06-30-2010 STAR-K Open Lines and Questions

uh so today we are going to discuss your questions it's open lines we have already a number of questions you're welcome to chime in uh by chatting with us if you're joining us on dimdham which by the way the class that we're in on dimdhim.com is kosher um and if you're joining us by uh via the telephone which is two one eight eight nine five one two o three the passcode is 20 20 pound and uh we'll show you hopefully we'll be able to uh if you have a question we'll we'll uh tell you how to uh join in in a minute uh zev uh the volume is low uh we have a comment here on the dim dim can you okay so so let's uh before we get to the questions let's talk a couple minutes about things going on in current events rabbi rosen uh we were talking before the show about what's happening with turkey and israel and all of the the issues that are coming up with turkey's creating difficulties for the israeli government and israeli people and how does that affect the hashikakas the certifications that we give and other agencies give in turkey and that's your basically your department here one of one of the many things i shouldn't say the only thing but among the many hats that you wear is you're in charge of the the certifications in turkey so how does that uh i mean if if we can't travel to turkey or whatever the issues are you want to address that for a minute it's a very good question and that's really left us the cautious agencies with a uh great concern um this week we had the fancy food show in the javits center in new york and in turkish pavilion uh very heavily is certified by starcase certification at present because of the situation all of the certification agencies have pulled back their supervisors um to our uh at least comfort zone is that we do not have uh productions that have to be on an ongoing basis and some of the certifications in israel that are being done for their producers so even though we would have a hiatus uh we are there periodically and you know quite with quite frequently uh right now we are waiting to see um a certain lull in the in the action um politically right now it does not uh bode well and hopefully it the companies are hopeful that the political situation will quiet because they still are very anxious uh to get coach certification and to be able to come and be a player on in the u.s marketplace okay so um basically if i could just reiterate what you're saying is that the the the agencies that certify product there on a constant basis they have may have some difficulty getting in correct but the ones that are like us we just we're just there from time to time correct okay so so how long can we go without with well without being there to i guess in our comfort zone rabbi duvet stein who is our field representative that comes from rehoboth to turkey this month is um at least these couple of weeks uh is he's his being um his uh certification route is taking him to europe to italy and spain so turkey was not supposed to be on his uh agenda until the end of july so hopefully by then that july is the time when apricots are in full production in malatia in eastern turkey so we are hopeful that by that time there's going to be a significant change in uh and a relaxation in the travel i mean is that uh really does it look like that i mean to me it looks like it's going the other way the uh well the the only other failsafe is that rabbi stein is traveling on a u.s passport uh as is other masjid that we use even from israel it is the an israeli it is an israeli problem more than a u.s problem and if we have to go ahead and to reorganize by taking a a supervisor from the united states we may have to go to that route okay so you're saying that it's not it's only an issue right now for the for israeli citizens but for an american citizen they could go without a problem correct we would be comfortable sending someone there well hopefully hopefully we'll be comfortable okay all right okay that's that's that's an answer i mean that uh really brings to four the the the concept that we're not there constantly these are not we're not producing uh you know we're gonna have i have a street over there slaughtering house where we need to be there all day correct we're producing things which are relatively simple we go from time to time uh okay so let's go to some of the questions first that we got by uh via email okay i see now that the volume is working better on the on the dim dim so thank you zev uh one question that we have is is grape juice considered wine and therefore one should not drink it during the nine days during the nine days meaning after the first of the month of of until the ninth of which is tish above during those nine days we don't drink wine and the question is is grape juice considered wine grape juice is considered wine right and it is important to to note that in shabbos we do make kiddush on wine however on have a dollar typically there's been the custom to make uh half dollar during the nine days on beer so uh people maybe get a overdose of wine over shabbos and make it on grape juice so i think that it's uh a good a good uh time to uh try sam adam starkey certified beer that's a good uh good point that a lot of people do make avdela on saturday night on beer i personally do not so i have two options one is i go to rabbi rosen's house for shabbos and i have to make kavdala the other option is i have one of my children usually we try to pick a child about six or seven years old and they make uh they don't make of those they drink the the grape juice uh um or the rama says that if a child is not available then he himself the adult himself can contribute grape juice for me the beer is just not really an option rather than i just robert goldberg's too young