Jewish Foodways and Religious Self-Governance in America: The Failure of Communal Kashrut Regulation and the Rise of Private Kosher Certification

Abstract

More PRODUCTS in the typical American supermarket are labeled kosher than are labeled organic, natural, or premium. Generating more than $12 billion in annual retail sales, kosher food is big business. Surprisingly, of the estimated twelve million American kosher consumers - individuals who specifically seek out kosher-certified foods-only 8 percent are religious Jews who eat exclusively kosher food. Most choose kosher food for reasons related to health, food safety, taste, vegetarianism, and lactose intolerance or to satisfy non-Jewish religious requirements such as halalThe popularity of kosher food is part of a more general infiltration of traditional Jewish foodways into American culture, a phenomenon reflected in the successful marketing slogan You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's real Jewish Rye.Kosher certification has been a medium for influence between Jewish and American culture in both directions. At the same time that kosher certification illustrates the infiltration of traditional Jewish foodways into the American mainstream, the turbulent history of kosher certification in the United States demonstrates how quintessentially American legal and economic institutions have shaped Jewish communal self-governance. Religious liberty and free markets in America undermined the thousandyear-old kehilah model of kosher regulation, which was based on statesupported centralized communal control over religious standards and economic activity. These same features of American liberalism nurtured the emergence of a highly successful system of private entrepreneurial kosher certification agencies.In the Old World, civil authorities throughout the Diaspora granted Jewish communities autonomy, which frequently included full powers of internal legislation and regulation. Governance by a community council, or kebilah, frequently included civil and criminal jurisdiction, as well as administration of standard municipal functions. Kebilah legal authority was comprehensive and exclusive: it covered the full range of internal administrative functions, and all the Jews in a particular locality fell under its jurisdiction.2Kebilah regulation of kosher trade rested on the powers to grant exclusive licenses to slaughter meat within a community and to prohibit the importation of meat slaughtered outside the community. The local ritual slaughterer-dbobet (plural, dbobetim)-was appointed and employed by the kebilah. Meat dealers seeking kosher slaughter paid the kebilah, which paid the dbobet a standard fee, regardless of whether an animal turned out to be kosher or treyf. This system aimed to avoid the conflict of interest that would arise if the dbobet were paid directly by the meat dealer, who might pressure him to lower his standards in order to assure that the dbobet would declare the dealer's meat kosher, thereby allowing the dealer to obtain a premium for it. The job of dbobet was a valuable asset that included exclusive slaughtering rights, tenure, retirement benefits, and transferability of the office to heirs. These features of kebilah regulation made dbobetim eager to maintain high standards and a good reputation to avoid any risk of dismissal. In addition, the halakhic principle of dbebute hutd (outside slaughter) prohibited importation of meat slaughtered outside the community and strengthened kebilah control over kosher standards.3Jews attempted to establish the kebilah system in America in the form of what Jonathan Sama has termed the synagogue-community. During the colonial period and for several decades after independence, each locality in America had a single Jewish congregation, run by a lay board, which hired a community dbobet. Like the kebilah, each synagoguecommunity exercised exclusive jurisdiction and monopoly power over kosher slaughter.4 This system of centralized community control suffered a serious blow as a result of the Abrahams affair in 1813.In that year, the trustees of Shearith Israel, the sole Jewish congregation in New York City, refused to reappoint Jacob Abrahams as the congregational ohohet, following complaints about his performance, and they appointed another ohohet in his place. …