Word: kashruth
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...that, say, between Washington and Moscow. But that detente has now suffered a severe rupture, and the cause is Jerusalem's four-year-old 420-room Hilton Hotel. The city's chief rabbi, Bezalel Zolty, 57, has yanked the five-star Hilton's certificate of kashruth, or kosher status. Reason: in his view, the hotel was violating the law of the Sabbath. As the agonized Hilton management knows all too well, the lifting of kosher status is a devastating blow in a country that annually receives half a million Jewish tourists, many of them devoutly Orthodox...
...ever before enforced Halakah (Jewish religious law) in Zolty's fashion. Traditionally, a hotel qualified for kosher status if it adhered to Jewish dietary laws. Zolty insisted that hotels should strictly observe Jewish Sabbath law as well. Said he: "If there is no Sabbath observance, there is no kashruth. One can't have faith in one without the other...
Zolty packaged his interpretation of the law in 20 demands that he presented last August to the 18 local hotels that seek kashruth certificates. Among the demands: use only automated equipment and non-Jewish employees to heat food and wash dishes on Saturdays; abolish Saturday check-out except for emergencies; and program hotel elevators on the Sabbath so that Jewish users will not have to push floor buttons. Zolty also requested the Hilton to eliminate Christmas and New Year's parties and decorations. "In a Jewish hotel, one doesn't hold Christmas parties or any parties for other...
...should Jews observe kashruth? Says Rabbi Leonard Oschry of Chicago's Hebrew Theological College, who is leading a campaign for more kosher households: "By observing it, I make my whole life holy; it is a daily reminder of my Jewishness." Said a Jewish housewife: "You can't really be a good Jew if you don't keep a kosher house...
...Fearing Butchers. Kashruth can make demands at once difficult and subtle. At Passover, for instance, when leavened foods are prohibited, orthodox Jews must beware of soda pop containing food coloring made from an alcoholic base, which in turn is often manufactured from leavened grain. The Old Testament prohibition against cooking a kid in its mother's milk is extended in Jewish homes to maintaining separate dishes for meat and dairy products. Explains Housewife Dorothy Tresley, an M.A. in educational psychology: "I have 4½ sets of dishes and silver: meat, dairy, just a few parve, or neutral pieces...