Double Standards of Kosher Booze?


Illustrative photo

I shopped for some shabbat delicacies at a chareidi/chasidish store in Beit Shemesh.

The thought struck me - how come everything in this store, which isn't nailed to the floor, has mehudar hechsherim.

Except for the liquor section.

Kashrus stamps are not just on all foods (including commodities such as salt and rice), drinks (including water), but also on disposables, soaps, detergents, cosmetics, even toilet paper.

The only exception is the area behind the check-out, which is well stocked with spirits, such as whisky, drambuie, vodka, liqueurs and imported beers.

They have no Bdatz stickers.

Nor "even" rabbanut hachsherim.

To the best of my knowledge, these drinks are not produced under any hashgacha/kashrus supervision whatsoever.

Why the double standards?

Or is the last vestige of kashrus sanity, right there on the booze shelf?

Comments

  1. Drunk25 April 2014 at 18:39

    Did you look on the back of the bottles? There are plenty of whiskeys sold in Israel with kashrut supervision.
    For instance, Jameson has Badatz Manchester.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous26 April 2014 at 21:38

    There Are people in this world who will not buy anything to do with food unless it has a hechsher... Not even if it is as far down the digestive system as toilet paper

    there are also companies that think that if they have a hechsher then more people will buy from them.

    Both groups are nuts.

    Some hechsherim will provide their approval for a price if that is what the company wants. Other hechsherim will provide it for nothing.

    I do not know which group the eida chareidis falls into (I assume you are referring to them) but there are many who provide free of charge (I have a brother who is a head food technologist in one of the major one and this is what he told me)

    you also know that when it comes to pesach even sane people go over board and won't use bleach that doesn't have a hechsher.

    There are chasidim in rbs and other places who don't smoke on pesach because tobacco used to be treated in alcohol.

    As much as you would like to portray it as Nutting but idiots and money grubbing frummers There is a lot more to kashrus and a lot of it makes a lot of sense

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mighty Garnel Ironheart27 April 2014 at 22:25

    Wait, you just discovered Chasireidim are hypocrites?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yehoshua27 April 2014 at 23:09

      I am going to assume that you had a typo and were not intentionally employing the age-old anti-Semetic trope of referring to Jews as pigs.

      Delete
    2. David Morris28 April 2014 at 10:40

      I'm not sure what MGI meant by "Chasireidim". "ChaZireidim" would definitely have been a slur, as you remarked, and was therefore surely NOT the intention. Perhaps Chasireidim is a combination of Chasidim and Chareidim? Or a simple typo, as you assumed.

      Delete
    3. Mighty Garnel Ironheart28 April 2014 at 21:36

      Oops, didn't even see that. No, Reb Morris is correct: I'm lazy and combined Chasidim and Chareidim into one word.

      Delete
  4. Baruch Gitlin28 April 2014 at 11:10

    Since when is this exclusively a haredi issue? Most datim that I know are also careful to buy food prepared under rabbinical supervision, but are also willing to buy liquor without such supervision. I know quite a few people on both sides of the haredi/dati divide who are aware of the potential kashut issues with certain types of liquors and are careful to research these issues and ask sheylos when necessary with respect to particular brands. I do not see how the fact that haredim generally require mehadrin hechsirim while datim generally do not (with exceptions in both groups) makes haredim any more or less hypocritical with respect to consuming liquor without rabbinical supervision.

    It is an interesting issue worth discussion on its own merits, but I see no reason whatsoever to turn this into yet another "haredi" issue.

    ReplyDelete

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