Rabbi Shmuel responds to The Jew on why Eitan’s goat cheese isn’t kosher.

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.

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

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.

What is it to be a Jew these days, and not have a little guilt, or a little dilemma, or a little identity crisis? We have an amazing 3000 year old history. We live in all places of the world. We’re strugling with a tradition that is at times grounding, liberating, shackling, horribly out of date, incredibly meaningful and powerful. Writing as The Jew on this blog, is essentially a conversation between tradition and post-modernity.