WHEN IS KOSHER BALL PARK FOOD KOSHER? HOW KOSHER IS KOSHER ENOUGH?
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Accident Lawyer)
I do not today blog about car accidents or whiplash injury cases.
To those who may not know, "kosher" means, simply, in accordance with Jewish religious dietary law. Depending on the level of religious orthodoxy or standard to which a Jew hold him or herself, "kosher" can have shades of meaning.
At a minimum, to be kosher, food preparation from source to sale requires the supervision of a rabbi. Volumes of Jewish law have been written about what kind of rabbi will do, and what religious rules must be followed to prepare kosher food.
Food may be manufactured and packaged for sale and be perfectly kosher, but it can lose its "kosherness" if it is not prepared or cooked in accordance with Jewish law. The details can seem nit-picky, but the more Orthodox practitioners of Judaism want to see their cooked food prepared under Rabbinical supervision equally strict as the supervision imposed when the food is manufactured.
Orthodox purchasers of cooked food will not buy food that is sold in violation of the Jewish Sabbath, which is unequivocally a day for rest, reflection and prayer, and not for commerce. Put differently, the food can be manufactured and packaged and be kosher, but even if cooked in a manner that would be considered kosher during the week, cook it and/or sell that food on the Sabbath and it's not truly kosher any longer.
This leads us into today's blog.
On Friday the 13th - yes, on August 13, 2010, a Brooklyn Federal judge ruled that the New York Mets had to let a kosher food seller, Kosher Sports, sell its food products at Citi Field on the Jewish Sabbath. Kosher Sports, which sells kosher hot dogs, knishes and peanuts at the ballpark, sued the Mets in federal court last month, claiming it lost half a million dollars when it was prevented from selling food Friday nights and Saturday.
The New York Mets tried to prevent sales of Kosher Sports' food during Friday night and Saturday games, reasoning that food at those times would render the kosher food not-kosher, and that all food sold byu Kosher Foods would no longer be sale-able to Orthodox Jewish beasball fans. The Mets' lawyer argued that selling or buying kosher food on Friday nights or Saturday is a contradiction in terms, but the judge declined to take a side. The Mets wish to not alienate Orthodox Jewish baseball fans.
Federal Judge Jack Weinstein a Jew, ruled that, "I cannot get involved in a dispute over rabbinical law." The judge relied n the contract between the parties.
The Mets say that they didn't violate the contract with Kosher Sports -- that Aramark, another food-concession company, did. Aramark has refused to supply the kosher vendor with carts for Friday nights and Saturdays, the Mets said.
The ballclub countersued the kosher company, claiming the Mets were owed $650,000 for the right to sell wares at the games.
The judge ordered the two sides to work out the terms of an agreement among themselves.
The bottom line is that Kosher Sports' kosher food will be less kosher because of its policy of selling during the Jewish Sabbath. And among those to whom the degree of food kosherness matters, the word will quickly get around.
