Kosher

Kosher in America

Kashrut in the United States went through several stages. Skilled practitioners were in tremendous demand on the western frontier. Polish-born Joseph Newmark, a certified shochet (ritually trained slaughterer), arrived in Los Angeles shortly after California attained statehood. With the knowledge of religious tradition required of his profession, he doubled as the first lay rabbi for a community that barely numbered more than a minyan (10-person prayer quorum). Rabbis in larger settlements were concerned that their congregations would not be adequately provisioned. New York's Congregation Shearith Israel hired a schochet before opening in 1730—and maintained a monopoly on kosher schehitah (slaughter/processing) until 1825, when other congregations adopted the practice.

At roughly the same time that Newmark entered Los Angeles, New York City counted approximately 16,000 Jewish residents. An anarchical commercial system soon arose: certified shochets and less trained colleagues could be found working in impure, unsupervised, and substandard conditions. After a bogus certification scandal, 18 New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore synagogues combined their resources to provide stricture and structure to kashrut.

They imported Rabbi Jacob Joseph from Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1888, as author Sue Fishkoff explains, to become America's “first and only chief rabbi, a sort of Jewish pope for the New World.” The rabbi hired a cadre of inspectors, or mashgichim, who affixed plumbas (pins with the authority's stamp of approval) to the chickens they deemed kosher. Butcher shops had to pay a tax for this service before even undergoing inspection.

The synagogue-based cooperative model died with Rabbi Joseph. (One legacy may be the hek-shers, or logos, that still designate kosher products). More an episode than a turning point, it nevertheless illustrates some persistent problems; namely, it can be difficult to maintain integrity if the inspectors’ pay is assessed to those who are supposed to be regulated. Depending on economic and other conditions, kashrut also has the potential to factionalize its stakeholders. Such results were visible on a national scale when kosher butchers unionized during the late 1920s and 1930s.

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