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An Amazing Morning For A Jew: On Hens, Tiger Poo and Hechshers…

by Leah Koenig · December 15th, 2006
Latkes to Lattes Conference, Sustainability, The Jew

I had an amazing morning. Here was just the first little bit:

Where it begins with us: the organic waste bin in the dining hall.I went for a walk with Marco and Talia (aged 3) to find the goats and the hens. The goats are just roaming around, doing hen-like things, and looking pretty happy. The difference between how they live and the pictures one sees of hens in cages is pretty dramatic. Last year some of the Adamahniks gave me eggs from here - they were like eggs I’d never eaten before; kind of like the eggs that Michael Pollan describes in Omnivore’s Dilemma — dark and rich and strong. The eggs of happy hens.

So then we wanted to find the goats; and en route bumped into Eitan, Freedman’s very own Jewish goat herd. Standing there with a big shovel, a load of old food, and four big bins of compost. Here’s the conversation, roughly:

Marco (who’s a Wall St guy — and an interesting one): You’re composting that?

Isabella's goat herdEitan: yeah. I let the hens eat the leftover food from Freedman for about a day, but then I compost it, because you don’t wanna let mold grow on it, or too much bacteria — the hen feces is good for compost, but not good for the hens to eat.

Marco: Yeah. And great compost.

Eitan: Yeah — do you compost?

Marco: Yeah — we have a place at the beach and we compost and grow stuff — asparagus, tomatoes, cucumbers.

Eitan: What kind of cucumbers?

Marco: The Amira ones, the little Israeli ones.

The compostersEitan: Oh yeah, Persian, they’re really great.What do you use for mulch?

Marco: We harvest seaweed, at the seashore…

Eitan: That’s really cool

Marco: …And we have great raised beds; a few years ago this guy from the circus gave us some tiger feces, it was really good

Eitan: Wow, that’s really cool — carnivore feces just has totally different bacteria. Great compost…

And I’m stood there and I’m thinking: I’m an urban Jew. I’ve never grown a cucumber. I don’t know what an amira cucumber is — and maybe I’ve eaten one, and maybe not. And I’ve never composted. And tiger feces — and it’s relative merits in composting — who knew??

And how cool for Talia and her sisters to grow up like this.

And then a different question: Eitan makes goat cheese. It’s great cheese - I’ve eaten it. But it’s not being served at this conference. How come — because it’s not hechshered.

Has to have a hechsher, otherwise we can’t serve it. So it’s not kosher, right?
Wrong! Ridiculously wrong!!

Eitan’s cheese is the most kosher cheese you could meet in the whole world.
The goat is called Zilpah! She’s milked by a Jewish guy — called Eitan. He makes cheese, very simply. Kosher rennet — hechshered kosher rennet. And gives it to me, who eats it. I know the goat, and the guy who made the cheese, and what went in it - how often is that true of the cheese you eat?

And then I went to a great session Arlin Wasserman did — “What’s In A Symbol?” - all about this stuff. The kosher market in the US is now $140 billion a year — hot dogs alone, $30bn. People choose it, according to his data, 35% on taste, 16% because they like the guidelines, 5% because it’s safe or healthier, 8% because they’re observant, 4% because they can’t get halal, and 8% because they’re veggie or for other reasons.

Well: I want the market to be $140,000,001,000 — because I think we should buy $1,000 of Eitan’s cheese this year — at least — and I want someone to be able to certify in a really simple way that it’s kosher…

– The Jew

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One Response to “An Amazing Morning For A Jew: On Hens, Tiger Poo and Hechshers…”

  1. Rabbi Shmuel Says:
    December 18th, 2006 at 9:48 am

    “Has to have a hechsher, otherwise we can’t serve it. So it’s not kosher, right?
    Wrong! Ridiculously wrong!!”

    Out of curiosity, wouldn’t a true gold standard of “eco-kashrus” call for absolute fealty to both the letter and spirit of the law? If the doctor told you he had to amputate a leg and asked you which one you preferred what would you answer? the right one? the left one? or would you say that you need both!
    Similarly, is it unreasonable to ask for the same exacting standards of kashrus, which have thousands of years of precedential value, be interpreted as expansively as the holistic organic standards which people seek? Why do we look long, far and hard at “remote” issues such as the adequacy of the bedding in the stall of the burro who carried the coffee bean to market in Central America, but we are quick to spout a thousand “technicalities” when it comes to the actual kashrus standard? Does the goat’s Hebrew name figure into the equation? Are the standards of milking on shabbos solely to alleviate tsaar baalei chayim adhered to or do we get to override them with some amorphous discussion about bal tashchis and halacha be damned? The kashrus of utensils involved in production?
    All I am suggesting is that the argument cuts both ways.

    “Well: I want the market to be $140,000,001,000 — because I think we should buy $1,000 of Eitan’s cheese this year — at least — and I want someone to be able to certify in a really simple way that it’s kosher…”

    Firstly, not everything in life is reduceable to a soundbite or “al regel achas” (standing on one leg) treatment.
    The seemingly seductive albeit elusive and oxymoronic “simple way that it’s kosher” is more wishful thinking than reality.
    I would assume there’s an undercurrent of honesty throughout these threads. I met and spoke to many of you this weekend and all of you are driven towards a thoughtful and honest reconciliation of these challenging issues. But the same way that you wouldn’t want unknown substances in your foods that you were unaware of no matter how minute a quantity (e.g. BGH or poultry antibiotics) or food that came from a problematic source (e.g factory farmed) certainly you would not want someone who held to a high standard of kashrus to unknowingly ingest something that
    ran afoul of their standard - merely from the point of view of truth in labelling rather than agreement with core principles.
    Ironically, certain aspects of kashrus - including many milk related kashrus issues - have to do with avoiding “timtum halev” - a deadening of spiritual sensitivity. Thus, an assault against traditional kashrus in the name of new spirituality is oddly counterproductive.

    The bottom line - I wish the goat cheese venture much hatzlacha (I know what it means to be a good steward of baalei chayim) but it should be labeled according to what it is - kinda kosher, sorta kosher, kosher style or virtually kosher. We can sell or do or make or eat what we want, but the only thing we are allowed - legally and morally - to call pure Vermont Maple Syrup is just that
    - pure Vermont Maple Syrup. So it’s really more of a disclosure/truthfullness issue than a kashrus one. Good luck!

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