Coca~Cola

da: you’re machmir to taste all your yomtov food beforehand to make sure it tastes good?

cheftze: Boy you’re opening up a can of worms. Anyways what’s the difference between rav landau’s mashgiach who goes into a Jewish company or a non Jewish one? You either rely on the hechsher or you dont. Or are you calling coke a non jewish food? If so, why?

Cheftze: What does “non-Jewish food” mean and why would you avoid it for Pesach?

Cheftze: And why do you avoid it? Personal thing you want to do or do you have a Halachic backing for it?

Minhag from our community.

Loyal jew- So are most foods! For one thing liquer…. And we use it for a miztvah!!!!:(

No Kosher l’Pesach coke in CA this year because of a new law that does not allow the caramel coloring because it can cause cancer if you drink 1000 cans per day.

Cheftze: As far as I understand, most manufactured foods are made by non-jews who are either employed by Jews or there is a mashgiach watching a days production or similar.

So what do you eat?

Chacham: I noticed that. Were you trying to point out the same thing Shticky just did?

can someone explain to me how i became a joseph? all i did was link to another old thread (which i happened to post on see comment number 35). I remembered something about it so i searched the homepage. and yes, i have been registered for over 5 years. March 6, 2007.

I like coke it’s so good

I am Machmir to drink Coke on Erev Pesach afternoon, 1st day Pesach afternoon, Erev Shovu’os afternoon, and on both mornings of Rosh haShono, to be able to stay awake for these 5 occasions which entail many hours of being awake & requiring intense concentration.

On the topic of Coke, did you know that, to avoid needed to print a very scary health disclamier, they opted to drop a chemical from the formula. FDA said it was “not a hazard” but still…

Its nice to know (or maybe, not so nice to know) what’s in that liquid we so quickly gulp down.

(For the record, Pepsi had to make the ssame change)

Why is it silly? Of course he’s not saying that anything with an OU is treif, just that it doesn’t necessarily meet his standards. So he has the Heimish Rav Hamachshir certify that this particular OU product does meet those standards.

or he’s saying that an ou alone doesnt suffice for him for pesach, which for all you know is based on a psak from a reliable rov, and isnt a chumra at all, and that when a riv says certain things made by OU are ok for pesach, he’ll rely on that rov.

When you have thousands of people too poor to afford Peseach because of all the CHUMRAS. People need to re-think chumras

Thousands Of Jewish Families In NYC Are Too Poor To Pay Pesach Costs

If you think the OU is not OK, then you are saying Rav Belsky is not good enough for you

“Why drink Coca Cola at all. The company is a big sponsor of lifestyles that are not for anyone, least of all for yidden.”

“Loyal jew- So are most foods! For one thing liquer…. And we use it for a miztvah!!!!:(“

EXCELLENT ARGUMENT!

Do you think the hsimish companies maintain their own canneries etc? They contract. With many of the same companies that manufacture canned goods with an ON. They just apply the heimish label for a specific run and you get to pay a higher price for the privilege. A few years ago a friends father insisted on paying a premium. For a bag of sugar with a heimish hashgacha.

During Pesach the bag tore and underneath was the Domino bag with an OUP

I personally will eat OUP on Pesach but it is very disturbing that someone would make fun of somebody who is machmir to use heimish hechsherim.

Your friend found a Domino OUP bag under the heimish bag, so what? The point is he doesn’t rely on OUP unless the heimish rav says to. It is money well spent.

It is a valid chumra and not to be scoffed at.

Those who scoff at it are “leitzim”, go read what chazal have to say about “leitzim”. (Those who scoff at those who don’t eat heimish are leitzim as well)

During Succos we have a concept of Chassid Shoteh for example in cases where someone insists in sleeping in the Succah when its pouring outside.

Is that really any difference than someone who buys a bag of “Hemish Sugar” that is really just Dominoes

There’s a difference. This isn’t chosid shoteh and this isn’t over-paying for nothing.

Fact 1: You want to keep a certain level of kashrus.

Fact 2: Some OU products adhere to that level and some don’t.

Fact 3: You don’t know which OU products adhere to that level.

Fact 4: Rabbi Heimish does.

Fact 5: You pay extra money to buy the OU products that are also certified by Rabbi Heimish.

It might look like Rabbi Heimish is just putting his sticker over the OUs (which he is) but it is more than that- he is certifying that he agrees with the OU about the kashrus of this particular product.

zahava: “kedem and Rashi are Yayim Mevushal”

Not all Kedem products are Mevushal. Furthermore, even Mevushal products may not be touched by anyone other than a religious Jew from the cruching until the Bishul. Harvesting is irrlevant, anyways, it is not done by Kedem themselves and the pickers are not their employees.

“The Wines that come from Italy , France or California are not located in frum areas and while of course some of the workers are frum most are not and cannot be. Do you really think Jews Pick the Grapes?”

What is your point, that they are all Assur or that you do not believe in an Issur of Stam Yeinam?

“How much work did he put into it to charge that extra amount? I seriously doubt that much, if any, maybe a few phone calls.”

That particular bag might not have been much work. If he knows a little about how sugar is made and packaged then he might have just made one phone call to determine that it has an OU. But, his entire line of Kosher products does take work. It takes knowledge of kashrus standards.

As I described above, the whole point (in my understanding) of heimish hachsherim are for those who don’t fully understand their own chumras. You want to be machmir (especially for Pesach) but you don’t know enough to know what the chumras are so you outsource the chumras to the Heimish Rav Hamachshir and he makes the decisions. He decides that OU sugar is good but OU widgets are not, he puts his sticker on the OU sugar and you pay extra for it. He did the work, he learned the halachos, he applied the halachos to decide what meets his standards, and he went around putting stickers displaying such, and you are paying him for it.

To some extent the entire kashrus industry is like this. In the old days people would buy a bag of sugar with NO hechsher at all. They understood how it was processed, packaged, etc and therefore understood that it was kosher without even an OU.

Nowadays, with all the random ingredients and machines that go into processed foods, even many knowledgeable people don’t know how to tell if something is Kosher. That is why we pay big money for companies like the OU to pasken for us.

Side note: There are some who still pasken based on ingredients as pointed out at the end of your post:

“There is a infamous web site that is matir almost anything by checking the ingredients.”

There was a thread about this:

Hello: Unless the word “ostensibly” means much more than I think you mean it to say, you didn’t get the point. Maybe you did though. I don’t know. I’m not gonna say explicitly why here though.

“If you think the OU is not OK, then you are saying Rav Belsky is not good enough for you”

Absolutely not. The OU themselves will gladly tell you that there is a need for their kulos for the wide tzibbur, and it makes perfect sense for an individual to be machmir. That’s besides questions of machlokes, no big chumrah, just a particular question R’ Belsky happens to hold is muta and your Rav holds is assur.