimes it might not be completely clear whether the restaurant's food is actually kosher, etc.
So I thought this book would be something like that and the author starts off by talking about his family and how he was driven to writing this book. Then the book quickly goes downhill from there.
Although there is generally some interesting information as to how Coca-Cola was kosher, how animals are slaughtered for kosher meat, etc. the book is dry, technical, academic, etc. It was best when he talked about his family but obviously that's not the focus of the book. I wanted to like it and did get some knowledge but it was a slog. Part of me wonders whether it's because I have a general lack of knowledge but I see from other reviews they also found the book pretty hard to get through.
If there's a specific topic of interest in the book it might be a good pickup. But I was disappointed to find the book wasn't what I thought it was nor was it very readable and I'm *very* glad I found it at my library. Otherwise I'd skip it.
So I thought this book would be something like that and the author starts off by talking about his family and how he was driven to writing this book. Then the book quickly goes downhill from there.
Although there is generally some interesting information as to how Coca-Cola was kosher, how animals are slaughtered for kosher meat, etc. the book is dry, technical, academic, etc. It was best when he talked about his family but obviously that's not the focus of the book. I wanted to like it and did get some knowledge but it was a slog. Part of me wonders whether it's because I have a general lack of knowledge but I see from other reviews they also found the book pretty hard to get through.
If there's a specific topic of interest in the book it might be a good pickup. But I was disappointed to find the book wasn't what I thought it was nor was it very readable and I'm *very* glad I found it at my library. Otherwise I'd skip it.
June 25, 2016
I thought this was quite a fun book, when it wasn't infuriating. :-) Horowitz is interested in the issues that developed with kashrut when food began to be mass-produced in factories. He describes the process by which Orthodox Jews managed to convince major food manufacturers to allow them to inspect and regulate their factories (which is pretty amazing in itself, considering how few of them there were and are). He goes on to explore the internecine battles among the Orthodox about their own various definitions of kosher. And he talks about how a hechsher has come to symbolize a kind of food purity that may or may not be in the food. It's worth reading just for the portrayal of the interactions between Temple Grandin, the advocate for humane animal handling in the food industry, and the Orthodox rabbinate. B'tei avon!
May 31, 2016
nice book of jewish foods & how they influenced modern foods!
February 14, 2017
Not as exciting as I thought it could be. More of an academic history of establishing kashrut practice in food manufacturing in this country.
December 31, 2018
Outstanding book that addresses all facets of Kosher food as it existed over the course of the 20th century. The author addresses history, sociology, Halacha, ethics and the economics of Kosher food production and consumption in the US. Very readable, particularly when the author brings his own family's relationship to Kashrut to bear on his research.
July 21, 2017
God is mos def in the details.
December 17, 2019
super interesting content but a little hard to follow and not well organized at some points
October 8, 2020
Fascinating history of how things because kosher in the US. Covers everything from Coke to beef.
March 24, 2022
Lots of interesting (to this Jew) history.
April 5, 2025
Very well researched and informative but a bit dry. A scholarly book and I am not nec a scholar.
January 15, 2023
Interesting history of the development of kashruth in America. Integrating personal memories of his traditional household, the author presents key points in American culinary history when the advent of industrialized food production necessitated knowledge of formal science, particularly chemistry and Western technology, along with rabbinics. The desire of American Jews to partake of modern inventions like Jello or ice cream, which contained substances like rennet or glycerin, conflicted with laws of separating milk from meat, and innovations were necessary to accommodate Jewish law within factories. As the notion of kosher gained favor among non-Jews -- i.e. vegetarians, Muslims, Seventh-Day Adventists -- who equated it with higher quality than non-kosher food, efforts were increased by companies to obtain kosher certification.
The author draws heavily on research -- archives, photos, cookbooks -- and presents the key figures behind the growth of kashruth. Abraham Goldstein (whose great-grandson Avi Goldstein was my co-worker and editor) proved a catalyst. Head of OK Laboratories (which was later sold to Rabbi Berel Levy), Rabbi Goldstein frequently clashed with the Union of Orthodox Rabbis (OU), at the time the major kashruth organization, over his insistence that rabbinic supervision alone was no longer enough in the modern world, and that modern production required Western sophistication. He discusses the history of kosher wine, back in the days when Passover meant Manishewitz, which ironically sold more to African-Americans, thanks to clever advertising, than to its Jewish base.
