[Avodah] "everything was kosher"

[Prof. Levine]

At 01:18 PM 3/28/2013, R. Akiva Miller wrote:

>I have long since stopped laughing at previous generations who 
>thought that "everything was kosher". Maybe they were right.

Did they really *think* that everything was kosher and investigate or 
simply use things without looking into the kashrus of what they were 
using?  Did they rely upon Rav Alle,  "Alle essen dos" and not go any 
further?  My understanding is that food technology today is much more 
complicated than it was in the past,  but this does not mean that 
there were no problems in the past.

Years ago a rebbitzen told me that only the chocolate flavor of a 
certain brand of pudding was kosher,  despite the fact that the other 
flavors manufactured by this company also had a K on it.  This seemed 
strange to me,  so I wrote to the company.  They sent me information 
about the rabbi who was behind the K.  This rabbi's supervisions were 
not considered reliable by most observant Jews.  I wrote to him and 
asked him detailed questions about the kashrus of the puddings he 
supervised.  His reply was, "All of the flavors may be considered 
acceptable."  He supplied no specifics regarding his basis for this 
statement and did not answer one of my questions.  Based on this, I 
decided that the rebbitzen really did not have any basis for saying 
the only the chocolate flavor was OK.  Based on what I had heard 
about this rabbi's supervisions,  I did not use any of these puddings.

YL


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