Let's say you were invited over to someone's house and you had a hunch that they did not do something as strictly as you do it in your home, for example you knew they were not very meticulous about washing leafy veggies or that they eat raspberries if you are machmir not to. Would you still go there to eat, if you knew the menu would not contain foods that would require your more stringent approach, or would you just assume the whole house is probably questionable for you?

I don't think I would eat somewhere if they didn't care about basic hygiene.

Excellent question.

If it's a produce bug issue, I'd likely eat there and just avoid the bug-prone foods. But as with everything in life, it depends on the specific circumstances.

Yes it is and what is your answer.

[Penina - what do you do?]

I'm waiting for 32 other people to answer first.

hey! 5 is reasonable, 32 is not!!!

What about 8?

If everyone waited for 5 other people to respond to your thread, no one would ever answer. I think you are setting a bad example.

8

It's a very interesting question and very common. On the one hand, if what we're concerned about is lack of adherence to chumra, but adherence to basic halachah, but I have a particular chumra, then it shouldn't matter - the host keeps halachah, I have shtick, so I avoid particular foods, without prejudice as to the other foods.

On the other hand, if the host is ignorant of halachah, or worse, knows halachah but ignores it, then that's another matter. Let's say I see the host putting chicken with congealed gravy into the oven on shabbat day right before lunch and let's say that's contrary to halachah [as opposed to putting it on a blech or whatever], can I just not eat the chicken and assume everything else the host does is al pi halachah?

It's a really tough question. If someone isn't checking for bugs, is that halachah or chumra? And if it's halachah, who knows what else they are or aren't doing. On the other hand, even if someone doesn't check for bugs, nobody buys treif anymore - everyone Orthodox buys things with certification so it's not like the chicken is going to be treif.

Anyway, it's a really tough question, and I do not have any answers. Which is why I wasn't answering.

And what if the hostess doesn't cover her hair?

Depends what. If it was a major thing (defined subjectively) then I might not go there. Otherwise, I would probably just stick my head in the sand. That's probably not the right thing to do, but if you started avoiding everyone who didn't do every thing as meticulously as you do then you wouldn't go many places.

What if someone checks for bugs but basically just rinses off the lettuce under running water, and does a perfunctory check, and doesn't hold it up to the sunlight or buy a lightbox or bathe it in bleach and dish soap and saline for 2 hours before use?

ok...ok.. I get the hint. Any other ideas of how to get responses to my threads?



ok...ok...I get the hint!!!

Pay people to respond???

put in something about sex (brianna will respond), put in something about guns (the Rabbi will respond), put in something about Israel (Pinchas will respond), put in something about seperate seating (VLG will respond), put in something about MO people (melech will respond), put in something about how hot Israelis are compared to Americans (Shoshi will respond), add in some breast talk and you got Agent220 etc.....
Before you know it you'll have a 3-page thread.

[Admission: I have started threads just to see who is lurking and to flush out certain members].

I'm going to ask you not to bring this into the equation just because I'm strictly speaking about food.

This is a question that I think alot of people run into when they belong to families with different backgrounds or different hashkafahs. In an earlier thread we talked about how people who eat CY will eat at people's houses who have CS but not when they're serving milchigs, thereby avoiding actually having to transgress their humras. This is sort of along the same lines. There are a LOT of people who keep kosher out there, including those who are Conservative or very nominally Orthodox, who take the time to keep a kosher home and buy totally hechshered ingredients but don't do things like soaking lettuce and avoiding foods like broccoli for fear of bugs.

I myself am goign to admit taht this question is about my own house. I eat rasperries and broccoli and most of the other veggies on that "do not eat" list because I think they are delicious and nutritious and I can't tolerate the idea of living without them because I might come in contact with a microscopic bug. I wash them or soak them, agitate them, and then after a brief check, I eat them. So one could say, I don't do much more than the average housewife probably does and there are many people who would say that I'm not doing a thorough enough job of making SURE there aren't bugs. So for me, as long as someone holds to the standard I hold (which is admittedly lower than some, but satisfactory to me) I will eat in their home/restaurant. I'm just asking if that's true of the higher denominator. If you hold that strawberries can't be eaten unless they're soaked in dishsoap, would that prevent you from eating at someone's house who you're not sure went through that process? Would you just avoid the strawberries? Would the entire house be suspect because "if they aren't careful about _________, then what else are they not careful about"?

