Hechshers

Tablet K is without question very questionable. The original rav hamachsir was nifter a few years ago and I doubt it got better. There have always been those that question the Triangle K and those who accept it. The are enough solid hechsarim around that it’s easy to avoid the questionable ones.

Hebrew National hot dogs have a Triangle-K. The company says that it is kosher, but not glatt meat.

Both are run by Orthodox rabbis. Rabbi Ralbag is very well-respected in inyanei gittin, eruvin, geirus, etc.

Tablet K’s main issue is with gevinat akum. Rabbenu Tam allowed the consumption of cheese made with vegetarian rennet that was produced by goyim. (See Tosafot, Avodah Zarah 35b, s.v. chada). In modern times, so did Rav Soloveitchik and I’ve heard the same in the name of the Hazon Ish. Most poskim don’t hold like this heter when it comes to cheese, and we therefore require gevinat yisrael. Talmudic gezerot don’t change; cheese must be gevinat yisrael, just as we don’t clap on Shabbat or Yom Tov.

When it comes to hechsherim, the specific issues need to be looked at on their own merits.

Ashkenazim, per the Rema, traditionally aren’t makpid on halak/glatt. An Ashkenaz could eat HN hot dogs, theoretically. Glatt, however, is promoted as the normative standard for today’s Orthodox Jews. Almost everyone in kashrut would tell you that Triangle K is acceptable for things like frozen vegetables. Another hashash people have is with oil; cooking oil is transported in trucks that haven’t been thoroughly washed and is then used subsequently in Triangle K products.

Regarding Tablet K, it is noteworthy that the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly does not consider it recommended, and le ma’aseh, Avi Olitzky, a Conservative mashgiach in MN, says that he doesn’t hold by it.

At the end of the day, though, much of the kashrut politics are exactly that: politics.

If you understand and learn halakha as an organic, cohesive, unified whole, you better inderstand the reasons behind why people do the things they do. Before I started looking at halakha through a more alphabetic lens, I did eat Tablet K cheese, but I now believe that the heterim they use are incompatible with the actual halakha.

RD – I want to add that it is very annoying to me that you insist upon using the transliteration that the British began rather than using the common transliteration that most people are comfortable with. Like you write here “halakha” but you refer to a “hatan”. Now that kh is the same sound (we can hardly differentiate between a chof and a chet) but there is definitely a difference between a chet and a heh, so there is no meaning to your word “Heh – tet/taf – nun sofit”. You also use the term “halak” but you write “hechsherim”. Living in EY and seeing these ridiculous transliterations that we can’t seem to get rid of makes this issue bother me more. Would it be a problem for you to use a ch rather than h or kh for the chof/chet sound? I for one would really appreciate it.

I write using academic norms. Kh is considered normative when writing academically. By some words, granted, I do still use a more colloquial transliteration.

Sam2: If you want to call the ideas in Rambam’s Hakdama to the Mishneh Torah and the ideas of Hakham Faur shtus, be my guest. Halakha is codified and is subject to objective standards, not the intuition of the charismatic. Tosafot was not (a) bet din ha gadol.

Tablet K was started by rabbi safra who died in 2009 it is assumed that his family took over the business.

So here we have rebdoniel saying a kashrus organization run by a deceased rabbi and his layman sons is mostly reliable.

True. My apologies.

But why bring up the cheese issue if the whole hechsher is shoddy?

Also, didn’t you say that you originally ate their cheese?

A while ago I did, but I then learned more about the relevant issues, and now, only eat cheeses with the OU hechsher or better.

I also no longer eat any products whatsoever under Tablet K, such as breads or bagels. A rebbe of mine says that Tablet K davka ought to be avoided, because there is simply a lack of adequate manpower to ensure a reliable yotzei ve nichnas. The same rebbe says that Ner Tamid K (on Amy’s) is reliable, since R’ Hazdan’s only kashrut endeavor is Amy’s, and they therefore are more directly supervised, although I understand that this is also not generally accepted by most in the community.

I used to also eat cheeses under the title La Dolce Vita or The Good Life, that have the hechsher of Rabbi Dovid Katz. I don’t eat those cheese anymore, because that company says explicitly on their website that the cheeses are produced using the “heter” suggested by Tosafot and R’ Soloveitchik (although, in all fairness to the Rav, there are doubts as to whether he really ate Kraft cheese, but if he did, it is in line with shitat Tosafot, anyways). R’ Dovid Katz is a big talmid hakham, from what I understand, yet I don’t know of too many frum Jews who use this cheese. A related episode was that in the Jewish Press, in the 70s, they rean advertisements for Findlandia cheese (vegetarian, with no hechsher), and at that time, they featured an article where R’ Klass, zt”l, argued that such cheese could be eaten, based on the Tosafot above.

Orthodox bona fides don’t necessarily mean that the specific standards used are meaningful. Rabbi Dovid Katz of Avenue L, Rabbi Dovid Sheinkopf, Rabbi Benjamin Weinblatt of Queens, Rabbi Moshe Novoseller in Philadelphia, Rabbi Elimelech Lebowtiz of Tiferes Yisroel, Rabbi Ralbag, Rabbi Israel Steinberg, etc. all have the right credentials. They’re all black hat-wearing, Igud haRabbonim-affiliated rabbonim, but the tzibbur doesn’t hold by their kashrus, for differing reasons.

Abcd2, my point is that he seems to be contradicting himself regarding their reliability.

There are two basic parts of kashrus supervision: halachic standards, and the actual implementation of those standards.

I’m fine with the idea of a hechsher having low standards, as long as they meet the minimum, and they’re transparent about it. Rebdoniel’s realization that their standards don’t meet his is actually something which I applaud. It may very well be that their standards don’t even meet the minimum.

My issue is relying on the implementation of whatever their standards may be. Tablet-K has a horrible reputation in this regard. Rebdoniel is, on one hand, acknowledging this, yet other than the specific halachic issue he has with their treatment of gevinas aku”m, he would eat from their hechsher.

Even if he’s discarded them altogether, he should have done so earlier based on non implemention (shoddy supervision and enforcement).

I don’t get his approach.

I never said that I hold by the Tablet K hechsher. I did at one time, though. If you read what I wrote 11 hours ago, I clarify that point.