so uh okay so that i believe that that answers uh answers that question another question has to do with the nine days with that period of time that's coming up which is a sad period of time is a remembrance for the destruction of the temples in jerusalem is someone who completed which is a tractate of talmud prior to the nine days such as the track date of macos which those who learned da fiomi just finished uh this past week this a couple days ago are they allowed to hold off on making the seam until the nine days so is it usually a party made or small party celebration when one finishes the uh a tractate of talmud and the question is is one allowed to hold off on that until the nine days when and during that uh celebration have meat drink wine and and so on and uh well typically we the states that one would one shouldn't uh time it in in such a way that it's as a convenience that you would have the maserta finished uh earlier and then you you're holding off till the nine days um i think that uh in in in certain cases um although um states we we shouldn't go ahead and uh and save it so you can have a nice steak dinner i know you know personally that some people would make a seam for a yard site and is it is a da fiomi is a studio so they would probably take that and that's as they they've planned it for their completion which is right now that they'll do it they would hold off you mean until right it's planted so they finish on the yard site which would be fine but again like rb rosen is saying the mission brewer rules that one should not hold off on finishing a miser and so then we finished macos this past would be monday and so to hold off basically two weeks or more i don't think it would be our custom to do that especially since marcos is a very small relatively and uh you know it there are those that do it though there are definitely those that do it and if one has that custom of that it's okay to hold off so they should follow that there are there are uh authorities who allow it right interesting to note that uh robrudermann the uh the roshi shiva the head of uh nerius royal uh the found the founding roshashiva uh in in in my days when i first came to baltimore that it was customary that in restaurants uh that there would be one person to complete a message so that the participants in that restaurant would be i have a flagship meal it was rabbi ruderman's concern that people if they did not have a place to go to have a kosher meal would go elsewhere and that was a a fear that was obviously robert rudiment started the yeshiva in the 1930s i came here at the beginning of the 90s and um subsequent to that we do know we no longer do the one messerta completion in restaurants during the night days what is our policy on that don't we have some restriction on the meat uh restaurants is only for takeout is it am i right um it's not our we don't take care of it directly but i think it's only but i think we love what we have in in the in in the restaurants that they have nine-day menus that aren't right they would have adjusted to um being able to have fish menus during the nine days fish fish during the night okay fish without worms fish right worms you know of farm-raised fish fish or dairy i dare you but but and if they want people want meat i think they can take it out is that right okay because there is no control right it could be for shoppers right right maybe the person is making a scene that's correct the person is not uh is not feeling well and and needs uh the meat and so on um now speaking about the fish we do have a chatted question here and i encourage everybody to if you have a question on what we're talking about or anything having to do with uh kosher to uh to chime in does their bell squishly to still hold that all kosher fish even those with anasakis is kosher without any checking needed and the answer is yes rabelski still does uh hold like that and um w's policy follows you know his his uh his opinion then interestingly as um we had we had the article on the anasakis in the the latest kashus currents which uh at the end i concluded that this issue is still in its process of formation uh other notable post skim uh i guess redactors of law have written uh response rav padawa in england uh recently wrote a response of permitting the fish as uh as rav uh moshavaya who is uh renowned in israel as being the bug the the premier bug expert for permits the anasakis and fish and uh rafale and who has wrote a response earlier still hold so the um the jury is still out on both sides of the issue our starkey policy is to follow those condolen uh in in israel in the land of israel who uh are uh forbidding to eat the anasakis currently that's our policy if anybody wants to see it in in writing we can you can go to our website stardashk.org and right there on the front page you can hit the button that talks that refers to this issue and it will come up one one significant change that we did have was with salmon canned salmon correct that's wild which normally would be a problem but based on various halachic reasons uh that it's questionable whether or not they're in the can or you can find them in the can we rabbi heinemann is now allowing the canned salmon obviously with reliable certification as long as you mash it up like you would normally when you make a sandwich make a salmon salad with mayonnaise or whatever so that is a significant uh change i think that will be well received okay let's go to some some other issue here speaking about the bug still we can't get away from the the bugs and the worms by rosin it seems to be with us nori sheets this is not bugs and worms these are crustaceans okay i stand corrected nori sheets what are the problems with them is there an issue of bugs do they need to be checked