OK, I'll try to respect that but:
1. I have an uncontrollable tayvah to push agendas.
2. The point is that if we are concerned about bug checking, does that imply anything else about their standards? So too their other halachic observances could say something.


Absolutely true. Personally, I think at least part of the bug crisis is specifically in order to build invisible walls of purity - since nowadays everyone buys kosher stuff and standards are pretty high in every orthodox woman's kitchen [eg. we don't normally buy the sort of chocolate bars anymore that used to be in the MTJ vending machines...], we need something else so that the self righteous can still be better and in order to reduce mingling with those beneath our religious contempt. Even CY is becoming pretty standard, at least in commercial establishments. So the bug crisis, or the water crisis, or whatever, is invented.
[See, I told ya I have an uncontrollable tayvah].
But the reality is that you are correct, this is very, very common. Not everyone in our Orthodox shul may be up to our standards, and especially so with family. And when Bubby has what she considers to be a strictly kosher home, and you are inspecting her kitchen and deciding what you can and cannot eat, it's not so simple. It's a very difficult situation.


That's probably very, very common. Far more common than people on h.com would openly admit given the stifling of non-Rightist views.

[I've mentioned this before, but my wife served broccoli one Friday night, and my youngest daughter said she thought broccoli isn't kosher...]


I would assume it depends on the person. Some people just as a rule don't eat things like broccoli or strawberries out. I guess like in the olden days when they wouldn't eat meat out.
But these are two separate questions: 1. What you yourself would do - many people, like you, are fine if the hosts hold to some standard, even if it is not their own, and to be a polite guest in the home of someone who follows basic halachah and 2. and what others would do in your home.

But again, this comes down to the question if the bug checking is halachah or chumra. If it's halachah, then your options are severely limited. If it's chumra, there is far more wiggle room.

(Off topic a bit, but someone home from seminary in Medinat Yisrael Reishit Tzemichat Ge'ulateinu told me her seminary instructed the girls who were often invited out for shabbat at peoples' homes
1. to always have a dvar torah ready and
2. to accept whatever level of kashrut the host held by).

Penina, would it bother you if you invited guests and they inspected your kitchen and decided what they would and what they would not eat?

Takeh, I'm not into washing fruits or veggies very much at all, plus I u se the same spice for meat and dairy, so i guess for sure no one is gonna eat by me ......

As long as you don't have any nuts in your cakes on RH you're all good.

I agree that it speaks to a broader issue. If not covering one's hair means they are not G-d fearing and that not being G-d fearing means one's kashrus cannot be trusted (I don't know if it does mean that, but it sounds like something I've heard around here), then where does that leave you?

If you find out that so-and-so uses Triangle-K and you don't, does that mean you aren't going to eat there anymore? What if you find out that your friend leaves the TV on on shabbos or plays basketball in his backyard?

The list of things is endless (not for frum people, whose friends are faultless, but for the rest of us).

I think most people just close their eyes and hope for the best. Maybe they stretch some halachic justifications to make themselves feel better, but in the end you just close your eyes and act like a normal person. Otherwise, you become neurotic and find yourself with no friends.

Traditionally, although we all have our chumrot and shtick, if you weren't a mechalel shabbat be-pharhesia, you were basically assumed to be fine. The problem is that doesn't leave enough gradations of holier-than-thou so in recent years other criteria for judgment were added so that people can fall along a continuum of acceptability instead of it being a simple "in" or "out".


True, but you are forgetting that people want to build invisible walls of purity.

As to the subject at hand, I still don't have an opinion and I still think it's a difficult thing, and very common. On the one hand, I agree, that at a certain level we trust that our peers keep basic halachah and if they are doing something that appears questionable, odds are there is a lenient opinion upon which they are relying. I also think that if you don't trust their bug checking, I don't see how you can assume anything else is ok, except that it's really inconvenient to be consistent, so at some point we close our eyes, and eat everything at Bubby's other than the broccoli quiche.

This is actually exactly the point, I find myself torn sometimes between what I learned as a child ("You're a guest in someone's house, it's impolite not to eat their food") and actually being concerned that I could be violating my own personal standards, one's which I chose to take on because I believed in them. Notice that I did not say "tresspassing halacha." I have relatives who are very very particular about food and don't eat in anyone's houses pretty much, I wonder how they can do that to "bubby" or "mom and dad" without feeling like total jerks. I guess it's important to me as a BT not to feel like I'm pushing my agenda, trying to m'karev my friends and family, or alienating people.

