Damn That’s A Big Ass, Controversy

Let’s first of all get some conflict of interest issues out of the way: Yes, Streit’s has been a longtime advertiser in Heeb. And yes, Heeb‘s own associate director of business David Kelsey was involved in the expose. And yes, every year, Jewdar takes the little Jewdars to our neighborhood matzo factory to stock up before Pesach.

But all that said, the current contretemps over the apparent efforts by people associated with the OU to muscle Streit’s into taking them on as their kosher supervisors is a chilul hashem (desecration of the Name, Heeb readers) any way you slice it. They slander a rabbi who has done nothing to merit their opprobrium. They slander and rob a company that’s been producing kosher food for nearly a century. And most revoltingly, they turn kashrus (that’s more or less "the keeping of kosher"–come on, don’t you guys know anything?) into a venal parody. The OU takes in a lot of money selling itself as a defender of kashrus, but if we didn’t keep kosher, and wanted to know what it was about, a story like this would send us off to the nearest double-cheeseburger.