the answer is yes nori sheets uh which are pressed seaweed sheets very popular in in the sushi community have to be checked to make sure that in its process that small sea horses are not contained they're in um typically nori sheets would go through an electric eye check to make sure that there is not there's no other foreign matter other than seaweed that's in the sheet and i think that these electric eyes are sensitive enough to detect if the the mass matter uh it would not match um the seaweed so they would be rejected so we only certify those sheets that can go through such a uh a check and then we do check some of them afterwards we spot we follow up with uh spot checks so if a person wanted to buy uncertified uh an unflavored because if it was flavored it would need the certification for the flavoring uh just plain old roasted nori sheets they could if they know how to check it but it takes some it does take some a lot of bug chunking takes expertise it does take some some training and uh we're waiting for uh robzev's team to put together a video how to check uh how to check nourish sheets because we've got the strawberries we have the flour we have the what else do we have the what lettuce the lettuce so we're waiting for the one on the nori sheets that is in in a nutshell that's the the nori sheets we have a question here that's being chatted there's a ge oven which has two ovens right bottom and a top the bottom drawer heats up to 450 degrees can one cook milks in that bottom drawer oven at the same time that flake chicks is in the upper oven i think we concluded not at the same time is that right i think you have to to make a determination how the uh the the ovens are vented if the ovens in that that's a very important thing to to realize that an oven vents either some some of the older models will vent in the back of the oven some ovens are vented in the the the last i guess north west uh burner in an electric oven and a double oven can at times be either vented separately but then coupled together and if that is the case that you're you you will have both uh meat and milk venting at the same time you may have a um a possible haul of a meat and milk issue in terms of its cooking so right so i i believe that we uh our policy is that if they end up or they have two vents two separate vents but they then they they join at some point you cannot cook meat and milk at the same time but separately you could uh unless one oven vents into the other oven i think we we've uh we're on alert for that possibility too the bottom one may vent into the top one and then from there go out i think that i'm sorry if that's the case so then you couldn't even use it at all for for me one for me and one for dairy typically it's really vents from the back and i think that it's important to go ahead and check with the manufacturer how your ge oven is being is configured we do have some of them are staircase certified and then we should have that information available on our site we i just want to identify us for those joining us late uh i'm rabbi sv goldberg this is rabbi sv rosen and we're here in the starkey offices in baltimore for our monthly teleconference which is on the last wednesday of each month except for next month when it will be the third wednesday which is july 21st the day after tish above at noon okay here comes here's another question robby rosen this gets a little bit sticky go ahead is the agency oh you the same regarding reliability in israel the same as it is in the u.s and is there a starkey as well here in israel okay this is a question from somebody who is residing in israel and wants to know about that that's a very good question and you if you are residing in israel as you know israeli castrus is uh not i wouldn't say a political hotbed but it's a cautious hotbed which um is far more complex than we have in the united states um which is which is uh which i tell people is counterintuitive right people think that in the united states you know it may be there's so many different certifications i think the last kosher cautious magazine listed though uh how many hundred how many hundreds in the united states maybe 500 or more and they think when they go to israel that you know israel is the land of the jews and it's easy to find kosher there but in truth like you say it's more complicated i'll give you an example where there's there's a uh a profound difference between the ou us and oh you eric cisrell in in inheritance role the ou would consider themselves to be what we call a mahadrin a mahadrin hasher mahadran hasher would be the ones which are more scrupulous because as mandated by israeli law everything has to have a certification before it can be sold and therefore they will rely on baseline certifications to be able to give the highest common um distribution of kosher products to the masses those who are actually uh desiring to have a more high-end conscious between they're called a mahadrin hasher a mohadran certification uh which the ou considers itself in israel as well the star k um that their standards would be even tighter in israel than you would in the united states for example in the united states you can purchase star-kissed tuna fish with an o-u where the o-u will not require full-time supervision on the tuna fish where it's being produced while in israel the star-kissed tuna fish with the ou has full-time certification full-time supervision on it and they will not sell the regular starkist in israel because it would not be considered to be on the maharan level okay as far as uh probably what what he's asking is also including the the restaurants and so on that the ou is certifying there and i don't think we would want to comment necessarily we don't we don't have direct knowledge or we're