The answer to your second question is that while I'd probably say "go ahead and look around," because I don't feel I have anything to hide, I'd secretly be holding my breath. We had guests recently who are much more RW than us and we had a pile of Kraft macaroni and cheese and other treif in a bag that I'd bought on sale to give to the local foodbank and I was cringing inside. What if they don't eat here because they think I eat Kraft dinner, when really it just doesn't make sense to speand twice as much on Wacky Mac when I'm giving it to a goyische food bank. What if they find something with an unreliable hechsher that I just didn't know about? It's easy to get paranoid, not just about your own food, but what people think of it.


You're totally getting my drift here. The answer is that I don't know. I have plenty of friends who eat Hebrew National hotdogs, I just try to avoid eating them at their house. I've started to wonder though, if I hold that Triangle K isn't kosher (which I'm not saying I do or that I don't) then doesn't that make it mammish treif? Would I eat in someone's house who served shrimp and just avoid eating it? Hmmmm.....

Bugs I think can be different just because people can get VERY into the bug thing.

I post on h.com
I let my kids watch Uncle Moishy videos.
I eat lettuce and broccolli.
I don't eat fresh strawberries.
I eat CY.

If I eat by someone's house and I'm not sure of their standards I'll eat parve food. I won't check their cabinets to see which ingredients they use. I know some peopel have a problem eating off keilim that were used for CY or non-glatt meat.

If people are guests in my home then I try to accomodate their shtick. I've had guests who wouldn't drink the wine (either brought their own or made kiddush on challah), wouldn't eat the chicken, wouldn't drink the water, wouldn't eat the salad. They're entitled to eat or not eat whatever they wish. Asking to check cabinets is weird and rude though, IMO.

Oh and I'm not careful with using the same spice for dairy and meat. Although it sounds like something I should be doing. I think we should have separate ketchups too. I'm just too tzuflaigen to implement a system for it.

That's exactly true. So often it's the BT's who go berserk when they are the ones who should be bending over backwards not to alienate their family and so as not to validate the perception of the wacko religious person who now spits on her family.

On the one hand I suppose it's good people eat at bubby's and just don't eat the problematic food. On a certain level that's better than not eating there at all, I suppose. And if they opt not to eat there at all, they better darned well be absolutely sure that they more than make up for it in their otherwise exemplary behavior so that bubby accepts their food restrictions as sincere rather than 1. wacko BT craziness or 2. an excuse to spit on bubby.

And you're right, because people will tell you how it's better to throw yourself into a fiery furnace than to embarrass someone. Apparently that's only if they check for bugs properly.





Indeed. Again, the question becomes if a certain certification is really treif, or if it's political [cf. the posts where I asked Lyric if avoiding non-Keddassia in Britain is because of politics or chumrot or if it's mamish treif] or chumra-driven. You really have to know your stuff, and unfortunately, rabbis often won't give a straight answer ["It's better not to", "We don't know enough about that certification to make a determination"...]


People are into the bug thing because it's a tool for building invisible walls of purity.





Oh, and because it's an issur d'orayta. That too.










what's tzuflaigen?

I would be off the rail if someone came into my house and checked around. Same thing for not drinking the wine. There is only one reason someone would do that, and if they want to imply I am an idol worshipper then they don't need to be there.

ditzy?



Oh and that reminds me. I don't eat at people's houses who can't throw around yiddish idioms in their speech.

I am definitely checking the wine next time I come over.

No, the problem was they didn't like the hashgacha on the bottle. :shrug:

Actually, some of my friends HAVE come into my pantry and inspected the way we do things. I got nothing to hide ….

ok, but I think it also depends who is doing it - if it's someone sincere and known for his meticulous halachic observance, it's one thing. But if it's the local ignorant BT lacking perspective it's another.

Are they still your friend?


Why does it matter?

Wouldn't someone that sincere and meticulous be equally sincere and meticulous in his observance of bein adam l'chaveiro and avoid doing anything that might even give the impression of embarrassing a fellow Jew? Honestly, a polite excuse for not eating my rugelach is far more palatable than investigating my cupboards and then giving a grudging okay.

Are you serious? What self-respecting person would allow this? That is a tremendous insult. And, then to sit there in judgement as the guests/inspectors patronizingly pronounce their verdict is ridiculous.

