JustASC

An article about a new “meal prep” establishment in Maplewood, NJ, set off some debate around our newspaper office. How do you write about an establishment that is clearly non-kosher, but goes out of its way to cater to a crowd that keeps a relaxed form of kashrut out of the home? More to the point, how do you write about it without really ticking off rabbinic authorities who demand that clear lines be drawn between what is certified kosher (that is, carries a hechsher from the local va’ad or national agency) and what isn’t?

A little background: The NJJN, like most Jewish weeklies, carries advertisements for non-kosher restaurants. We do it to survive financially, but we also justify it on the grounds that perhaps the vast majority of our readers eat in non-kosher establishments, so that to keep them out of the paper would be an act of sanctimony that would inhibit our ability to provide all our other services to the community.

Besides (and here we return to the topic above) plenty of Jews go to non-kosher restaurants but observe what some call “kosher lite” — ranging from no pork or shellfish, to no meat or fowl, to eating cold foods only. By the Orthodox rabbis and many Conservative rabbis (but not all) kosher-lite [is there no better term?] is like being a little bit pregnant. 

But for many people, limiting the menu is a profound statement of Jewish identity — “I don’t need a rabbi to tell me where to eat, but that does not mean I will not make Jewish choices wherever I go.”

So take a look at the article. It specifies that the restaurant is not kosher. But it also shows the accomodations its owners are willing to make for its customers.

For the uninitiated, “they’ll cover surfaces with Saran wrap” sounds like mere fastidiousness.

For others, it’s code for “we’ll do all we can to keep your meal from touching another’s treyf.”

We’ll see if our community and its rabbis are ready to acknowledge kosher-lite, and to debate whether it is better to at least give people a chance to do a mitzva as they define it, or only as the rabbis define it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.