The following is vis the NY Daily News:
A kosher food vendor has hired a heavy hitter in the legal profession in its upcoming court battle with the Mets over selling hot dogs at Citi Field on the Jewish Sabbath.
Stepping to the plate for Kosher Sports Inc. will be the high-powered law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, which represented Al Gore in his historic clash with George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000. The firm also repped the NFL in anticipation of an anti-trust battle with the players union.
Kosher Sports filed a breach-of-contract suit against the Mets nearly two years ago after the team banned it from slinging kosher food during Friday night and Saturday home games — a move the vendor says caused it to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.
Kosher Sports had signed a 10-year, $725,000 contract to sell glatt kosher hot dogs, sausages, knishes, pretzels and peanuts at Mets home games, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. The case is set for trial this month.
Team officials “at the highest levels” of the Mets organization were apparently concerned about “undermined credibility with Sabbath-observing” fans, the court papers filed by the vendor charge.
Fortunately for both sides, the jury will parse contract law rather than a complex question of Jewish law — whether food that is prepared and sold on the Sabbath can be truly kosher.
“It doesn’t look kosher,” said Rabbi Zushe Blech, a lecturer at the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn, who is not involved with the case.
Blech added that no observant Jew would attend a Mets game on the Sabbath, anyway.
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9 Responses
Do the mets have games on motzei shabbos? If so the food was cooked on shabbos
I don’t know about that law firm…they represented Al Gor(nisht) in his historic fight against George Bush? They didn’t do too good a job!
Surely the argument is more than “do we have a right to be open on shabbos”? what is the real issue being fought over in court?
“It doesn’t look kosher,” said Rabbi Zushe Blech
I don’t get it. It isn’t Kosher if it’s bishul b’shabbos (by a yid) and then the keilim become assur – so it’s NOT Kosher even during the week. And if it’s a goy cooking on Shabbos the keilim become assur with bishul akum (not to mention shvisas keilim problems too!)
So what’s the point of them being Glatt Kosher?
PloniAlmoni: The keilim become assur, that is correct. But they are only assur to the one who cooks intentionally with them. Other people would be able to eat from those pots. Ayen MB 318:4.
The Glatt Kosher food stand from Kosher Sports Inc at Citi Field is certified under Star-K. The food is most assuredly not cooked on Shabbos.
We do not have the full story on what exactly Kosher Sports’ plan is with regards to operating on Shabbos. It is very possible that they are looking to “sublet” on Shabbos for financial reasons. Any option they choose related to possible sales on shabbos would have to be approved by Star-K, otherwise they would risk their supervision that brings them a lot of their business. In the end, I wouldn’t worry, and I will continue to eat there under Star-K supervision.
Your article, from a non-Jewish sources, is missing something. After an earlier article I checked with the hecksher and the company, and it appears you are missing some of the facts. You should at least ask the company or the hecksher (Star-K) what is going on rather than relying on a goy who is known to be ignorant of both halacha and law.
Motzei Shabbos might be a problem because they are cooking for Jews perhaps. On Shabbos, if by a goy (and one can only assume it is goyim working on shabbos at a Kosher Hot Dog stand, how low can a Jew go to be both m’challel shabbos and be cooking glatt kosher franks) for goyim, then there is no kashrus problem per se, if the food is being heated up, not cooked. Maybe hot dogs are raw not sure. I think bishul akum could be avoided, for example if a Jew turned it on erev Shabbos for example.
Nonetheless, the big issue is no one is supervising what is going on (as Ploni said), and therefore everything must assumed to be nonkosher (any “mashgiach” that is checking as no nemanus at all on Shabbos). Therefore everything would have to be kashered every Motzei Shabbos, which is practically unlikely. Therefore, the food itself might be glatt kosher while in the package, but the food when prepared can’t be assumed to be. No one I’d imagine would put a hashgacha on such a place as well. Therefore, it’d be false advertising and break the contract for selling “glatt kosher” food (obviously food able to eaten by a glatt kosher consumer).
R’ Blech probably can’t legally say it is unkosher without threat of lawsuit, therefore the ambiguous language.
DQB
It’s certainly possible for a mashgiach to check on Shabbos. An example would be a kosher Dunkin Donuts. I believe a mashgiach also goes into kosher DD locations on Pesach to make sure nothing treif goes in.
Anybody know what kind of checking goes on at this concession? Is there a mashgiach temidi? If not, what’s the heter?