Yesterday night, I was wandering the aisles of the local supermarket. It’s actually a fascinating place to explore; the ethnic and European home market product selection is sizeable, and there’s an entire kosher aisle.
Along with the usual kosher products – matzoh bread, gefile fish, and so on – were Manischewitz and Rokeach branded candles. They looked like smaller versions of lucky number and Santo candles; just wax and a wick in a small glass cup.
So, what makes a candle kosher? Rabbinical supervision, I would assume, but why have kosher candles? Why not kosher furniture, appliances, home electronics, and other non-edible products?
The ‘Kosher’ section of a supermarket is usually more ‘Stuff the Supermarket Management Thinks is of Interest to Jews.’ The candles you describe are yahrtzeit candles, lit by many Jews on the anniversary of the death of a close relative. They’re not ‘kosher’ per se, but I suppose there’s no other obvious place in the supermarket to put them. Other candles you might see in that section are Shabbos candles or, seasonally, Chanukah candles.
Most of the food in the ‘kosher’ section is nasty, by the way, and please don’t judge kosher food based on that.
They aren’t kosher candles per-se. What you saw is a Yurtzite candle. It is tradition in Judaism to light a candle on the anniversary of someones death. I’m not sure, but I think that you do it for immediate family only (mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and children). The candle is lit while reciting a prayer and is supposed to burn for 24 hours.
Technically, furniture can be treif (not kosher). Some wood finishes are made using a chemical secreted by the lac beetle. Food coming into contact with that finish would be rendered unkosher. Offhand, I can’t think of anything that went into my computer, clock, or toaster that would be treif. You can find kosher plastic bags, aluminum foil, paper plates, plasticware, soap and make up.
If anything is going to come into contact with food, or is likely to be eaten, it’s got to be kosher.
An interesting observation Doc, which raises a question. Many of the remodeling projects for which I’ve been hired involve painting and sealing of walls and woodwork which have a propensity for bleed through of the finish beneath. I have several favorite products, but they are all based on variants of pigmented shellac-the product of the noted beetle.
Reflecting on your post, I’ve employed these products in the homes of some customers who kept kosher. Should I inform them of the presence of this substance in their dwelling? Should I mention it in dealings with future customers for whom keeping kosher is important? Yet another thought-is the presence of such a finish adverse to keeping kosher when a Jewish couple purchases a home and the seller may have no idea of what was applied to walls and woodwork?
At times like this I wish we had a Rabbi on the SD advisory board. ;j
It’s amazing how posts asking questions about traditional/orthodox Judaism are posted late Friday afternoon or Saturday during the day, when our knowledgable traditional/orthodox posters can’t respond.
I just checked the yarhtzeit candles, shabbat candles, Chanukah candles, and havdalah (end of sabbath) candle that we have in the house, and none of them are labelled “kosher.” Different candles are used for different purposes – as noted above, the yarhtzeit candle is lit on the anniversary of a death, and is supposed to burn for longer than 24 hours. The shabbat candles in our refridgerator are labelled that they burn “for 3 hours”, etc.
So, different candles are needed to ensure that they burn for the appropriate length of time. Since these candles are used for Jewish ceremonies, they are commonly put on the shelves in the “kosher” section of the grocery store, but there is nothing “kosher” per se about the candles themselves. “Kosher” in that sense usually refers only to foods. There is a wider sense in which “kosher” refers to various religious items – one might question whether a prayer shawl (tallit) is"kosher" if one of the knots has come undone, for instance.
I’d only worry about it in the kitchen. Elsewhere, the odds of shellac getting on food or transferring to hands immediately before eating are low. If a strictly kosher buyer would likely remodel the kitchen anyway. Some materials and surfaces are considered porous. These cannot be rendered clean if used with treif foods, and are considered permanently tainted by meat or dairy products. While they’re ripping up the counters, they’ll probably take out the cabinets too.
BTW
Nobody asked, but this is related. Ovens may be purified by use of small (I think acetylene) torches. Every square inch of the interior must be heated to a certain temperature. There are proper procedures for doing this. There are Jewish organizations (most notably among the Lobovitcha community) who will provide free torches, and even do the cleaning for those who are unable.
A quick followup question: like you said, the Manischewitz candles have designated burn times. Are Manischewitz/Rokeach 24+ hour candles candles used because the burn times are fairly reliable acompared to a generic secular candle? Does the candle ritual require the candle to burn out after about 24 hours; that is, one candle per anniversary? Are the candle burn times slightly longer so users won’t have to fuss with them during the Sabbath, if the anniversary falls on that day?
Yahrtzeit candles are customarily supposed to burn for at least 24 hours, so people want something they know will last that long. I don’t think anything is required, per se - I think it’s a custom rather than law, which means that the details aren’t quite as specific. There’s no particular requirement not to use a generic candle, it’s just taken for granted that these are what is used. There’s even a special extra-huge model for shiva houses, for the immediate week after a close relative dies, so they can have a candle going all week. There’s no particular ritual involved, either - you just light 'em in the evening.
[Slight hijack] Some old recipes from my grandmother’s day will call for a ‘glass’ of some ingredient - it was understood that this was a glass from a yahrtzeit candle, and was a pretty reproducible measurement in a day when many people didn’t have measuring cups. A friend of mine recently tried to make her grandmother-in-law’s stuffed cabbage recipe, but interpreted ‘gl. rice’ as gallon rather than glass (maybe six or eight ounces). The results were apparently less than spectacular.
We used the glasses from yahrtzeit candles as drinking glasses for kids in my house, when my siblings and I were little. I never thought twice about it, but apparently some of my mother’s friends thought this was morbid, and my parents have since gotten rid of them.[/slight hijack]
Actually, there is a small but growing list of “kosher applicances” out there. Take, for instance, your refrigerator. By opening the door on Sabbath, you are breaking Jewish law in two ways: one, the interior light turns on; two by opening the door you are letting in warm air which will turn the motor\compressor on to bring the temperature back down to 40F or whatever. Both of these things violate the Sabbath because they cause “fire” to be created (in this case, inside the electrical circuits). To get around this, many Orthodox Jews turn the fridge off altogether on Sabbath or (at a minimum) put a piece of tape over the spring that causes the light to come on. Some new refrigerator models come with a “Sabbath mode” where the interior light turns itself off around 4pm on Friday and turns the compressor on and off randomly (so that there is no direct link between opening the door and the compressor turning on).
Likewise, most ovens these days have an automatic shut-off after 12 hours for fire prevention reasons. This isn’t long enough for the Sabbath for the Orthodox, so “Sabbath mode” on these applicances keeps the oven on for 24 hours.
A shomer shabbos couple who are friends of mine keep the tape on the little spring all the time. Either that, or there is no bulb in their fridge at all. They also don’t much care for the ‘Sabbath’ feature on their stove, and instead will use the flame from a candle left burning all sabbath to light their gas stove.