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Yesterday I had a long trip with the owner of an ice cream factory and told me this story. They have a very pro-active mashgiach kashrut (the Rabbinate's inspector to ensure the ritual purity of the product) and he examines the stainless steel pots after they are washed. Once he found that a washed and dried container had a white spot inside and decided to declare the day's batch as unclean and non-kosher. In the discussion that followed the mashgiach maintained that the stainless steel walls of the container had exuded old milk, which can be seen as the white spot. The plant engineer explained that stainless steel does no absorb milk and therefore does not exude it, the white spot is calcium carbonate deposits contained in the hard water supplied. All food factories have their kashrut supervisors, well versed in the Gemara but wonderfully ignorant of math, physics and science in general. An enterprising kibbutz is growing strawberries in the air (hydroponics) to ensure the kashrut of the produce, because if one fruit touches the soil, the whole batch may be declared unfit for Jewish consumption. The ice cream factory buys only that kind of fruit. On the other hand, thanks to the strict supervision, the scandal of horsemeat found in sausage in Europe could not happen in Israel. Not that horsemeat is unhealthy or anything.
15 comments:
One of the wonders of the world is that Jews could achieve so much in the technical and scientific spheres while at the same time having to labour under the intense pressures of an often irrational Rabbinate.
I appreciate the added stress might have honed the talents for seeking and finding solutions, but at the same time the added worry and time wastage can only be considered as a huge tax on intellect.
Anon.
Human brains have the rational part covering the old, deep irrational part. That old lizard brain demands magic rituals and sacrifices, and we are not evolved enough to escape its influence. All religions try to satisfy the lizard in a harmless way, and the Jewish religion has an elaborate set of rituals and prohibitions that has its cost but saves us from worse crazyness. Rejection strawberries that have touched the soil and organic fertilizer may be less harmless than reject it because it is not "organic" or because it was genetically engineered or some stupid EPA rule.
Might make you want to reconsider your priors, i.e., if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.
OK, not stupid, irrational. Magical.
In the story, the mashguiach caused a second washing of the container. That cannot be bad.
Mashgiach was not stupid. The rabbis talk about the ta'am or flavor of the food in question. Many times I have washed a pot and it appears clean to the eye and yet when you heat it you can smell whatever was cooked in it last - garlic or onion or whatever. Stainless steel may appear smooth to the eye but on a microscopic level the surface is pitted and molecules of the food cling to it.
Also on a practical level the mashgiach wants to demonstrate that he is in charge - what better way than making arbitrary demands?
Especially when you are dealing with rabbinically trained Jews, it's a mistake to assume that your opponent is stupid. He may have priorities that are different than yours, but stupid he is not.
K
I didnt say stupid, but ignorant. Stainless steel retains no milk residues. It may have been poorly washed, but that is not what he said. And he should not say that if wished to save the engineer's respect.
That they are in charge and they abuse of their power is no joke. The factory in question is trying to conquer the American kosher icecream basis market, which is large, and they are in the hands of the masgiach. They have more than enough problems with the Israeli and American health authorities, having a conscientious Talmudic scholar is no joy. And they pay his salary!
Is the proportion of lapsed Jews as high as the proportion of lapsed Christians?
Anon.
I would say higher...if you look at the % of Jews in the US that attend services weekly vs. Christians, the Jewish % is much much lower. But America is somewhat unusual in that there are still many Christian believers vs. say UK or Scandanavia.
K
I think in the UK, political correctness is now the major religion, followed closely by Islam.
In due course, Islam will be #1, and will brook no competitors.
The irony is that Islam is itself very politically incorrect, and the "liberal" idiots and criminals who have allowed this to happen will be the first to feel the persecution.
Anon.
>not stupid, irrational.
Yes, but rationality only gets you so far. We have powerful non-rational adaptive mechanisms driving us. The most self-consciously rational civilizations, which set rationality as an overarching good, die out or devolve into degeneracy rapidly-how rational is that?
Maybe people aren't really thinking rationally but rather are rationalizing, which is not the same thing. If you are clever and set yourself free of all religious, historical, moral and ethical constraints and declare (like the French Revolutionaries) that you are resetting the clock at Year Zero (see also Pol Pot) where we can figure things out for ourselves without any help from dead white man rabbis, in a RATIONAL way of course, then the little lizard that lives inside of us that wants to eat and screw and kill everything it can get its claws on is released from his cage.
K
Not only. Even in a wealthy, controlled environment, not the Cambodian jungle, the results are suboptimal. Our rationality works and gives good results within a narrow envelope, sadly.
Pol Pot suboptimal?
Time to sign up for a re-education camp.
Anon.
>Pol Pot suboptimal?
Idiocracy suboptimal.
The French Revolution and Pol Pot were just extreme examples of what happens when you decide to ignore religion and custom and history and live your life "rationally" according to first principles freshly derived through the application of pure logic and science without benefit of magic sky gods. These are just the worst case scenarios but the other results also seem to lead to dead ends, just perhaps a bit more slowly, more or less depending on how strictly you enforce "rationality". Since virtually every culture has some form of magical/religious belief (even moderns believe in Gaia and Soviets ended up worshiping Stalin) it must somehow be deeply rooted in the human psyche.
K
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