[Avodah] Are Vegan Restaurants Kosher?

[Akiva Miller]

.

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> Why is their own religious repugnance not at least as reliable
> as beer industry standards or pride in a true bagette (when in
> France)? (As a she'eila, not a qushya.)

R' Zev Sero wrote:

> In both cases we rely not on the owner's pride but on his fear
> of ruin should he be caught adulterating his product.  Here
> you're asking us to rely on his own conscience, which is a
> different proposition, though perhaps a stronger one.  Maybe
> we can, but those cases don't prove it.

I think you are both raising good points. I think we should be asking:
To what extent can we rely on our understanding  of "industry
standards" and "fear of ruin" and such? It turns out that Chazal
stepped in to protect us from ourselves, using the power of Gezera and
Seyag to keep us safe within specific limits.

Take Chalav Yisrael, for example. Milk is a consumer product which is
ostensibly made of one single, simple, kosher ingredient, and in the
pre-pasteurization era it wasn't even cooked. But because of the
possibility of adulteration, Chazal saw fit to require hashgacha of
that single-ingredient product. Even in situations where Torah Law
would allow us to rely on the probability that a given container of
milk was kosher, Chazal said we *can't* rely on it.

Basar Shenis'alem Min Haayin is another such seyag. It is not enough
that the situation allows me, under Torah law, to presume that this
piece of meat is kosher. There must be a "chain of custody" from one
reliable Jew to the next, preventing any opportunity for a
non-reliable person to exchange the meat for a non-kosher one.
Similarly, there are many situations where Bittul works on a Torah
level, but it was invalidated by Chazal. I am obviously glossing over
many details, but my point is that these are all parts of Chazal's
efforts to protect us from our own mistakes.

It is in this context that I find Pas Yisrael and Bishul Yisrael to be
shockingly lenient.

Despite the many kashrus problems that can and do arise in a
non-Jewish environment, Chazal never required any hashgacha of the
ingredients or keilim. They allowed each individual to rely on his own
vigilance for the ingredients, and to rely on "stam keilim einam bnei
yoma" for the keilim. The only thing they required was Jewish
participation in one small step of the cooking process.

And so it remains today. If you meet a non-Jewish farmer who offers
you some of the milk that he milked himself for his family, that milk
is assur d'rabanan. But if you go into the kitchen of a vegan
restaurant (or even a treif restaurant!) and you look around (and you
know what to look for!) and you are satisfied, then you are on safe
ground. Among the many lessons you can learn from Bishul Yisrael is
this: Chazal did NOT forbid us from eating from a treif kitchen. They
*could* have chosen to forbid that, but *instead*, they said, "If
everything is okay, AND the food is oleh al shulchan melachim, then
you just need to do one more thing, and that is to participate in the
cooking. But if the food is not oleh al shulchan melachim, then you
don't even need to do that."

I'm sure that some people have been reading this thread with only an
academic interest. "Interesting halachos," they say, "but **I** would
never eat in a vegan restaurant." Yes, I'll grant you that. But do you
ever get a hot coffee at a convenience store? Or a fountain-dispensed
soda at the ballpark? If you avoid such risks then I sincerely applaud
you. But if you do these things, it is because you've learned to know
what to look out for. You know that certain realities CAN be relied
on. The coffee and the soda are much simpler than the vegan
restaurant, but it is only a matter of degree. There's no essential
difference.

Akiva Miller