RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:REBBE MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:THE REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: A LIFE OF DEREK ERETZ AND KOSHER FOR PESACH COKE: RAB GEFFIN

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: A LIFE OF DEREK ERETZ AND KOSHER FOR PESACH COKE: RAB GEFFIN

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH RENEWAL :THE REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH RENEWAL :THE REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

 

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUALITY :REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUALITY :REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ECO-JUDAISM : THE REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ECO-JUDAISM : THE REBBE WHO MADE COKE KOSHER FOR PASSOVER

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ECO-JUDAISM : COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ECO-JUDAISM : COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUALITY : COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH SPIRITUALITY : COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH RENEWAL: COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: JEWISH RENEWAL: COKE ON YOUR SEDER PLATE?

 

A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: April 22, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES

 

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

Tuvia Geffen

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta's first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank's lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that "have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place." As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen  today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union's certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia  Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola's secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank's lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler's genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry's place in the mainstream.

"Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it," said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. "You couldn't live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American."

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen's solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz , has written in an essay on Geffen  and Coke: "Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion."

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen  rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke's home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink's kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

"Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink," Rabbi Geffen  wrote in his teshuva  , "I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution."

Putting aside God's props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen  had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen  was permitted to enter that industry's Holy of Holies and receive Coke's secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke non-kosher   during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva , Rabbi Geffen  explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

"It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matzah and hard-boiled eggs," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union's kosher-certification program. "Now, I've got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes."

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder , an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder   reported, "knew all about it."

Rabbi Geffen , of blessed memory, who'd  have guessed you were so ecumenical?

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL: ELLEN + MIKE+JANES COHN'S PARROTS ON PASSOVER

 RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:

ELLEN SEGAL +

MIKE+JANE COHN'S PARROTS

ON PASSOVER

EVENING OF 19 APRIL, 2011

16TH NISSAN , 5771

 

TINKER AND PEANUT

 

 

 

  

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:ECO-JUDAISM:DON'T FEED THE LOCUSTS PROZAC ; PASSOVER

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:ECO-JUDAISM:DON'T FEED THE LOCUSTS PROZAC ; PASSOVER

 

 

 

Shalom y'all:

 

Chaver P. Zohav is spot on quoting the  Midrash Shemoth Rabbah  which  reads :

"Once the locusts came, the Egyptians rejoiced and said 'Let us gather them and fill our barrels with them.' Ha Kadosh  Baruch Hu said 'Wicked people, with the plague that I have brought against you, are you going to rejoice?!' Immediately God brought upon them a western wind...and none were left. What does it mean that none were left? Even those that were pickled with salt and sitting in their pots and barrels were blown away...."

Talmud Bavli Tractate Chullin 59a  :

"Any kind of grasshopper that has four walking legs, four wings, two jumping legs and whose wings cover the greater part of its body is kosher."

The four types of locusts stated in the Torah are known according to Yemenite tradition to be the following:

The red locust (Hebrew: ארבה, Arbeh),

The yellow locust (Hebrew: סלעם, Sal'am ),

The spotted gray locust (Herbew: חרגול, Chargol Aramaic )

The white locust (Hebrew: חגב, Chagav)

And Yanaton Ha Ish Ha Mikveh ate locusts and wild honey (Mattathias 3:4).

Orthoptera is the order of species for locusts. This order is divided into two large groups : Cursoria  and Saltatoria .

The first  includes only those families of Orthoptera  which have legs formed for creeping, and which were considered unclean by the Jewish law.

Under the second are comprised those whose two posterior legs, by their peculiar structure, enable them to move on the ground by leaps and not creep.

 The 4 species above are Kosher if you're, for example, a Yeminite  Jew, who has been taught how to recognize the 4 allowed types of locusts. I won't go into halacha.

From March to October 1915, a plague of locusts stripped areas in and around what is now Israel of almost all vegetation.