I do not believe you would stand for that.

This issue is one of the strongest reasons that I have for not being interested in socializing with anyone outside my group. Stick with people who eat what you eat and accept your range of hashgachos, or at least don't blanche when they see something a bit to their left.

Many times I have HAD to eat food I didn't want just to show the people in question that I was not snubbing their level of kashrus observance.....

buttcavities.

I'm trying to think of the possible problems that could arise from eating parve food in someone's house that keeps kosher but maybe doesn't share your standards.

They bake milk and meat in the same oven.
They use the same microwave for meat and milk.
They wash milk and meat dishes in the same sink.
They use star-k, triangle-k, moon-k or any other hechsher you don't rely on.
They eat bugs.
They watch Uncle Moishy videos.
They use the same spices for meat and milk.
They dont' check eggs for bloodspots.
They don't check rice, beans, flour etc. for bugs.

Anything else? Any discussion on the relative seriousness of these issurim vs. possibly disturbing your relationship with these people?

But I'm sure the sincere person would explain that there's nothing halachically wrong it's just that he has personal shtick. And if he's already having to check the cupboards, then I guess he shouldn't be eating there in the first place.


I'm not sure. Maybe because the BT is far more likely to be confusing halachah and chumra and is probably drawing conclusions that the host is erring halachically. I don't think there's something wrong with someone having a shtick - let's say someone doesn't hold by kli shlishi for tea on shabbat, so he just declines the offer of tea. I think that's ok. And that's different than the BT who is more likely doing things because he thinks the host is a sinner.


That's true.
I hear that.


Again, I will remind you guys that I said early in this thread that I don't really have any answers.

In order to help all of you be more dan l'cahf zchus. I once offered a can of Sprite to a guest in my home. She sincerely mentioned that she was in store and couldn't find a hechsher on that (or coke, etc.) and wanted to know what the story is with that.

In Canada, Sprite has an MK.

Did she take it, drink it, and then ask? Or, did she take it, set it down, ask her question, and then drink?

It also has an OU in the US (at least in civilization)...

So let's say I decide that even though we don't eat gefen peanut butter in our house (to choose a random ridiculous example), when we go to Bubby's house we eat it, to avoid awkward explanations or embarrassment to bubby or scouring the stores for a brand of peanut butter that we do eat. Would you say that I'm compromising my standards by eating it at bubby's? Or revealing that it's ridiculous to be strict on this at home if I'm not going to be consistent about it? Does this make me a hypocrite? What if I eat the gefen peanut butter at bubby's but not at melech's since I know he'll understand if I explain?

I would understand. I personally wouldn't think it a big deal. We buy all sorts of things for my motherinlaw, for instance. It's not a big deal.

If you ate it a bubby's I don't think it's hypocritical - depending why you're not eating it. If you think its treif, then it's hypocritical to eat it at bubby's. But if you're not eating it at home because of personal standards/gedarim/shtick/politics, I don't think it's hypocritical to eat it at bubby's because the issurim d'orayta of embarassing her, or the issurim of making yourself out to be particularly meticulous with extra chumrot, trump this particular chumra of generally not eating it.
I could also understand not eating it at bubby's. But that's if you make it an issue of the pb. If the implication is that bubby doesn't keep a kosher enough home, that's something different altogether.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's one thing if you are clearly not eating something because you have shtick. It's another not to eat something because you're implying the host doesn't have a kosher enough home.


ETA:

Maybe the difference is if it's a peer or not. It's one thing if a rabbi, known to be meticulous, is not eating something. It's another thing if it's a peer, because if it's a peer, and she doesn't think you check the brocolli adequately, then it's like, "who the heck does she think she is?"

But really, I don't know.


In theory, but that's not always practical.



But that's where it makes a difference how well you know your halachah, to know which of those things violate actual halachah and which are enhancements to halachah and which are ok be-di'avad.
(My issue with the BT is that I assume the BT doesn't really know that stuff, but that the meticulous rabbi does).

Where I live, it only has a hechsher for Pesach.


No. Took it, asked me to show her hechsher because she can never find it in the store. and then drank it.

I'd rather assume that the BT has actually spent time learning the pertinent halachos, whereas the average FFB yeshiva guy probably did not.

I have no idea. I just ask my wife and do whatever she says.

You have gone on and on in the past about how the yeshivish just take on chumros for no reason. Why should this be any different?