not uh we didn't review the restaurants and so on but we did have experience with uh some of our some of our certifications there a number of years ago we we did have a star k israel uh program where we started the the procedures of giving certifications to some restaurants and we found it very difficult a very difficult environment to to keep to uh the standard that we require over here right in a restaurant situation it's important to note that in israel where you you will have certification being given by an agency in both a restaurant and in a hotel hotels typically may have a more strict setup because each hotel has its own particular rav hamaksha rabbi who's the resident rabbi who is responsible for the hotel in a restaurant it's not as tight and therefore you would have to really be have to check each particular restaurant or hotel to see if it reaches your cashless comfort level i um i just want to point out that in israel if you look on a typical two da a leather certification in a restaurant it lists the name of the mashiach and usually his cell phone number oh really yeah usually his uh usually will have that information there which is i've never seen it in the united states there it has the name of the agency but in israel you if many times you go to the you look at the two dial which you should check that you should really check it to see that it's current and that it's valid and if you have any questions you should be able to uh speak to the masjid if he's supposed to be on site or if not you can give him a call and ask him it's it's it that that little um tidbit of information is not given here in the united states here we would we don't put the much name down we just put it's the agency if you want you can call the star keg there is an another very fundamental difference between giving giving uh kosher supervision here in a town like such as baltimore where you will have all your your restaurants along a two to three mile drag and that will be the uh your your base of operation while when you're certifying a country and it's replete with restaurants uh all over your task is uh a lot more formidable i remember i went into a restaurant in israel and it was not an ou or a starkey place but a place with would be considered i guess a reasonable certification and the certification letter listed it said rabbi on site and has his name cell phone number and i asked the the uh people behind the counter can i speak to the masjid to the supervising rabbi i want to talk to him see what's going on i said well he's not here now well the letter says he's supposed to be here so where is he well he leaves at 11 so he's not here any longer anecdotally rabbi i happened to be in marseille this year and the rabbi told me to go to a particular restaurant which was open and i came there they're the in france they do not call them i mean is not here yet to unlock the oven so i had to wait about 45 minutes until the chomera came and then i was able to have my meal okay well that's good absolutely unable to uh you weren't able to uh it's maybe inconvenient for a person who wants to eat but it's good for cashews i was pleased okay um we do have some more questions over here let's take take them okay according to those who say that one must cover the knob of a crockpot for shabbos is there any problem if this covering falls off on choppers what the background for this is that the crockpot will say you're cooking your trolling in there you want to make it what we call gruffalktuma and either you want to line it with with aluminum foil according to some opinions or you want to cover the knob or remove the knob so let's say you covered that knob before shabbos and then it fell off on chavez is there any problem with the food and um i was thinking about this question when we when we got it i don't really know why you wouldn't be able to just put the covering back on right it's not yeah you're not the idea the idea being that it's supposed to be some sort of a sign as you'd either take off the knobs or to be able to cover the knob so that you wouldn't adjust it but the food is already cooked before shabbos and um well that that has to be a proviso before you can use it but as long as your food is cooked before shabbos you'd be able to partake of the food on on shabbos well even if it even if it wasn't cooked and he was which is ideally supposed to be but if he covered the knob and he left it in let's say partially cooked and then it fell off i don't know why he wouldn't be able to put it put it back on and i don't really see a great uh a great uh issue with that um okay if anybody has any questions you can uh join us with through dimdhim and chat with us or by telephone hit star six and you can unlock yourself i do want to mention that coming up next week in about a week and a half actually we have our star case summer program training in koshers and we have a very interested group as we do every year i think this is our seventh or eighth year that we're doing it and as usual we have more applicants than unfortunately we can we can handle and you know we're very very much looking forward to it and germain to that is that we're having this year rabbi duvet stein from israel who is our starkey field representative actually in in eric's israel and in europe and in turkey and he's going to be addressing the group and i think a lot of the questions that um you raise in terms of narcissist role he has written uh extensively in conscious currents about the differences been in shrita and in dairy and in the other produced products well what we've asked him to address here is um how does one living in hutzle arts in diaspora how does he deal with the the tithing the true museum is the orla the shmitah the sabbatical year because it's it's