A few years ago I queried a major kosher certification agency why something that was certified kosher year 'round was not certified kosher for Pesach.
The answer was that the certifying agency didn't check the ingredients - or the preparation of the ingredients - to know if the ingredient contained kitniyot or yeast. Most kashrut certifiers in the U.S. are owned and controlled by Ashkenazim; they are, after all, now the majority, ergo the kitniyot concern.
I used to be an honest reporter so my initial reaction was: If you (the certifying agency) don't know what is in the ingredient (or how it is processed), how do you know if it's kosher at all?
Bet Shamai or Bet Hillel?
Recently I got involved with the question of kosher liquor, specifically scotch and Irish whiskies.
Some scotch and Irish whisky is aged in casks that formerly held wine; not necessarily kosher wine. (If the wine was kosher, the problem might go away.)
Apparently most poskim - authorities able to rule on such things - agree that to spurn Chivas Regal - as an excellent example - is an unnecessary "stringency." The "Bet Hillel" approach.
For those that take the Bet Shamai approach, deliberately aging a parve product (grain alcohol) in a cask that held wine for the purpose of adding color and taste to the grain alcohol, the whisky is not kosher.
Neither the Chicago Rabbinical Council (cRc) nor Star-K recommend such whisky, but neither rejects its use.
Invisible cars
"Orthodox" rabbis are caught between a hammer and an anvil on Shabat when, although we are instructed by the Torah not to make a fire, in order to make a minyan a portion of the minyan "drives to shul." Should the rabbi tell these people "Don't come"? Should the rabbi deny these people an aliyah? The Conservatives solved the problem by using R. Ismael's 13 medot to allow making a fire on Shabat.
The major negative of driving to minyan on Shabat is that this allows congregants to scatter all over the area, destroying any possibility of a cohesive "community" while simultaneously increasing intermarriage opportunities.
I would hope there are a number of observant Jews reading this thinking to themselves: A problem easy to fix; offer to host guests for Shabat (and haggim)."
I read the label and know it's 'OK'
The trouble with reading the label is that your need to be a food chemist to understand all the ingredients.For better or for worse, the kashrut certifying agencies have food chemists on staff. Assuming they track all of a product's ingredients from harvesting or creation to inclusion in the final product - which must be suspect given the opening paragraphs of this page - the kosher label at least suggests that all the ingredients are OK (as in "okay" not the Orthodox Kosher organization).
A good example of "is it kosher or is it not" is milk, the stuff in the store's dairy case.
What can be wrong with milk? After all, it's US FDA certified to be only what's on the label (cow's milk, goat's milk, etc.) - no danger of milk from a forbidden animal sneaking in. Unlike wine, no one suspects non-Jews of reciting blessing to their gods over milk.
The problem is the additives, the vitamins added to enhance milk's health value.
Some vitamins, I'm told, are from non-kosher sources. (I am not a food scientist and I don't play one on tv.)
Most yogurt and marshmallows contain gelatin' or so say the labels. Hakham Ovadya Yosef ruled once that most gelatin can be permitted since in its dry form not even a dog would eat it. The question: is the gelatin used in your product a permitted type? (Check with your rabbi about the particulars of R. Ovadya's ruling and how it applies to you.) A good kosher label fairly well eliminates the question of gelatin source.
הריני מקבל עלי מצוה עשה של ואהבת לרעך כמוך, והריני אוהב כל אחד מבני ישראל כנפשי ומאודי