The author discusses the history of the kosher meat industry, which in fact dominated the slaughterhouses even in the outside world, and the current ethical dilemmas concerning humane treatment of animals vs. the Orthodox way of slaughter (shechita), which mandates the animal's consciousness before having its throat cut. This battle is still being waged in Europe and elsewhere. Rabbis insist that the kosher method of slaughter is the kindest; the author argues otherwise, presenting a history of animal abuses (and photos not for the squeamish, where the animal is being hoisted). Animal specialists like the famous Temple Grandin did much to improve the process of slaughtering that reduced an animal's anxiety. Unfortunately, the refusal of many Jews to purchase the required equipment hints at a weakness in Jewish behavior -- the desire to save money. Carelessness can lead to consequences, and the author brings up the court case involving Agriprocessors, the slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and resulting in the prosecution of its owner Rabbi Shlomo Rubashkin. (His twenty-seven-year sentence was commuted by Trump, in 2017.)
Some issues I have with the book is its sloppy editing -- many misspelled words. And it wasn't Joseph who wrestled with the angel, but Jacob! (This came up during the discussion of rump roast and other problematic or forbidden cuts of beef.) Also, I have my personal bias against non-Orthodox viewpoints. The author, who grew up in the Conservative movement and clearly states his secular lifestyle, brings up foods (i.e. sturgeon) which really have no place on the kosher table.
Nevertheless, the stories behind the growth of kashruth in America are fascinating. They make me realize how spoiled we are in North America, and how far kashruth has come. Nowadays, kosher has not only gone mainstream, but upscale, as gourmet, artisanal, vegan, and international titillate the palates. At the same time, kashruth has grown stricter, with tighter laws (i.e. glatt) and standards, thanks to the arrival of the Chareidi communities. It's like having the best of both worlds.
The author draws heavily on research -- archives, photos, cookbooks -- and presents the key figures behind the growth of kashruth. Abraham Goldstein (whose great-grandson Avi Goldstein was my co-worker and editor) proved a catalyst. Head of OK Laboratories (which was later sold to Rabbi Berel Levy), Rabbi Goldstein frequently clashed with the Union of Orthodox Rabbis (OU), at the time the major kashruth organization, over his insistence that rabbinic supervision alone was no longer enough in the modern world, and that modern production required Western sophistication. He discusses the history of kosher wine, back in the days when Passover meant Manishewitz, which ironically sold more to African-Americans, thanks to clever advertising, than to its Jewish base.
The author discusses the history of the kosher meat industry, which in fact dominated the slaughterhouses even in the outside world, and the current ethical dilemmas concerning humane treatment of animals vs. the Orthodox way of slaughter (shechita), which mandates the animal's consciousness before having its throat cut. This battle is still being waged in Europe and elsewhere. Rabbis insist that the kosher method of slaughter is the kindest; the author argues otherwise, presenting a history of animal abuses (and photos not for the squeamish, where the animal is being hoisted). Animal specialists like the famous Temple Grandin did much to improve the process of slaughtering that reduced an animal's anxiety. Unfortunately, the refusal of many Jews to purchase the required equipment hints at a weakness in Jewish behavior -- the desire to save money. Carelessness can lead to consequences, and the author brings up the court case involving Agriprocessors, the slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and resulting in the prosecution of its owner Rabbi Shlomo Rubashkin. (His twenty-seven-year sentence was commuted by Trump, in 2017.)
Some issues I have with the book is its sloppy editing -- many misspelled words. And it wasn't Joseph who wrestled with the angel, but Jacob! (This came up during the discussion of rump roast and other problematic or forbidden cuts of beef.) Also, I have my personal bias against non-Orthodox viewpoints. The author, who grew up in the Conservative movement and clearly states his secular lifestyle, brings up foods (i.e. sturgeon) which really have no place on the kosher table.
Nevertheless, the stories behind the growth of kashruth in America are fascinating. They make me realize how spoiled we are in North America, and how far kashruth has come. Nowadays, kosher has not only gone mainstream, but upscale, as gourmet, artisanal, vegan, and international titillate the palates. At the same time, kashruth has grown stricter, with tighter laws (i.e. glatt) and standards, thanks to the arrival of the Chareidi communities. It's like having the best of both worlds.
October 11, 2022
This is a great review of changes in the Kosher food market throughout the 20th century. It's too easy to forget that not so long ago it wasn't easy to find anything beyond basic ingredients that were certified Kosher. Today, even Oreos have a heksher.
May 14, 2016
The single best book that I have ever read on the modern kosher industry in America. I highly recommend it.
June 5, 2016
Fascinating but incomplete.
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June 22, 2016Review by Carol Poll for the Jewish Book Council.
September 13, 2016
See my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
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November 18, 2016296.73097 H8168 2016
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