[Avodah] Fwd: Rabbi Hershel Schachter - Kosher Style Cuisine

[Micha Berger]

TL;DR: Mitzvos anashim meilumada cultural observance = "kosher style".
Yelling "mesirah" to silence people from reporting criminals who are
harming people or pose a public menace (in a context where no BD is
equipped to effectively handle it) is just as treif as a a "kosher
style deli".

-mi

-- Forwarded message from TorahWeb <torahweb at torahweb.org> -- 
Rabbi Hershel Schachter
Kosher Style Cuisine

Years ago, there used to be restaurants which would advertise that they
were "kosher style". That meant that the food was not kosher at all but
rather kosher "style". Bnei Torah realized that that is a farce. The laws
of the Torah are very detailed and if one of the necessary conditions
is for kashrus is missing, it does not help that it is "kosher style";
it is absolutely not kosher.

The same is true in all areas of halacha. Halacha is very detailed and
very complicated. Many non-observant Jews raise a question, "do you
really think that G-d is so pedantic that He really cares about all of
those intricate details??" Rav Soloveitchik zt"l once pointed out that
the same G-d that gave the Torah also created all living creatures in
the world. The DNA of a simple butterfly is extremely complicated. The
same G-d who came up with the idea about complicated DNA also came up
with all of the halachos, including all of their complicated details.

Every so often, Jewish folklore takes over a certain halacha and succeeds
in totally distorting it, sometimes l'chumra and sometimes l'kula. The
Torah tells us (Devarim 17:11) that when the rabbonim issue a psak, one is
not permitted to ignore that psak by either going to the right or to the
left -- "[lo sasur min hadavar asher yagidu lekha yamin usmol -mb]". Some
of the commentaries interpret that going to the right means l'chumra, that
one feels that the rabbonim were too lenient; and going to the left means
l'kula, that one feels that the rabbis were too stringent in their psak.

Over the years, folklore has taken over the laws of mesirah and
misrepresented this halacha as if it implies that no Jewish criminals
may be given over to the police. Those who follow the Daf Yomi have
been learning the Gemorah Gittin the last three months. In the first
perek in Gittin (7a), the Gemorah makes it clear that sometimes mesirah
is permissible and even required. If one is a public menace, or one is
harming other people, it is clear from the Shulchan Aruch and all of the
classical poskim that there is no prohibition of mesirah and because the
Jewish community in chutz la'aretz has no beis din which can take care of
the matter, we have no choice other than to report the individual to the
governmental authorities. Just the other day, I read a beautiful essay
on this topic in a sefer called shu"t Ishei Yisroel (volume 6 page 522),
by Rabbi Aschi Dick (a young talmid chacham who gives shiurim in the
OU center in Jerusalem) which quotes all of the sources that indicate
clearly that the prohibition of mesirah definitely does not apply in
such a situation.

Let us not fall in to the "kosher style" attitude that used to be so
prevalent in the area of kashrus years ago. All the details of every
halacha are significant, folklore notwithstanding.

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