Gosh, who remembers the savory taste of Wrigley’s sticks of gum? There was no question as to whether or not it was kosher. Everyone chewed it. What about Sunshine cookies? As long as any product had vegetable shortening in it there was no worry. All one had to do was check the ingredients. For some reason that we do not remember, Nabisco was always treif! Treif candy—no such thing. As long as there was no gelatin in the product we could purchase it easily. Rye bread was very Jewish and acceptable, but white bread was not. Today when we see someone buying a white bread for their family it jolts our memories to the days when that was an absolute no-no. We are sure that you could all think of other examples of things that we ate in the past that no one considered to be questionable. Washing vegetables to the extent that we need to do so today was unheard of. Who told us that there were bugs in strawberries? In Montreal, caterers are not allowed to use strawberries at all. Nor is there any type of lettuce used at any simcha except for iceberg.
Did we even know that there were other types of lettuce? Romaine lettuce was only used for the maror at the seder and that certainly did not exist when we were children. Soaking cauliflower and searching for bugs in broccoli, which Nina has given up serving, unless frozen, were unheard of. You did a peripheral check, as we imagine that there is no one who willingly wants to eat a bug, and then it was cooked.
Who knew that there were different kinds of meat? When glatt kosher appeared on the market it became known to be used only by the “ultra frum” community. Why would we need to use it if for all of these years the heter on the meat that we had been buying from our butcher had never been questioned by anyone. Today, try to get a piece of meat that is not glatt and you will have a hard time. Did anyone really know anything about chalav yisroel dairy products? We all knew that hard cheese was off limits to us unless we went out of our way to find Miller’s packages in an up-to-date supermarket. Nina’s parents used to go once a year to the Lower East Side to get their etrog and lulav and would also make their yearly pilgrimage to Miller’s cheese store. There stood Mr. Miller with a big fat cigar hanging from his mouth cutting and slicing big slabs of all kinds of delicious kosher cheeses. They were hard to find anywhere else.
Wine was restricted to Manischewitz; Schapiro’s, “so thick you can cut it with a knife” and Kedem, and other than Malaga and concord grape who knew there were other types of grapes and varieties? Today the descriptions on the myriad of kosher wine bottles celebrating their aroma, texture and flavor are written by those who obviously majored in the use of adjectives in college.
When one was sick you took the medicine prescribed by the physician. Who would think to ask a question as to whether or not the ingredients were not kosher?
Now the piece de resistance has appeared in the NY Times this past weekend. (Forgive us for reading it—we waited a long time to get back to the NY area.) Kosher marijuana will have two hashgachas. The OU will be in charge of one type and the CRC will supervise the other type. We are waiting for the Badatz to put their seal of approval on it although it might be a shailah. If the Rabbinut of Jerusalem allows it for sure it will not be kosher enough for the entire population in Israel. It definitely will need to go before a beis din, which no one will agree to listen to. We are waiting for the newest arrival on West Englewood—The Weed House under the supervision of…?
By Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick
