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HALACHICALLY SPEAKING

Conducting Business with Non-Kosher Food

By Moishe Dovid Lebovits on Jan 5, 15 4:30 am in Halachically Speaking

Many times one is faced with the question if he is allowed to buy a non-kosher item in order to give it to one’s workers, or if one is allowed to sell items which are not permitted to be eaten. In addition some kashrus agencies may give hechsherim to companies which manufacture vegetables that may contain bugs, is this permitted? These issues and many others will be discussed below.

The Prohibition

One may not do business with foods which are forbidden to be eaten m’d’oraisa.1 Although it may be permitted to have enjoyment from such food, it is still forbidden to do business with them2 since one may come to eat from the food.3 Included in this are non-kosher animals, kosher animals which become neveilos,4 chometz on Pesach, and non-kosher wines.5

D’oraisa or D’rabanan?

There is a discussion in the poskim if this issur is d’oraisa or d’rabanan in nature.6 The opinion of most poskim is that the issur is d’oraisa in nature.7

Meant for work Only items which are meant to be eaten are forbidden.8 Accordingly, horses, donkeys, monkeys9 and camels etc. may be sold to goyim since they are used for work.10

Wormy Fruits

A question arises if one is permitted to sell wormy fruits to goyim, since one is not allowed to conduct business with issurim d’oraisa.11 Some say that one is not allowed to sell such produce to a goy.12 However, others say doing so is permitted, since one is not doing business with the worms just with the fruit.13 The custom is to be lenient with this.14

Fish Store

Some poskim do not permit a Jewish person to sell non-kosher fish.15 However, the custom is that a Yid may sell goldfish etc since they are not sold to be eaten.16

Birds – Dogs

Many people have in their homes non-kosher birds. Since one does not eat the bird, many poskim say that this is permitted since it is made to beautify the house.17 The same applies to a dog etc which one keeps in his house.18 Similarly, one is permitted to do business with these kinds of animals.19

Pet Food

Food which is meant for a pet and is not able to be eaten by a human (such as fish food, and dog food) is not called a food item, and one is permitted to buy or sell such items.20

Animal Skins

A Jew is permitted to be in the animal skin business since they are not sold to be eaten.21

Selling Shatnez Garments

We only find an issur to sell things which one may come to eat, therefore, one would be permitted to sell shatnez garments to goyim and we are not concerned that the Yid may come to wear the garment.22

Partnership with Goyim

There are many poskim who maintain that one should not enter into a business venture with a goy who is selling items that the Jew himself may not sell.23 Therefore, one who decides to enter into such a business with a goy should speak with a competent halachic authority before doing so.24 One may rent a house to a goy who will bring in items that are forbidden to do business with. The reason is that the Jew has no dealing with the items he is just renting the house to the goy.25

Feeding Workers

The Rama26 says one is not allowed to buy non-kosher food for his workers. However, many say that doing so is permitted.27 The reason to permit this is because buying lunch for workers is not considered doing “business” with non-kosher food.28 The custom is that doing so is permitted if the food is not being given to them as part of their wages.29

Some say even according to the stringent opinion, one is permitted to tell the workers to take this money and buy the non-kosher food themselves.30

Fish Food

Food which is disgusting may be bought or sold.31 Based on this one is permitted to buy worms in order to feed fish etc.32

Happened Upon it

The Shulchan Aruch33 “who happened”34 to get in his net non-kosher animals, birds, or fish35 may sell them36 together with the kosher animals.37 If he happened to get only non-kosher animals in his net38 he may sell them separately.39 Some say they should be sold immediately without delay.40 Others say there is no reason for an immediate sale,41 and one is permitted to keep the non-kosher meat in a freezer until he finds a buyer.42

Based on the above, a slaughter house which has animals that became non-kosher during the slaughtering process may be sold.43

One who receives a non-kosher food item from a goy is allowed to sell it since it is considered “happened upon.”44

Owning a Grocery Store – Selling non-Kosher in a Kosher Store

As discussed above, one may not buy and sell non-kosher food on a steady basis. One who must buy both kosher and non-kosher, is permitted to buy the entire package since the prohibited items are considered to have come to him by chance.45 However, stocking up on these non-kosher items on a steady basis is forbidden even if it will cause one business to fail.46 In the above situations one should first discuss the details with his Rav.

Giving a Present to a Goy

We will not discuss the issur of giving presents to goyim for no reason. However, even if one is giving a present when it is permitted (i.e. for a worker), food items which are forbidden to do business with on a d’oraisa level may not be given to a goy as a present either.47 The reason is because giving a present is like doing business.48 If one sent the

gift directly to the goy (without actually acquiring the gift) some say that this may not be considered buying non-kosher.49 There is a discussion in the poskim if one is allowed to accept a non-kosher (neveila or treifa food) and then sell it or give it to a goy. Many poskim say that doing so is permitted because it is considered happened upon.50

Food which is forbidden m’d’rabanan

Food which is only forbidden to eat m’d’rabanan may be sold to goyim and the issur of doing business with forbidden foods does not apply.51 Included in this is the blood of a kosher animal,52 non-food items such as soaps and furs, pas akum, bishul akum,53 cholov akum,54 gevinas akum,55 and non-kosher fat from a kosher animal.56 However, if there is a concern that a goy will sell it to a Jew to eat then one should not sell it to the goy in the first place.57

Can A Jew Purchase Stock in McDonalds?

When one is dealing with stocks he does not see the items that he is dealing with. Therefore, some say one would be able to buy stocks in a company that deals with food

which would be ossur to sell, since there is no concern that he will come to eat the food. The Gilyon Maharsha58 says that even if one will not come to eat the food it is forbidden to give a goy money to do business for you in forbidden items. Others say that this only applies if one is doing business, but owning a stock (if he is a limited share-holder or a

non-active party) is not viewed as doing business with the non-kosher food. One reason is since the stockholder may have a few shares and he may be considered an investor rather than actually doing business with the items.59 In any case one should try to find parnasa in other areas.60

Working for a Goy (who sells treif)

There is a big discussion in the poskim if one is allowed to work and cook treif for a goy.61 (This can be very common when one wants to be a salesman for a company which sells treif).62 Some permit doing so if one will not be able to find another means of parnasa.63 Before one accepts this type of job he should discuss it with his Rav. Harav Moshe Feinstein zt”l64 permitted one to drive a delivery truck with non-kosher meat for various reasons (see footnote).

Selling non-kosher food in a vending machine

One is not allowed to sell non-kosher (treif) food in a vending machine. The reason is because one is not allowed to sell items which are forbidden to do business with.65 If the food is permitted to do business with then placing them in the vending machine is permitted even if they may be purchased on Shabbos.66

Investment Bankers

A common practice among investment bankers is to receive their compensation in the form of equity. If a company deals with non-kosher items, is the banker permitted to get paid his fee when they do not have cash to pay him?

The Rama67 says one is permitted to accept a pig as a debt.68 Nonetheless, he has to sell it right away.69 Accordingly, it would seem that an investment banker is permitted to take non-kosher equity if he sells it when he gets paid.70

Renting a Store to a Goy

There does not seem to be anything wrong with a Yid renting his store to a goy who will be selling non-kosher (treif) food. The products being sold there have nothing to do with the Yid, and it is just a way for the goy to make business.71

Selling Other Items

One should not sell items which will be a michshal for Yidin. Included in this are books or newspapers72 which one should not read73 and clothing which should not be worn.74

After word

We have presented many scenarios of doing business with forbidden and permitted items. According to most poskim the issur of doing business with non-kosheritems is d’oraisa. Therefore, when one has a question if one should engage himself in business with non-kosher he should talk it over with his Rav.75

Footnotes at http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/01/conducting-business-non-kosher-food/ or

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/217386/halachically-speaking-conducting-business-with-non-kosher-food.html

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from: Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald date: Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 5:59 PM subject: Weekly Torah Message from Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald Shemot 5775-2015

"Moses--The Mysterious Early Years"

by Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald

In this week's parasha, parashat Shemot, the Torah reports that Moses, the Jewish child who was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as an Egyptian in Pharaoh's palace, grew up identifying with his Jewish brothers. In Exodus 2:11, scripture records, And it happened in those days that Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and observed their burdens. The Torah narrative itself tells little about Moses' formative years. All we know is that he was found by Pharaoh's daughter in the water, given over to his biological mother for several years until he was weaned, and then returned to Pharaoh's palace. There is a difference of opinion among the rabbis of the Midrash as to whether Moses was twenty or forty years old when he finally went out to look at the burdens of his brothers. Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov the extraordinary commentator and compiler, fills in many of the details of Moses' life by gathering Midrashim from many sources, reconciling them and reconstructing the early years of the life of Moses. Rabbi Kitov reports that Moses grew up in Pharaoh's palace, where he was accorded great respect and honor, more than any other member of Pharaoh's household. He was more handsome, more brilliant, and braver than anyone else in Egypt. As he was the reputed "son" of the daughter of Pharaoh, he was regarded as the natural heir to the throne. The few "insiders" who were aware of Moses' Hebrew origins kept quiet about his background, for fear of offending Pharaoh and his daughter. Even though Pharaoh at times had second thoughts about Moses, he eventually convinced himself that Moses was the biological child of his daughter and thus his own biological offspring. He therefore offered Moses the authority over whatever he wanted. Moses asked for free reign over the workers of Egypt. Although Moses' true intentions were to help the Hebrew slaves, no one but he and Bitya, Pharaoh's daughter, knew the real reason for his desire to aid the slaves. The true hero of this story is Bitya (see Shemot 5760-1999), Moses' adopted mother who strongly encouraged her son to go out to meet his biological brothers, the Jews, and advised Moses to pay no heed to those Egyptians who insincerely honored and fawned over him. In his role as the supervisor of the workers and slaves, Moses frequently visited the land of Goshen. It was in his role as an overseer that Moses introduced and developed advanced technology that was used by the Egyptian workers. He reportedly built ships and invented machinery for cutting and shaping stones. He developed new types of weapons for battle, and uncovered novel ways of drawing water from underground sources. All the while, Moses kept his distance from his Jewish brothers. Those Jews who knew of Moses' Hebrew origins, resented his seeming indifference to their suffering. But Moses was hardly indifferent to his brothers' travails. Seeing how the Israelites suffered, Moses convinced Pharaoh that by refusing to give the Hebrew slaves a day off and forcing them to perform many forms of unnatural work, Pharaoh was actually damaging the economy of Egypt. Once persuaded that the economy of Egypt needed healthy, strong and well-motivated slaves, Pharaoh relieved the Israelites of work on Shabbat. Moses taught the slaves how to work smartly to avoid injury, and even tended to those who were hurt. No one suspected that Moses was doing this to help the Jews, since they all saw it as an effort to enhance Egypt's economy. G-d, however, saw in Moses' great concern for his brothers, the making of a natural leader for His people. The Midrash says that because of the way that Moses reached out to his brothers, he was rewarded by Heaven with perfect health throughout his long life. He was also rewarded after his passing to be personally buried by the Al-mighty Himself (Deuteronomy 34). Obviously, in the midst of the brutal enslavement and persecution of the Hebrew slaves, for a man like Moses to emerge from a Jewish family to lead the Children of Israel from slavery to freedom, many fortuitous elements had to come together. In light of the sparse information provided by the Torah, Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov's rich analysis and insights add much to our understanding of the man Moses and his emergence as the great leader of his people of Israel. May you be blessed. Hebrew text courtesy of www.mechon-mamre.org Facebook Forward to a Friend twitter Copyright 2014 NJOP www.njop.org

