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Loading... Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)by Roger Horowitz
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  Dokfintong | Jun 23, 2017 |  no reviews | add a review
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Kosher USA follows the fascinating journey of kosher food through the modern industrial food system. It recounts how iconic products such as Coca-Cola and Jell-O tried to become kosher; the contentious debates among rabbis over the incorporation of modern science into Jewish law; how Manischewitz wine became the first kosher product to win over non-Jewish consumers (principally African Americans); the techniques used by Orthodox rabbinical organizations to embed kosher requirements into food manufacturing; and the difficulties encountered by kosher meat and other kosher foods that fell outside the American culinary consensus. Kosher USA is filled with big personalities, rare archival finds, and surprising influences: the Atlanta rabbi Tobias Geffen, who made Coke kosher; the lay chemist and kosher-certification pioneer Abraham Goldstein; the kosher-meat magnate Harry Kassel; and the animal-rights advocate Temple Grandin, a strong supporter of shechita, or Jewish slaughtering practice. By exploring the complex encounter between ancient religious principles and modern industrial methods, Kosher USA adds a significant chapter to the story of Judaism's interaction with non-Jewish cultures and the history of modern Jewish American life as well as American foodways. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)296.7Religions Other Religions Judaism Jewish life and customsLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3)
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Wikipedia in English
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Kosher USA examines the struggle to transform Kosher certification in mid-twentieth century as food increasingly became an industrial product. It explains why certification (the process by which a particular food is verified OK for observant Jews to eat) passed from the hands of rabbis who knew the law but could not apply it to a factory, into the hands of specially trained chemists who are able to follow the chain of evidence to determine whether a permissible raw material emerges as an acceptable final product.
Mr. Horowitz is a skilled writer and patiently explains the intricacy of Jewish food law, highlighting the detailed knowledge needed when a tiny production detail instantly renders a food unfit for consumption by observant Jews thereby losing a company an entire consumer segment. He stresses the role that debate continues to play in Jewish legal formations of all kinds. (I remember twenty years ago a rabbi friend of mine served on a commission to determine if USDA humane slaughter rules should be adopted in place of traditional Jewish humane slaughter rules. More recently a Muslim friend served on a USDA panel on the same question.) Mr. Horowitz is sympathetic to the distress of observant mothers and their modern children when popular products like Coke and marshmallows fall on the wrong side of religious law.
This is a legalistic book and I found it very interesting to read as a story of the sacred and the profane.
I received a review copy of "Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food" by Roger Horowitz (Columbia University) through NetGalley.com. (