More about Standards of Kosher
In my last post I showed how there could be room for different approaches which could express itself in differing standards of Kosher level. I will present here another example.
I have a personal friend who I actually haven't seen in about ten years as he moved out of the neighborhood. At the time he was a Kosher supervisor in a particular place. He worked for the Mehadrin department of a Rabbanute Hechsher. For those of my readers who require an explanation, the Rabbanute is the Rabbinic council which I guess comes under the auspices of the Chief Rabbis of the State of Israel.
Now, those people who are referred to by the anti-religious news agencies and the secular establishment as "Ultra-Orthodox," don't necessarily look up to the Chief Rabbinate as the final word in Jewish law, rather they go to their own sages for the final word. And similarly, these Ultras don't necessarily view the Kosher supervision of the Rabbanute as the standard of kosher that they want to keep, thus other Kosher supervision establishments were founded and developed. These Ultra, so to speak, Kosher supervisions, are known in day to day language as Mehadrin supervision. Mehadrin means, approximately, to go the extra mile in Mitzvah observance, both in quality and quantity, to be extra careful to make sure things are being done right.
This is what I meant that my friend works in the Mehadrin department of a Rabbanute Hechsher.
I asked my friend once how is the level of Kosher in the department where he works, and how does the Mehadrin express itself. He answered me at the time, and this is going back 10-15 years, (and I don't keep track of what's going on since then), he told me that the level is satisfactory high. And he told me that the Mehadrin department is like a completely different Hechsher, which has nothing to do with the Rabbanute hechsher with whom it shares part of the name. He said that there are three differences between the regular Rabbanute of that city and the Mehadrin department:
1) There are disputes in Jewish law. For example, the regular Rabbanute hechsher accepts the "Heiter Mechira," a special leniency with regard to the Jewish Sabbatical year, which was accepted in the Rabbanute and not by the rank and file sages who represent the Mehadrin people.
2) There is a stronger framework of checking in the Mehadrin department. In the regular Rabbanute they put a Supervisor in a restaurant for example, and everything is dependant on how G-d fearing the supervisor is, and how vigilant he can bring himself to be to fight with the owner and the workers when he finds something not right, not an easy task. But in the Mehadrin department the system is built on a hierarchy of levels of supervision. The supervisor has a supervisor that checks out how he is doing his job, and there's the supervisor's supervisor's supervisor etc. The supervisor in the restaurant is answerable to someone regularly and he knows it and that makes a difference how he does his job.
3) Even if the hechsher of the Rabbanute of a certain city is particularly strong, by Israeli law the Rabbanute has to accept all the different hechsherim of the Rabbanute in the whole country. That means a restaurant in a city where the Rabbanute hechsher is reasonably good as far as the Rabbanute goes, still, if the restaurant owner wants to bring in a product with the hechsher of the Rabbanute of the weakest city in the country, the supervisor has to accept it and he can't do anything about it.