Quite apart from the constitutional issues involved with the New York State kosher laws (“Conservative Rabbis: State Laws Not Kosher,” Aug. 1), there is another reason, just as important, why the office that enforces these laws should be shut down immediately: The whole enterprise is a terrible waste of taxpayer money. Jews have kept kosher for thousands of years, and they know how to identify an establishment as kosher. What is important is a reliable kashrut supervisor, not a government agency. Furthermore, if the state inspectors are declaring that gelatin is a non-kosher product, then they are not merely taking sides in an Orthodox-Conservative dispute, but are also entering into a controversy in the Orthodox world. The fact is that the world’s leading halachic
authority, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, holds that all gelatin is kosher. I wonder which government functionary decided that the State of New York should rule against Rabbi Ovadiah.
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