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from: Aish.com date: Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:31 PM subject: Advanced Parsha - Shmot

On Not Obeying Immoral Orders

by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Shmot(Exodus 1:1-6:1)

On Not Obeying Immoral Orders

The opening chapters of Exodus plunge us into the midst of epic events. Almost at a stroke the Israelites are transformed from protected minority to slaves. Moses passes from prince of Egypt to Midianite shepherd to leader of the Israelites through a history-changing encounter at the burning bush. Yet it is one small episode that deserves to be seen as a turning point in the history of humanity. Its heroines are two remarkable women, Shifra and Puah.

We do not know who they were. The Torah gives us no further information about them than that they were midwives, instructed by Pharaoh: 'When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live' (Ex. 1:16). The Hebrew description of the two women as ha-meyaldot ha-ivriyot, is ambiguous. It could mean "the Hebrew midwives." So most translations and commentaries read it. But it could equally mean, "the midwives to the Hebrews," in which case they may have been Egyptian. That is how Josephus,(1) Abrabanel and Samuel David Luzzatto understand it, arguing that it is simply implausible to suppose that Hebrew women would have been party to an act of genocide against their own people.

What we do know, however, is that they refused to carry out the order: "The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live" (Ex. 1:17). This is the first recorded instance in history of civil disobedience: refusing to obey an order, given by the most powerful man in the most powerful empire of the ancient world, simply because it was immoral, unethical, inhuman.

The Torah suggests that they did so without fuss or drama. Summoned by Pharaoh to explain their behaviour, they simply replied: "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive" (Ex. 1:19). To this, Pharaoh had no reply. The matter-of-factness of the entire incident reminds us of one of the most salient findings about the courage of those who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. They had little in common except for the fact that they saw nothing remarkable in what they did.(2) Often the mark of real moral heroes is that they do not see themselves as moral heroes. They do what they do because that is what a human being is supposed to do. That is probably the meaning of the statement that they "feared God." It is the Torah's generic description of those who have a moral sense.(3)

It took more than three thousand years for what the midwives did to become enshrined in international law. In 1946 the Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremberg all offered the defence that they were merely obeying orders, given by a duly constituted and democratically elected government. Under the doctrine of national sovereignty every government has the right to issue its own laws and order its own affairs. It took a new legal concept, namely a crime against humanity, to establish the guilt of the architects and administrators of genocide.

The Nuremberg principle gave legal substance to what the midwives instinctively understood: that there are orders that should not be obeyed, because they are immoral. Moral law transcends and may override the law of the state. As the Talmud puts it: "If there is a conflict between the words of the master (God) and the words of a disciple (a human being), the words of the master must prevail." (4)

The Nuremberg trials were not the first occasion on which the story of the midwives had a significant impact on history. Throughout the Middle Ages the Church, knowing that knowledge is power and therefore best kept in the hands of the priesthood, had forbidden vernacular translations of the Bible. In the course of the sixteenth century, three developments changed this irrevocably. First was the Reformation, with its maxim Sola scriptura, "By Scripture alone," placing the Bible centre-stage in the religious life. Second was the invention, in the mid-fifteenth century, of printing. Lutherans were convinced that this was Divine providence. God had sent the printing press so that the doctrines of the Reformed church could be spread worldwide.

Third was the fact that some people, regardless of the ban, had translated the Bible anyway. John Wycliffe and his followers had done so in the fourteenth century, but the most influential was William Tyndale, whose translation of the New Testament, begun in 1525 became the first printed Bible in English. He paid for this with his life. When Mary I took the Church of England back to Catholicism, many English Protestants fled to Calvin's Geneva, where they produced a new translation, based on Tyndale, called the Geneva Bible. Produced in a small, affordable edition, it was smuggled into England in large numbers.

