Orthodox Jewish Women generally have different considerations to take into account when seeking a career or employment. Many will try to find jobs that are family friendly, allowing them time to care of their children as well as help out with religious holiday preparations. For the longest time these jobs examples would be wig stylist, teachers and more recently speech therapy, OT, PT etc.. A new job market is opening up that could prove to be another opportunity for Jewish Orthodox women: Kosher Supervisor AKA Mashgiach. The article in the JFB reports that women may be better at the job than men are:Rabbi Mayer Kurcfeld of the Star-K, who is organizing the fall training course, oversees several women supervisors and says they are often better than men because they are particular about details."They're very meticulous," he says. "They don't deviate -- either a thing is right or it's not. A guy, a lot of times he'll do a Talmudic analysis. I don't want a Talmudic analysis. A mashgiach's job is to see and to hear and to report."Most female supervisors work in the food services industry and tend to be found in cities outside New York and Los Angeles, where plenty of Orthodox men are available to fill the jobs. As you can see from a book published by Rabbi Zushe Blech on Kosher food production, the idea of a female mashgiach was pretty rare:
As time progresses and more classes are given we may see a change in this industry entirely.
3 comments:
Can't see any possible halachic reason why not.
I'm certainly open to women serving as Mashgichim - but there is some legitimate dispute on the matter.
It seems that Rav Moshe was matir it only bdieved, and others outright forbid it (R' Moshe Shternbuch). There are very few teshuvot in writing permitting it lechatchila.
It has to do if whether or not appointing a woman as a mashgiach is a violation of "serara" - the prohibition on appointing women to positions of authority.
see: Igrot Moshe Y.D. 2:44
Ari Enkin
One is always relying on a woman's proper supervision and understanding of kashruth if one eats her cooking. As for the mashgichim from kashruth agencies, most of what they do is very clerical in nature. A lot of the visit is checking that only the ingredients they had approved in a list sent before are present at the plant. And often the female secretaries check over the paperwork coming in and going out of the agency.
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