Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Superbowl and Kosher Supervision Ideology

I have a friend who is in the Jewish mag biz. Due to the nature of his business he is quite friendly with many owners of Kosher establishments, most of which are in the Brooklyn area. He recently told about something I found quite alarming. There is a particular Hashgacha which was giving restaurants a hard time about their advertising "Super Bowl" specials. Forget for a minute that thisthe super bowl is a tremendous source of income for many of these establishments. Where does a hashgacha have the right to enforce their beliefs into an advertisement to this degree...what's next the ad must be in yiddish, hebrew with a BS'D or else they revoke it? I have been to weddings where they had mixed dancing and the food was under very good kosher supervision. The reason: The point of kosher supervision is for food not for people. Perhaps these hashgachos should be more interested in how clean these restaraunts are.If say a restaurant was found to have mice running around, or food that is not protected from potential source of contamination during storage should they not revoke it? Isn't that a more important issue?

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6 comments:

Ezzie said...

Hey, they did better than Prime Grill!

The Town Crier said...

I dare say the sick obsession with the superbowl is a much worse problem for the frum community than the horrifying practice of mixed dancing, (as bad as that may be). Especially when you consider the pornogrpahic half time shows...

AS said...

Wow a liberal getting into the fray, this should be interesting. I don't actually watch the superbowl so I'm not really failiar with the part you claim is pornographic ( do you actually know what that word means?). Considering the content of most TV shows today I would think those half-time shows pale in comparison.The question I'm proposing isn't the obession..you can blog about that if you like. TTC do you think hasgachos job is to give supervision on advertising?

The Town Crier said...

Surely you couldt have missed all the hooplah in this country over Janet Jackson's fully exposed breast at the superbowl halftime show?
In any event while i dont think we should compare the severity of the two ideas you mentioned, tho it could indicate inconsistency, i do understand the idea behind taking issue with the fanatical fanfare with which the frum coomunity adopts the hype of the super bowl. if it were a holiday it would be "chukas hagoyim" and some other reason why people are against thanksgiving. (yet when was the last time anyone theteaned to pull a hsgocoh for advertising a thanksgiving dinner?) the superbowl and the obsession with it and its celebrations is troubling.

AS said...

Actually I totally forgot about it until you brought it up.Janet that is :)

Batya said...

Let's take it in a different direction. Let's say some non-observant person wanted to "l'chabed" religious, Kashrut makpid friends or relatives and have a simcha with strictly kosher food...
So the caterer should be afraid to take the job, because the mashgiach won't approve of the client?

back to your question--
Would it be better for a Jew to eat traif while watching the game?