confusing for us for those who live in the united states when you get an apple from israel on orange do you have to worry that it might be something from the first three years of growth and then it would be it wouldn't be sufficient to tithe it it would be completely forbidden so you have to worry about that and you know those kind of issues it's interesting rabbi stein told me that when he was first married he his wife lived on a moshaf and the wedding president that moshav gave the young couple is that he learned studied extensively in a shemitah colo that uh for two years oh really and that's okay that was able to go ahead and to give him uh a very sound uh background right all these issues as far as the oil goes the fruits are for benefit for three years i was discussing it this year with rabbi stein and he uh mentioned that there are five opinions five basic opinions so it's not you know it it's confusing subject and we need we want to get some more clarity on it that's correct you you if you're in israel you'd have to go look at the charts and see you know the probabilities we we've written about that also well in israel actually i think that as far as the fruits go it might be a little bit easier because because you're not going to buy anything any fruit without a reliable certification here in the united states we don't certify you can't go into the supermarket if it says jeff oranges you're not going to look for a certification a typical supermarket so you're stuck on your own so actually i think for israelis it's uh somewhat easier and i found that when i was in israel during the the shmitah sabbatical year you just basically you don't ask any questions you're just relying on your particular certification whichever it might be they take care of it and some many people living there know very little about the actual laws because they don't have to and here since it's not as it's not it doesn't come up that often we don't have a particular uh eye on it all the time and sometimes the questions come up more often in the united states than they do in in israel um here the person who asked the the knob question about the crockpot so you're saying that your son insists on taping on the covering over the knob i don't know why you would be have to tape it on i think it would be sufficient just to if you had some tin foil to uh to surround the surrounding that's the proper way to say it right just turn apart or you could also take off the knob right take off the knob it also makes a difference to be able to allow you to some knobs some knobs have springs on it you know okay then you won't be able to fix it afterwards right okay rabbi rosen is there anything else that we wanted to get to urgent or is it uh basically we've uh okay do we still have time we have a couple of minutes or anything else that we i just wanted to i happen to have taken a trip just to check on our hall of fall farms i think that the the listenership might be interested in knowing um you know that probably one of the central issues that we have on dairy farms is if a cow develops a a problem called the displaced abbot mason as they call it a d a um where where there's a gas buildup in in the in the stomach of the cow of how to be able to uh alleviate the problem without making the cow uh non-kosher because if you uh if you do something invasive in the apple mason you make a puncture or a hole to release the gas then the the milk cow is not maybe grow to be healthy again but cannot be uh used for kosher production so in our farms in pennsylvania we've instructed the the veterinarians to do a similar operation as they do in all the dairy farms in israel where the they they've learned and are taught to to be able to suture an animal without doing any type of invasion invasive action there thereby saving uh the dairy cows and uh not puncturing any type of a um any any type of an organ is there is the uh supervisor watching him when the supervisor is watching him with with avid interest every every time we have a one a supervisor that lives there 24 7 and therefore he's on call okay so when you buy the hobby soil milk so you assure that it doesn't have any problems with the uh with the d.a cows and uh do all of these certifying agencies do it like that or is there some in israel in israel they do it but that israel does not have the luxury of having a supervisor living that they have to have something like hatsola an on-call rabbi to go ahead and get to the farm uh others do not have the um i guess you'd say the that type of a cooperation so they'll either have to milk the cow separately which then some of the farms they milk them separately and other farms they'll have to sell off the da's and sometimes we do that as well and therefore or they will they will have to have a separate barns where you will have separate milkings so if if a person buys any call of your soil milk in the united states can he be assured that this problem was taken care of 100 okay okay that's good good uh we have a comment here there is so much choice nowadays in the fruit store why buy israeli produce with all its inherent problems it's easy to avoid that that's uh okay there's some truth to that uh the other hand is that we want to support uh the farmers in israel and if if a person knows what he's doing and knows how to properly eat israeli produce then he would be recommended or encouraged to buy israeli produce if a person is not certain then i definitely would would stay away a lot of times i get a call from a person who went into costco correct and they have israeli peppers for some reason costco always you get that that same call right so and it's beautiful produce and they and they feel that they want to support israel uh right so well people buy the calls i get usually