Hug the Rav haMachshir

If anything could have persuaded me to leave the rabbinate, it would have been the several years I was responsible to serve as Rav haMachshir (certifying authority) for a small, non-metropolitan kosher certification. This was, without a doubt, the worst nightmare of my entire rabbinic career.

I could devote an entire blog to this and have enough posts for several years – it was that involved and that bizarre an experience. I can’t understand how I managed it as long as I did.

The problem, in a nutshell: When you supervise Kosher certification, you are working against many of your clients, many of your consumers and many of your Mashgichim (on-site supervisors). [And all of this has nothing to do with the financial end of running a vaad hakashrus; don’t get me started on that.]

Clients
Sure, the business owner comes to you with a smile and a request for certification, and perhaps some business owners are even sincerely interested in helping the Jewish community, but many/most of them are simply in this for cold business purposes: the benefit of reaching the kosher consumer. They have little desire to invest anything in the cost.

This means that you, as certifier, spend significant time hearing, “Can we do it that way instead of this way,” “I have a cousin who runs a kosher business and his rabbi lets him do it that way,” “You can trust me not to mess this up,” “Why do you need to visit that often,” “What could be wrong with this ingredient,” “I’ll get you that Schedule A soon,” etc.

If you decide not to certify the business, you are the victim of communal lashon hara from people who remember the last rabbi, who certified what they are certain was an identical business in an identical situation. And, of course, you hear from the people who spoke to the business owner and heard from him just how rigid and intractable you are.

If you do decide to certify the business, you then spend your nights lying awake in bed, wondering what you might have missed, and what your on-site Mashgichim aren’t catching.

Consumers
The consumers aren’t much of a treat, either. Aside from the ones mentioned above who complain about the businesses you don’t certify (“Hey rabbi, that vegetarian place would be easy to certify! What could be wrong with lettuce?”), you have to deal with the ones who complain about the businesses you do certify.

Some people think you are responsible for quality control. “That challah is too dry.” “Why don’t you tell them to bake it for a shorter period of time.” “They didn’t have enough hamantaschen for Purim this year, and they put them out too late.” Aside from the fact that our businesses wisely ignored most of our supervisors’ advice, people should realize that quality control isn’t really in the certifiers’ bailiwick.

Some think kashrut is all politics. “I know the Albania-K is really fine, my cousin is a rabbi and he told me all about how these things revolve around politics.” “I know the Hexagon-K is fine; he just went to the wrong yeshiva.”

And there's the alleged shift to the right, too, alleged by people who don't spend the time to actually investigate the topics they are discussing: "I've never seen a bug in lettuce," "My bubbe ate strawberries without washing them, let alone examining them," " “Glatt, shmatt; it was good enough for my grandmother, it’s good enough for me.”

And let’s not forget the consumers who are passing through the area, see your name on the Teudah (certificate of supervision) and call you, seeking to somehow vet your bona fides over the phone. What they really want to know is, “Can I trust that you know what you are doing,” so what they ask is something like, “I was just passing through here and I stopped in and saw your name on this sign. It sounds familiar; did you go to yeshiva with my neighbor’s cousin’s chavrusa X, at Yeshiva Y? No? Oh, I was sure you did. Where did you go, then?”

Mashgichim
Sad to say, you are also working against your mashgichim.

I’m not going to discuss my own mashgichim, in case my identity ever becomes known, but I will discuss the general issues one can encounter:
Mashgichim who don’t do their jobs, because they think they know better;
Mashgichim who don’t know how to relate to the workers at their businesses;
Mashgichim who take food for themselves with a wink and a nod at horrified workers;
Mashgichim who never want to pull a hashgachah (certification);
Mashgichim who always want to pull a hashgachah.

And, bottom line, you’re always working against the mashgiach anyway, because either you ar adding a business, which means adding more work, or you are dropping a business, which could ultimately result in a drop in salary.


So please – particularly if you live in a non-metropolitan Jewish community – find your Rav haMachshir and give him a verbal hug; he can probably use it.