All too often, kashrut is viewed as a set of rules that are meant to be followed and not understood, technicalities with little or no underlying meaning. But these rules do embody values that give ...

In the course of studying for my rabbbinic exams at Beit Midrash Har’el, I was studying the Pitchei Teshuva, an 1800s-era commentary on the Shulkhan Aruch. After bringing a few different reasons that ...

The Agriprocessors fiasco, which came to a head just about a year ago with the ICE raid on the Postville, Iowa, meat processing plant, was, as we say in Yiddish, a shande far di goyim—a scandal in ...

Reform rabbis are talking about their own board of kashrut. Alternative minyans are offering vegetarian or kosher-approved vegetarian meal options. Synagogues are contracting with organic farms in the ...

Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner has spent over a decade working as a writer in New York City. She currently covers all aspects of food, dining, travel and lifestyle trends and the intersection of culture, ...

Last November, at the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial in Houston, a group of rabbis and lay leaders gathered for a workshop to discuss how Reform Jews should relate to the theory and laws of ...

Ending the kashrut monopoly On January 1, as part of the government budget, the first segment of the kashrut reform law was passed. According to the new law, Stav explained, religious councils may now ...

Recently, we have been told repeatedly that competition is a good thing, especially when it comes to the religious services provided by the Rabbinate in Israel. There is merit to that argument.

A few months ago, signs were plastered across haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem—including one directly in front of my apartment building—declaring that “Anyone who enlists (in the IDF), will eat treif ...