The locusts in north Africa  and the Levant that swarm and eat crops are Schistocerca gregaria. They start off being green in color and turn brown when they swarm. Science has discovered that an increase in brain serotonin levels triggers the color and the behavioral change. (Don't feed the locusts Prozac).

This locust of the plague is NOT one the four species that are considered kosher. So they were not a plague bad for the Egyptian's crops, but good for the Hebrew's tummies. While there are Midrashim  of how Hebrews benefited  or were not harmed by various plagues, there is no Midrash about the Hebrews, collecting these locusts to eat.

But back to the Midrash above, we get a hint of how Hebrews may have prepared their kosher locusts for eating, if they followed the Egyptian recipe . 

On a more spiritual and eco-Judaic note, just as we can use Matzah to teach us to be egoless, flat, and humble, and not be puffed-up with Chumetz, we can use the locusts ,especially with earth day coming up, to remind ourselves and others, to stop being a swarm on this earth, gobbling and consuming every thing in sight.

shalom uvracha:

arthur

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

 

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Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL : JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL :DON'T FEED THE LOCUSTS PROZAC

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL : JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL : DON'T FEED THE LOCUSTS PROZAC

 

 

Shalom y'all:

 

Chaver P. Zohav is spot on quoting the  Midrash Shemoth Rabbah  which  reads :

"Once the locusts came, the Egyptians rejoiced and said 'Let us gather them and fill our barrels with them.' Ha Kadosh  Baruch Hu said 'Wicked people, with the plague that I have brought against you, are you going to rejoice?!' Immediately God brought upon them a western wind...and none were left. What does it mean that none were left? Even those that were pickled with salt and sitting in their pots and barrels were blown away...."

Talmud Bavli Tractate Chullin 59a  :

"Any kind of grasshopper that has four walking legs, four wings, two jumping legs and whose wings cover the greater part of its body is kosher."

The four types of locusts stated in the Torah are known according to Yemenite tradition to be the following:

The red locust (Hebrew: ארבה, Arbeh),

The yellow locust (Hebrew: סלעם, Sal'am ),

The spotted gray locust (Herbew: חרגול, Chargol Aramaic )

The white locust (Hebrew: חגב, Chagav)

And Yanaton Ha Ish Ha Mikveh ate locusts and wild honey (Mattathias 3:4).

Orthoptera is the order of species for locusts. This order is divided into two large groups : Cursoria  and Saltatoria .

The first  includes only those families of Orthoptera  which have legs formed for creeping, and which were considered unclean by the Jewish law.

Under the second are comprised those whose two posterior legs, by their peculiar structure, enable them to move on the ground by leaps and not creep.

 The 4 species above are Kosher if you're, for example, a Yeminite  Jew, who has been taught how to recognize the 4 allowed types of locusts. I won't go into halacha.

From March to October 1915, a plague of locusts stripped areas in and around what is now Israel of almost all vegetation.

The locusts in north Africa  and the Levant that swarm and eat crops are Schistocerca gregaria. They start off being green in color and turn brown when they swarm. Science has discovered that an increase in brain serotonin levels triggers the color and the behavioral change. (Don't feed the locusts Prozac).

This locust of the plague is NOT one the four species that are considered kosher. So they were not a plague bad for the Egyptian's crops, but good for the Hebrew's tummies. While there are Midrashim  of how Hebrews benefited  or were not harmed by various plagues, there is no Midrash about the Hebrews, collecting these locusts to eat.

But back to the Midrash above, we get a hint of how Hebrews may have prepared their kosher locusts for eating, if they followed the Egyptian recipe . 

On a more spiritual and eco-Judaic note, just as we can use Matzah to teach us to be egoless, flat, and humble, and not be puffed-up with Chumetz, we can use the locusts ,especially with earth day coming up, to remind ourselves and others, to stop being a swarm on this earth, gobbling and consuming every thing in sight.

shalom uvracha:

arthur

Rabbi Arthur Segal www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal www.jewishrenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

 

---

The ALEPH-PNAI-OR mailing list is hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network.
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