:smack:
By “made up” I mean changing the rules on the fly. Presumably the certifying organization has written rules so people know what they must do in order to obtain certification from them. If the rabbi is adding new requirements on the fly that were not explicitly spelled out then that is bogus even if they comport with well known rules their community lives by.
It sounds like Basil already agreed to some of the “extra” rules, like not having women sing to men and keeping the public displays of affection to a minimum. Whether that is part of kosher certification or something else, they’ve accepted it. The request for video is what’s new, but it sounds like it is part of the enforcement of the rules they agreed to. (That doesn’t mean they have to agree to give him the video, and I don’t think it’s a reasonable request at all.) And the restaurateurs are also put off that the rabbi is being this aggressive in policing them. I don’t think that’s reasonable either.
On the other hand, the reason they contract with a certifier is to attract Hasidic customers from the neighborhood, and someone in the restaurant (i.e., a customer concerned about the dress and behavior) called the rabbi when these other people were in there. So at least a portion of their customer base likes the way the rules are currently enforced.
This goes right back to the fact that the owner has a choice here: keep contracting with this rabbi’s certifying authority or drop him and possibly lose the Hasidic customer base.
There are a LOT of us who wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t know. I only know that the kosher delis ALWAYS have the yummiest sammiches and soups.
Of course, if I lived in the neighbourhood and I heard about it I would probably go there just to push buttons.
It ticks me off no end when I hear about any religious group trying to regulate the behaviour of non believers like this, and is just another reason to hate religion in general.
Of course, you don’t live there. And why would you? I’ve been to that neighborhood: It’s mostly Hassidic Jews. Would you really be comfortable there?
Since there’s no chance you would want to live in such a neighborhood anyway, why not just leave them alone?
One might ask the same question about the rabbi’s actions toward the non-Hasidic patrons of a restaurant, which by choice is catering to Jews and gentiles.
Really? Doesn’t throwing rocks count as work? Or do they hire goyim to throw the rocks?
I’d go to a place like that, but not to push buttons. I grew up in NY. Kosher delis and restaurants have some of the best food you can get. The prices are good. You get big servings that satisfy. I can live with a dress code. I can live with a behavior code long enough to wolf down all that food. It’s their restaurant, their religious rules. It’s probably no secret that it’s a kosher place. I’m not forced to go there against my wishes, and in NY at least, most people know there won’t be any ham sandwiches or bacon. You know the rules going in, if you don’t like them, there are zillions of other places.
Although in this case it’s not ‘their restaurant,’ at least not in the most direct sense.
Right, I was talking figuratively. People talk about a favorite place as “theirs”.
“Bottle of red, bottle of white…at our Italian restaurant.”
The first question is, is certifying other stuff part of a normal kosher certification? If so, this is obviously not much of a surprise. If not, it’s understandably annoying to the restrauter, the non-Chassidic customers, and some portion of the Chassidic congregation.
There’s also the question of whether it SHOULD be part of the certification. You should probably ask someone who has actual experience of this, but my uninformed argument would be that it SHOULDN’T, because the reason we have food certification in the first place is that people can’t tell by looking whether food is kosher (or vegetarian, or fair trade), so someone has to do the checking (and maybe be paid to do so). Whereas (most) other aspects, you can tell by looking at the restaurant, so a certification is somewhat helpful, but not absolutely necessary.
So, maybe there should, or shouldn’t, ALSO be some sort of “this is an appropriate environment for my congregation” certification, official or unnofficial, but tying it into the food has a big downside of giving the certifying authority massive discretion over the rest of the restaurant’s business. Because the certification is the only way of knowing if food is kosher, most jewish customers will not go there if the certification is withdrawn, which is a big threat. So even if this particular rabbi is acting entirely in good faith, it’s bad to give this discretionary power to people, because sooner or later, someone well meaning will use it as blackmail to get a restaurant to conform to some standard – that other Jews will disagree was necessary at all.
Since the congregation are such a big part of the business, it’s reasonable that the owners want to keep things in a way they’d be happy, which typically means a way the Rabbi will approve. But the cameras seem massive overkill: a discreet chat to the owner that he should gently ask customers not to be immodest, and he would probably comply. If the Rabbi has the cameras, he has a temptation to go snooping for other stuff to object to, of the restaurant or the guests. Which is laudable, but probably a bad idea!
That’s between the rabbi, the restaurant owner, and (maybe) the other residents of the neighborhood, who at least are aware they are living in a Hassidic area and so are used to what that means.
