Volume 44 Number 09 Produced: Wed Aug 11 7:13:38 EDT 2004 Subjects Discussed In This Issue: Arnold's (dairy) bread (5) [Martin Stern, <Shuanoach@...>, chips@eskimo.com, Batya Medad, Avi Feldblum] Basis of Discussion about Rabbinate [<chips@...>] Brachot or Tefila with no Printed Text (2) [<Shuanoach@...>, Mark Steiner] Cohen Modal Haplotype [Mike Gerver] Credit Cards/Ribis (Prohibited Interest) [Rhonda Stein] Genetics and Ashkenazim/Sepharadim [Ira Bauman] Stem Cell Research [Irwin Weiss] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Martin Stern <md.stern@...> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 09:07:51 +0100 Subject: Re: Arnold's (dairy) bread on 10/8/04 2:37 am, Israel Caspi <icaspi@...> wrote: > Arnold's Bakery produces a line of parve bread under the OU. They also > have a line of (dairy) bread which is marked "K-dairy." When I inquired > about the supervision of the dairy line, Arnold's claimed that all their > baked goods are produced in facilities which are under OU supervision. > But in spite of the fact that all the ingredients in the dairy bread are > kosher, and the production is supervised by the OU, the OU will not > allow its symbol to be used on the packaging because of the dairy issue. > The OU has declined to confirm or deny the validity of Arnold's claim > that their line of dairy bread is, in fact, under OU supervision and > that, for those who accept that the products' "K-dairy" label is a > sufficient siman to overcome the halachic objection to dairy bread, the > bread is kosher. There is a ban on baking dairy bread (or for that matter meaty bread) unless it is of such an appearance that it cannot be confused with ordinary bread. Since we have not been informed on this topic it is difficult to comment but, if the dairy bread is not sufficiently distinctive, then it is possible that the OU does not want to give it its hechsher. On the other hand, it cannot state that it is definitely not kosher, hence the prevarication. Perhaps the K-dairy authority disagrees and, since the degree of distinctiveness is somewhat subjective, it considers it sufficiently so. Martin Stern ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <Shuanoach@...> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:14:05 EDT Subject: Re: Arnold's (dairy) bread See Yoreh De'ah siman 97, problem with making dairy bread. y. l. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <chips@...> Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 23:30:13 -0700 Subject: Re: Arnold's (dairy) bread Does the dairy bread look different than regular bread? If not, then the OU will not deal with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Batya Medad <ybmedad@...> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 06:05:55 +0200 Subject: Re: Arnold's (dairy) bread I remember learning that there's a halachik problem with dairy bread; it's forbidden/unacceptable. Since people expect bread to be parve, and dairy bread looks like parve bread.... very problematic and confusing. IMHO the same should be for cakes. But I never heard of a halacha for cakes, contrary to the bread issue. Batya ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Avi Feldblum <feldblum@...> Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 07:08:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Arnold's (dairy) bread On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Martin Stern wrote: > Since we have not been informed on this topic it is difficult to comment Some history here. At some earlier period, the OU did give Arnold's a hashgacha on their dairy bread. There is no physical difference between the dairy bread and non-dairy bread in the shape of the loaf etc. The arguement was that the marking of ou-dairy on the packaging was sufficient to satisfy the halachic requirement that there be a siman - a marking or difference. The other major supervision agencies disagreed, and after a relatively short time (less than a few years at most, if my memory is correct) the OU withdrew from that position and the Arnold dairy breads went from being marked OU-dairy to K-dairy. For those outside of the US, as a quick note, marking something with a two letter combo where the two letters are not just next to each other allows the symbol to be trademarked, and cannot be used by anyone other than the trademark holder. K as a single letter is not subject to trademark, so anyone can use that symbol. The word on the street when the change occured was that the OU decided to not get involved in the issue of the dairy designation, so withdrew it's trademarked symbol, but it remains the only Kashrut supervision agency in Arnold's factories. So many people who generally do not accept a "K" designation, accepted Arnold's dairy bread as being Kosher, if they accepted the arguement that the dairy designation was sufficient for the halacha of siman. With this, I think you might be better able to understand both Arnold's statement that all of their production, including the dairy bread, is under OU supervision, even though the OU symbol is not on the package, as well as OU's reluctance to explicitly state anything about the situation. Avi Feldblum ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <chips@...> Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 17:27:53 -0700 Subject: Re: Basis of Discussion about Rabbinate > It is known and I think undisputed that at various times there have > been "Rabbis" that have been appointed by various governments for > secular reasons, and that these persons have for the most part been > unsuited for the position. However, the original posting implied that > many/most of the Polish Rabbis in the 18th century were not only such, > but that they were the "promoters" of the Pilpul style of Torah > learning. This is, to me, highly derogatory and disrespectful, in > addition to being suspect for the illogic mentioned in the earlier > posting. But you are the one who assumed aspersions, not the original poster. There is a BIG differerence between "many" and "most". The fact of the matter is that many of the Rabbinates in that part of Europe were purchased and the problems caused thereby was a major factor in the rise of Chasidus in that part of Europe. You don't have to like it, but to refuse to acknowledge it is to spit into the wind. And I disagree with your position that the old time Europeans were so much better than us. The disappearance of religious Jews was massive in an extremely short period of time. A perfect example is Frankfurt-on-the-Main. The -only- reason there was so many Jews keeping the religion in that time is because the Goyim would not let the Jews in. Once they just started to allow Jews in the, Jews of Europe broke down the doors with a flood. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <Shuanoach@...> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:10:53 EDT Subject: re: Brachot or Tefila with no Printed Text Most of these discussions can be found in the standard codes where the brachot/tefillot appear. I recall the issue being mentioned in the shulhan Arukh and nosei keilim both by hilkhot kri'at shema and when the recital of the parashat ha-tamid is discussed. Although C. Luntz mentioned that there might be an issue of bracha she'eino tzricha, i don't recall that being the major issue - most of the issues revolved around "devarim she-bichtav ee ata rashai le-omram al peh" (e.g. Gittin daf 60, and Temura, among other places), though this is of course limited to sections of tefila which come from pesukim in the torah. (not many berachot) In many instances, even though it is preferred that tefilot whose source is pesukim be said out of a printed text, many poskim find reason to be lenient because with tefilot which are 'she'gurim be'phiv' there is less of a chance that a mistake will be made because they are so frequently recited. (This of course assumes that the problem of making a mistake is the reason for the halakha of devarim she-bichtav, as opposed to, say, a reason based upon the desire to distinguish between things with sources in torah she-be'al peh vs. in torah she-bichtav.) Hope this helps. y.l. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark Steiner <ms151@...> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:19:04 -0400 Subject: Brachot or Tefila with no Printed Text > Everybody pretty much seems to hold that, if we are talking about a bracha > which is a rabbinic obligation, and you are in doubt as to whether you said > it or not, you don't say it, but if it is a bracha which is fundamentally a > torah obligation (eg birchat hamazon) you do say it, based on the general > principle, safek d'orisa l'chumra, safek d'rabbanan l'kula "Everybody" is too strong. There are rishonim who hold (a minority opinion to be sure yet instructive), that if a person was in the middle of eating, and realized that he doesn't know whether he made a bracha, he cannot continue without a bracha, since eating without a bracha constitutes "meila" (unlawful use of what belongs to Hashem) as Chana pointed out. There is a principle "safek brachot lehakel" which is interpreted by these rishonim as applying to cases in which one doesn't know whether one is supposed to make a bracha or not, but not to cases where one doesn't know whether one made a bracha or not. Mark Steiner ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <MJGerver@...