Able to read the Bible by themselves for the first time, people soon discovered that it was, as far as monarchy is concerned, a highly seditious document. It tells of how God told Samuel that in seeking to appoint a king, the Israelites were rejecting Him as their only sovereign. It describes graphically how the prophets were unafraid to challenge kings, which they did with the authority of God himself. And it told the story of the midwives who refused to carry out pharaoh's order. On this, in a marginal notes, the Geneva Bible endorsed their refusal, criticising only the fact that, explaining their behaviour, they told a lie. The note said, "Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling evil." King James understood clearly the dire implication of that one sentence. It meant that a king could be disobeyed on the authority of God Himself: a clear and categorical refutation of the idea of the Divine right of kings.

Eventually, unable to stop the spread of Bibles in translation, King James decided to commission his own version which appeared in 1611. But by then the damage had been done and the seeds of what became the English revolution had been planted. Throughout the seventeenth century by far the most influential force in English politics was the Hebrew Bible as understood by the Puritans, and it was the Pilgrim Fathers who took this faith with them in their journey to what would eventually become the United States of America.

A century and a half later, it was the work of another English radical, Thomas Paine, that made a decisive impact on the American revolution. His pamphlet Common Sense was published in America in January 1776, and became an immediate best seller, selling 100,000 copies almost immediately. Its impact was huge, and because of it he became known as "the father of the American Revolution." Despite the fact that Paine was an atheist, the opening pages of Common Sense, justifying rebellion against a tyrannical king, are entirely based on citations from the Hebrew Bible. In the same spirit, that summer Benjamin Franklin drew as his design for the Great Seal of America, a picture of the Egyptians (i.e. the English) drowning in the Red Sea, with the caption, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Thomas Jefferson was so struck by the sentence that he recommended it to be used on the Great Seal of Virginia and later incorporated it in his personal seal.

The story of the midwives belongs to a larger vision implicit throughout the Torah and Tanakh as a whole: that right is sovereign over might, and that even God Himself can be called to account in the name of justice, as he expressly mandates Abraham to do. Sovereignty ultimately belongs to God, so any human act or order that transgresses the will of God is by that fact alone ultra vires. These revolutionary ideas are intrinsic to the biblical vision of politics and the use of power.

In the end, though, it was the courage of two remarkable women that created the precedent later taken up by the American writer Thoreau(6) in his classic essay Civil Disobedience (1849) that in turn inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the twentieth century. Their story also ends with a lovely touch. The text says: "So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them houses" (Ex. 1:20-21).

Luzzatto interpreted this last phrase to mean that He gave them families of their own. Often, he wrote, midwives are women who are unable to have children. In this case, God blessed Shifra and Puah by giving them children, as he had done for Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel.

This too is a not unimportant point. The closest Greek literature comes to the idea of civil disobedience is the story of Antigone who insisted on giving her brother Polynices a burial despite the fact that king Creon had refused to permit it, regarding him as a traitor to Thebes. Sophocles' Antigone is a tragedy: the heroine must die because of her loyalty to her brother and her disobedience to the king. The Hebrew Bible is not a tragedy. In fact biblical Hebrew has no word meaning "tragedy" in the Greek sense. Good is rewarded, not punished, because the universe, God's work of art, is a world in which moral behaviour is blessed and evil, briefly in the ascendant, is ultimately defeated.

Shifra and Puah are two of the great heroines of world literature, the first to teach humanity the moral limits of power.

NOTES 1. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, II. 9.2. 2. See James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense, New York, Free Press, 1993, 35-39, and the literature cited there. 3. See, for example, Gen. 20:11. 4. Kiddushin 42b. 5. See Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-century Revolution. London: Allen Lane, 1993. 6. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience. Boston: David R. Godine, 1969. Published: January 4, 2015 __________________________________________

from: Shema Yisrael Torah Network to: Peninim
date: Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 6:18 PM subject: