[Avodah] The Arukh haShulchan on eating borcht made by a non-Jew

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Aug 13, 2023 at 10:34:13AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> For certain products, I question the premise that "we today need to look
> for hekhsheirim".
> 
> Let's look, for example, at foods such as domestic unflavored beer, corn
> starch, salt, unflavored ground coffee, and unflavored water even with
> fluoride. These are listed by the Star K (
> https://www.star-k.org/articles/kosher-lists/3502/no-hechsher-required/) ...

And a question I asked about tea led to the star-K writing
<https://www.star-k.org/articles/kashrus-kurrents/1145/>.

Basically, the traditional teas don't require a hekhsher, even if they
have flavoring. And this is true both the standard Chinese and Japanese
recipes and the traditional European ones -- jasmine tea or earl gray are
both kosher, even though they have more than one ingredient.

They emphasize:
> Food flavor chemicals represent one of the most challenging areas in
> kashrus. Since ingredients for flavors are derived from a myriad of
> sources, any product containing either natural or artificial flavorings
> requires certification.

Before continuing, "Flavored teas are no exception..."

They seem to be saying the big problem today is that flavorings and
the like can show up anywhere. Not that this is the problem specifically
in the tea arena, since teas are being presented as "no exception" to
a rule.

So, it would seem "one of the most challenging areas" is a topic that would
have post-dated the AhS (1890s). But only one of them.

> Postscript: I am not advocating the above approach for *all* products, but
> *only* for those where a reliable source has investigated the current
> manufacturing practices, and has concluded that the product is
> sufficiently innocuous...

I think that while today that's a minority of commercially available products
and in the AhS's day a majority, I still don't see how this addresses the
question of how he just assumes random ingredients are bound to be batel
beshishim, and we don't.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   heights as long as he works his wings.
Author: Widen Your Tent      But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter