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Who Gets to Say What is Kosher?

Disputes over the business of kashrut have become a regular feature on the dockets of U.S. courts.
Image: Facebook
Image: Facebook
Dr. Michael (Avi) Helfand is a Senior Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is currently the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion and Co-Director of the Nootbaar Institute for Law, Religion and Ethics at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law as well as Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. Avi received his J.D. from Yale Law School and his Ph.D. in Political Science

“It’s easy, in theory, to say that courts should stay out of religious matters. But what happens when money and faith collide? How should judges balance the government’s responsibility to regulate commercial conduct against the constitutional separation of church and state?

For over a century, one of the prime areas where these two core principles have repeatedly come into conflict is kosher certification. Disputes over the business of kashrut have become a regular feature on the dockets of U.S. courts, though most have been dismissed out of concern that adjudicating them could inappropriately make judges the arbiters of religious validity.”

Read the complete article in the Forward

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