“Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”
— “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rabbi Noach Vogel is surrounded by staggering quantities of food, but it’s all invisible to him.
He’s got his kosher blinders on.
The San Jose-based supervisor for the Orthodox Union has no problem ambling past the vats of postage-stamp sized hunks of sourdough and beckoning dipping bowls of spiced olive oils or booths offering 10 varieties of corn chips and six salsa selections (yes, that’s 60 dip possibilities) featured at San Francisco’s Winter Fancy Food Show this week.
In fact, operating a booth at ground zero of gourmet food central, Vogel and colleague Rabbi Aharon Brun-Kestler admit they packed their lunches.
Well, most of it.
“I like chocolate,” admits Brun-Kestler, a New Yorker.
“I had one of the flavored waters. The mango one. It was fairly good,” pipes in Vogel.
“It was very good!” contradicts Brun-Kestler.
The bearded, kippah- and black hat-wearing rabbis cut striking figures at the show, which was held from Sunday, Jan. 22 through Tuesday, Jan. 24 in the cavernous Moscone Center. Unlike so many of the hawkers pitching
foods, drinks and cleaning products (inevitable clashes between tomato-based dipping sauces and white Oxford shirts were anticipated), the Orthodox Union booth offered nothing. Except, maybe, good advice. And pens.
A convention-goer named John Rodger representing SwissRose International, walked up to the OU booth. He claimed his company was the nation’s largest importer of “table cheeses” in a New Jersey accent thicker than, say, table cheese.
Rodger wanted to import cheeses from Europe, but wasn’t sure how up-to-speed the continental kosher overseers were.
“Who’s certifying them now?” queried Brun-Kestler.
“I don’t know,” answered Rodger.
“Well,” said Brun-Kestler, taking a breath and slipping into a speech he’s surely made many, many times before, “cheese is one of the more complex products. Give me your contacts and I’ll help you through.”
Digits were exchanged, and Rodger went on his way. And that’s why the OU is at the fancy food show.
And, make no mistake, the kosher certification business is a growth industry. Ten years ago, Brun-Kestler estimates, perhaps 10 booths would have featured kosher certified products. Now a quarter of the products hawked on the seemingly endless convention floor are kosher.
Vogel heads off for a walk to check on some of his clients. Though he isn’t grazing on the multitude of meats, cheeses and desserts, the airplane hangar-esque dimensions of the facility offer at least a modicum of exercise for those who are.
And while he’s filtering out the ambience generated by non-kosher products, the rest of us notice a new delightful smell every few meters — teriyaki-glazed salmon, caramel corn, barbecued ribs, pungent cheeses.
Then again, in retrospect, perhaps the cheeses did not emit the most delightful odor.
This is where diets go to die. This is where carb counters give up and start again. By the time one has grabbed at the umpteenth forkful of this or a cupful of that offered, oftentimes, by young women with strategically placed cleavage, Jack LaLanne would be spinning in his grave (if he were dead).
A glance at a rabbi or a press badge reading “J., the Jewish News Weekly of N. Calif.” quickly elicits vendors to boast of their kosher certifications, or claim that, in essence, the check is in the mail.
Even in the alcohol section, one could inadvertently stumble across the Tikvah booth. The Spanish wine is, of course, kosher; the Crianza (2000) is allegedly the libation of choice at 60 percent of Spain’s Jewish weddings and, most important of all, it goes delightfully with forkfuls of this and cupfuls of that offered by women with or without strategically placed cleavage.
The sign in OU’s booth claims it now certifies more than 250,000 products and works in 68 countries. That sign is five years old and, inexplicably, hasn’t been updated: The correct numbers are 400,000 products in 80 countries (including, amazingly, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as many factories in China).
It’s not as if there’s been a massive boom in the number of strictly kosher consumers; in fact, Brun-Kestler estimates that only 20 percent of the market is driven by observant Jews.
The rest are lactose intolerant, vegetarians, vegans, people convinced kosher food is healthier or “more spiritual,” and Muslims taking advantage of the kosher/halal overlaps.
Borrowing vocabulary from Harry S. Truman, Vogel believes a “domino effect” has aided the kosher market. More and more large corporations require that the smaller outfits sending them candy or mushrooms or whatever have a kosher certification. As globalization opens the world to suppliers from every corner of the globe, OU is needed in all of them (on the other hand, when multinational corporations shut down swaths of factories, OU loses business, too).
And while the certification business is booming, it’s still ultra-competitive.
Vogel notes that his brother works for a cheese company, but, Brun-Kestler interjects, “it’s under the competition,” a rival kosher certifier to OU.
“I know,” says Vogel, shaking his head.
Brun-Kestler stares back at his colleague.
“Why don’t you fix this?” he implores.