Shabbat Gathering: What the heck is a heksher?

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

Have you ever wondered why sponges come in different colors? That’s so kosher families can keep track of which ones are for washing up from meat messes and which ones are for dirty dairy dishes. Really.

I don’t keep kosher. I’ve never deliberately tried. I was a vegetarian for a couple of years and a vegan for a month and these are “back doors” into keeping kosher, but I never went straight ahead into keeping kosher except for special events.

Even in Brooklyn, keeping kosher was a HUGE undertaking. Above and beyond the meal planning, there was the equipment involved. Basically, to do it right, to make sure that meat and dairy didn’t commingle, a family needed a double kitchen: two stoves, two refrigerators, at least two sets of dishes unless someone wants to add a Passover set in there as well. And ladles and spatulas and tongs and so forth. On and on.

Two hundred years ago, keeping kosher might have been easier. There was the kosher butcher. There was the kosher grocery store. The entire food infrastructure for the shtetel was set up around kashrut. Nowadays, and out here in the diaspora, it’s more complicated. You can’t say that Woodman’s is a kosher grocery store, but you can say that it carries kosher food. How do we know what’s kosher and what isn’t? That’s where the heksher comes in.

A heksher is a little symbol on a food label that indicates whether or not a product is kosher and who’s taking responsibility to make sure it’s kosher and to what degree the product is kosher. Maybe you’ve noticed cryptic little marks on a food label, a “u” inside a circle for example. That’s an indication, in this particular case, that the food is kosher according to the Orthodox Union. There are hekshers for local groups. There are hekshers for when something is kosher for Pesach. And so on and so forth. There are even various degrees of kosher with “glatt kosher” above them all — for most people who keep kosher.

Overall, I think it’s a great idea to be aware of what we eat and try to instill meaning into the food we consume. For me, that’s very much an aspirational goal as I pay almost no attention to what I eat. Sometimes, I think about the self-discipline it takes to keep kosher out here in the diaspora, and I admire those who do it. For now, keeping kosher isn’t a good fit for me. Perhaps it’s something I’ll eventually get to.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

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