Jerusalem – The kashrus forgery industry continues to bedevil the lives of well-meaning faithful Jews.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
This week, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate circulated to city rabbis and other religious authorities a list of food products which they caught bearing forged kashrus symbols.
One of the products was yayin nesech distributed as kosher l’Pesach with the hechsher of the Aida Hachareidis Badatz. The marketer had affixed the Badatz symbols on the three kinds of yayin nesech wines he was selling and the fraud was discovered after it was realized that the wines didn’t have the obligatory Rabbanut kashrus symbol.
Other forged products included a popular non-kosher energy drink bearing the Chief Rabbanut kosher symbol, a French brandy stamped with the Jerusalem Rabbanut symbol as being kosher l’Pesach, and various meats, cheeses and oils.
In one case, discovered by the Rabbanut in the Misgav region, a cheese producer continued to use a Rabbanut hechsher even though the Rabbanut had removed their kashrus supervision from the plant.
The Chief Rabbanut anti-fraud division said they are doing their best with the limited manpower they have. In one of the above cases, they even turned to the police requesting that they begin an investigation on the perpetrator. However, they themselves admit that the fines for kashrus forgeries are too low to provide deterrence.
The continuing cases of kashrus fraud — most of which are discovered not by the anti-fraud unit but by the public — shows that stiffer penalties and incarceration must be utilized if forging kashrus symbols is to become too risky for forgers. The continual breaches and the frequent Rabbanut notices of forgeries show that stricter enforcement and punishment are an imperative.
uh, shouldn’t it be stam yaynum not yayin nesech? unless of course the same ones who used the sheitels for avoda zara also offered yayin.
Why is there no public list of all these products.
Every one of the readers here may possibly already have it in their kitchen today and be eating it right now, tomorrow and the next day.
Unless we are all to stop using all “Eda” bearing Hechshers until we have the specifics of which products are affected and which not.
The original psak was stam yayim had the same chumras as yayim nesech, which would mean an issur hanaah. Whether those chumras are still applied to stam yayim is debatable,
wich wines?
“the limited manpower they have”
Yet tourism, high-tech, and government have all the manpower they need and want.
FYI, the OU is never on a label, it is always directly on the packaging. So that is another thing to watch out for.
Which wines have the fraudulent hechsher we don’t know but there is a hint in the article; that it is missing the mandatory Rabbanut hechsher. So if you find an Israeli wine with Eida & without Rabbanut hechsher you can assume it is fraudulent .
Ask your local wine merchant before puchasing.
We should be making our own wine like we should be growing and preparing our own food. This way there will be no problem with false or bad hashgachos.
The Mahri”l writes that there is no such thing as yayin nesech today. And this goes back a long time ago, he was a rishon. The Remah Also writes the same.
The Mahri”l writes that there is no such thing as yayin nesech today. And this goes back a long time ago, he was a rishon. The Remah Also writes the same.