Come to think of it, there might be a contract issue here. Does the restaurant have a contract with the certifying agency, and if so, what does it say? If, for instance, the contract says that the agency will certify the restaurant if it’s consistent with the Kosher rules, then it’d be a breach of contract for the agency to withhold certification for some other reason.
My standard is this: take the religion out of it, and is it okay?
JimBob’s wants to be known as THE place to see and be seen by clowns. So Jim hires the Clown Federation of America to supervise their cream pies, their squirting daisies, and their dress codes: he wants the SuperLaughalicious Certification. The CFA says that too many people are coming in with normal-sized pants, and that until this changes, the place isn’t laughalicious enough to get that certification. CFA further stipulates that they won’t provide this certification until they can see video evidence that oversized pants have become the norm.
Where’s the problem in all of this?
If it’s okay without the religious element, it’s okay with the religious element. Contrariwise, if it’s not okay without the religious element, adding religion to the mix doesn’t magically make it okay.
From my seat, I couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about what standards Orthodox Jews want to have for Orthodox Jewish certification. It’s their business, and they’re welcome to set it up however they want.
My first thought that had me a little dubious was based on what admittedly is speculation: I had a mental picture that the couples who got the rabbi concerned were black, based on the fact that most of the other non-Jewish customers shown in the accompanying photos were, and on the characterization of the neighborhood. (Also based on my equally-biased assumption that if they were white Brooklynites the odds were their clothing would have sounded a lot more hipster-douchey).
The article doesn’t say what ethnicity the couples at the bar were, to be sure. I don’t even think the rabbi, if he reacted to black couples, perhaps even more to black couples than non-Jewish whites, would be consciously racist, but in the scenario in which let’s say they’re black, I think it’s fair to assume that someone from a community that defines itself in part by being “different” would find Brooklyn black people “more different” even than white Gentiles. To someone potentially concerned with losing “control” over how things ran or the overall tone of an establishment/community, I can see an uneasy reaction being more likely (not laudable, likely) the more un-alike the “other” patrons were from the old guard, and that’s without adding in some of the historic issues Jews and blacks have had in Brooklyn.
Having said that, the guardians of kosher can do what they want, as most here have said, and so can the restaurant.*
*people can be quite creative in sending not welcome messages. I remember walking by a restaurant in East London, some Pakistani place, with a sign “Men must wear white skullcap for admittance.” It’s not like they were handing out or selling white skullcaps for non-Pakistanis, or that I’d have been welcome if I’d brought my own – I got the message.
Sounds like this place is not merely a restaurant but something of a nightclub as well, if live singing is part of the issues the Rabbi is addressing. If live music is part of the atmosphere, then the issue of Kol Isha (women singing) and the possibility of mixed dancing is an issue that affects the ability of the place to seat observant Jews for meals or drinks. Another example that’s not strictly related to Kashrut of the food is the availability of a Sukkah to eat in during the holiday of Sukkot. These are all legitimate concerns of a Rabbi certifying an establishment as suitable for observant Jews to eat in.
Sometimes it’s a matter of the organization’s own ideas about spiritual priority. Here in Queens, the local major Kashrut organization, the Vaad, will not certify the nearby Coldstone Creamery because it stays open on Sabbath. It is certified by an individual Rabbi whose Orthodox credentials are impeccable. When I asked the head of the Vaad about it, he answered that there are Sabbath-observant ice cream stores in the area, and they do not wish to certify a non-Sabbath-observant one when the higher standard of observance is available and competing. Nothing wrong with the food itself, but if they want the Vaad, they need to close on Sabbath. Period.
The bottom line is, the Kashrut organization does not need the restautant, the restaurant (if it wants Kosher-observant customers) needs them. Whether it seems petty or tyrannical, the organization can insist on whatever standard of spiritual purity they wish and it’s up to the establishment to decide how badly they want the particular organization and the Jews who will accept no lesser trusted certification.
This is why religion is so screwed up, and both Judaism and Islam are the worst. Religion should be about what the observer does, not what the business does. If the Jew (or Muslim or whatever) wants to observe the sabbath that is their prerogative, but whether or not the business does should not matter.
It’s not, or it shouldn’t be, the concern of a Kashrut certification organization as to whether an establishment is suitable for “observant Jews” to eat in. It should be the concern of a Kashrut certification organization as to whether the food in an establishment is Kashrut.
Also, there are plenty of “observant Jews” who aren’t Haredi.
bengangmo:
The Kashrut authority has the job of certifying that if the observer wishes to observe, patronizing that business will not harm his observance. The business is obligated in so far as they feel it is worth it to them to get observant patrons.