> (Mike Gerver) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:34:43 EDT Subject: Cohen Modal Haplotype Eitan Fiorino, commenting in v44n01 on my earlier posting on this topic, says I knew there was something wrong with this; it took me a while but I finally figured it out. The whole idea behind the Cohen modal haplotype is that it was discovered as a marker somewhat unique to kohanim. In other words, the investigators looked for genetic markers - little snippets of genetic code - that were found regularly in the Y chromosomes of self-identified kohanim but not among non-kohanim. So the idea that the high frequency of the kohen modal haplotype in these various non-Jewish populations could be explained by a shared common ancestor such as Avraham doesn't make sense, since the marker is not found commonly among Jews who are not kohanim. The marker is several times more common among kohanim than among other populations, but that doesn't mean that most people who have the marker are kohanim. In fact the statistics that Eitan gives in his next paragraph suggest that the number of Yisraelim who have the marker is greater than the number of kohanim, since the total number of Yisraelim is several times the total number of kohanim. Some of these Yisraelim may be descendents of Aharon who have lost their kohen status in one way or another, but why shouldn't many of them, maybe most of them, simply be people who are directly descended, on the paternal line, from Yehuda or other sons of Yaakov? After all, Yehuda was Aharon's great-great-uncle on the paternal line, so wouldn't you expect him to share Aharon's Y chromosome? As I said, the marker mutates about once every 1500 years, so the chances are that it didn't mutate between Yaakov and Aharon. (Most kohanim who carry the marker today differ in one or two places from the sequence that would be inferred for the node of the tree, which is why the marker is said to indicate a common ancestor about 3000 years ago.) Similarly, although I think the marker is less common among non-Jews than among Yisraelim and kohanim, it does occur among non-Jews, and I suspect that many more non-Jews have it than Jews. Again, although some of these non-Jews may be descended from Aharon or Yaakov on the paternal line, why shouldn't others, probably most of them, be descended from Avraham, or Terach, or earlier ancestors of Aharon? It's only 7 generations from Terach to Aharon, or about 700 years. Whether the probability of mutation depends on the number of generations or the number of years, it probably didn't mutate between Terach and Aharon. If there were populations in the world today who had a valid tradition that they were directly descended, on the paternal line, from Yehuda, or Binyamin, or Moab, or Ammon, or Esav, or Ishmael, then the marker would probably be just as common in those population as it is among kohanim. But there are no such populations. Yisraelim are not all descended on the paternal line from Yehuda or Binyamin. Many of them, maybe most of them, are descended along the paternal line from converts sometime in the past 3000 years. (Though the relatively high percentage of Yisraelim who have the Cohen modal haplotype, as noted by Eitan, suggests that a large fraction of Yisraelim ARE descended from Yaakov on the paternal line, which is an interesting fact that we otherwise wouldn't know.) And there is no reason to think that most Arabs today are descended from Ishmael on the paternal line. Only among kohanim is there a claim to a specific paternal line of descent. (And among Leviim, but that claim, at least among Ashkenazim, seems not to be supported by the genetic evidence.) Mike Gerver Raanana, Israel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rhonda Stein <rhondastein@...> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 08:47:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Credit Cards/Ribis (Prohibited Interest) Have any of you done research into which credit card companies do not involve any problem of ribis (Jews charging interest to other Jews)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: <Yisyis@...> (Ira Bauman) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:07:56 EDT Subject: Re: Genetics and Ashkenazim/Sepharadim The biggest physical difference I can see between Sepharadim and Ashkenazim is that Sepharadim have darker skin, attributable as an adaptation to a warmer, sunnier climate (darker skin is more effective against sunburn and the cancers that can come with it.) The writer uses this as a reason that Sephardim are darker because the idea of intermarriage with the local population is probably offensive to him. However for Sephardim to develop darker skin as a response to the climate would either have to be by a process of natural selection and the greater protection against death by skin cancer would probably not be enough to change a population's skin color over several centuries. The other process. using LaMarck's theory has been generally dismissed since no way has been found to transmit acquired characteristics if they are not genetically encoded. Ira Bauman ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Irwin Weiss <irwin@...> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 21:48:13 -0400 Subject: Stem Cell Research I didn't find anything by searching, but maybe I didn't do it well. In any event, is anyone aware of any Teshuva relating to Stem Cell research? <irwin@...> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Volume 44 Issue 9