they buy it and then they bring it home and they say oh no it says product of israel or israel and mexico and they want to know how to how to deal with it and on a vegetable like that if it's not the sabbatical year it's fairly easy to tithe you know if you go through the steps it's not it's not it doesn't have a question of the aurala that we mentioned before and it's not a sabbatical year issue so it's fairly easy to deal with night we explained how to deal with it over the phone and then i tell them to look at rabbi rosen's article which uh which is available at the star k site i see that someone asked the question of how many americans really know what they're doing about about tithing that's a that's a good question and uh that's why you have it is he asking about cashews or in general how much i don't know maybe they're at maybe they don't know what they're doing or maybe they're talking about doing the operations on the count no i think he's talking about the yeah he's talking about the it's true that's a good point if a person doesn't know what he's doing with reference is really pro this then yes he's good i would agree you should know that there is a default position that you know a person would go ahead and just say follow what the dictates of the hazon is and you know sort of that that would kind of cover it if but you have to really know what you have to take off that makes it a little simpler uh isn't that all the old cow problem at the post komo mate we're going back between cows and fruits okay so there are those there again there are those who are matera there are those who are not you know we we do have the dictum that a if you see that a cow can live for 12 months after a after taking ill or having being in a questionable status which after we know that the even if you had you were invasive in in an abomasin in which that's corrective surgery and typically the cow can can live right um but nevertheless we take uh trying to take a a stringent view so that every the particular group who may not want to rely on any types of leniencies so we have that's another thing like the fish we try to take the high road right when a person is buying the hobby soil milk which is a higher level of kosher than the regular milk that you buy he he is not intending on getting himself involved in a in a hollow question there's another good question of it accordingly all star k dairy non-hobby soil is a problem well it's a very good question yeah and when and and ironically when that the the this particular problem as i have noted hit the 4 on 1994 that's when this whole d.a issue sort of erupted and the the ironic the ironic state of affairs was that because we are on the farm with the mashiach witnessing what's happening with the in in terms of the cows we would have we were able to just to basically target the problem and we we maybe we must target the problem that's correct if somebody buys non-holiday throw basically the this this issue is is not as far reaching as people may think that it is it's a very small percentage of the cows that are suffering with the ease and in certain and it has been found that with diet it can actually be prevented so in a non-hall of your throat situation where you buy the milk in the store we apply the principle of that it goes for the milk has come from the majority as we call called the parchment rubber copper it goes from the majority of cows who are healthy and therefore the problem is not an issue so when he's buying but because for call of duty stroll we perhaps have our obligation to take care of it like you mentioned because we are there and we can take care of it correct and otherwise but by the non-hobby so we're relying on nullification perhaps right on a different subject if one gives a bottle of wine as a gift is he obligated to notify the recipient that it is non-official so it's non-cooked wine and therefore there are certain ways that you have to deal with that wine i mean anybody can really if he's giving it to a religious person that person usually would be aware that you can look on the bottle to see if it is militial or not then if you have your issue if you're giving it to a non-observant person then then that's that's uh okay that's more sticky that would be a question i would to a non-observable person i would give not i would not give them a bottle of non move one i would give them only one that is convolutional uh here in columbus ohio there are no longer any tums that carry a hectare however cvs and acids are starchy certified okay well that's good to know the um we do have uh uh thumbs like products and i think you probably can go to our star k uh medicine list uh where you have a listing of even if it doesn't have to carry the certification on it and that there are some some of it i think some of the terms would be okay even without any certification but when it has a certification you get that additional oversight that you know you know that it's kosher not just sort of assuming that it is kosher okay i think we'll wrap it up there rabbi rosen i want to thank you and thank you very much everyone for for uh joining us uh we are here every month usually the last wednesday of the month at uh 12 noon at dimdham.com the the key word is kosher and on the phone we are at 218 895 1203 passcode is 20 20 pound next month we will be joined we will be having the class on july 21st which is the not the last wednesday of the month but the previous one and this class if you'd like to review it or have want to tell a friend about it is located at kosherclasses.org it's archived there under webinars and you can go there and find it or tell your friends about it we want to thank everyone very much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time take care bye bye