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]
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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)?
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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
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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@...>
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End of Volume 44 Issue 9
