Eating at restaurants without Hashgacha

simba

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 3:27 pm

naturalmom5 wrote:

Why is bishul akum not a problem

בישול עכו׳ם is only an issue for food that is fit to be served by a kings table, I think the term is ראוי לשולחן מלאכים.

meyerlemon44

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 3:39 pm

I think it's worth noting that a generation ago this would not have been considered problematic by many Orthodox Jews. As a man at my shul said, "These kids today worry about kosher bagels--when I was growing up, all bagels were kosher!"

Jalapeño

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 5:50 pm

simba wrote:

What about eggs at a vegetarian place? Is it a problem that they don’t get checked?

I've heard that checking now is really a formality, since most industrial chickens are hormonally induced into fertility, and not actually fertile at all. So the blood doesn't make the whole egg not-kosher.

https://oukosher.org/blog/kosh.....pots/

Basically seems ok (though I am not YLOR), especially because restaurants likely remove any blood spots and/or wouldn't use a bloody egg and/or make multiple eggs at once

chicco

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 5:55 pm

simba wrote:

בישול עכו׳ם is only an issue for food that is fit to be served by a kings table, I think the term is ראוי לשולחן מלאכים.

Yes, but מלכים not מלאכים Smile

amother

Chartreuse

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 6:00 pm

meyerlemon44 wrote:

You don't have to go back a generation or two to find large pockets of Orthodox Jews who are lax about halacha, unfortunately.

pause

Thu, Mar 28 2019, 10:48 pm

amother wrote:

None of those are issues in vegan restaurants. Perhaps the bugs, but non Jews don’t want to eat bugs either generally.

Is there no cooking involved in a vegan restaurant? That's bishul akum.

amother

Seagreen

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 4:27 am

pause wrote:

Is there no cooking involved in a vegan restaurant? That's bishul akum.

There is no concept of bishul akum if one of the following (not all) apply

1. Food (even if now cooked) can be eaten raw
2. Not fit to be served on a Kings table (different opinions on what constitutes that since today Kings can have potato chips too)
3. A Jew was involved in the cooking prior to the item being cooked (I.e. turned on fire, observed, etc.)

Therefore, the majority of vegan items do not need to be bishul Yisroel since almost all of them can be eaten raw. The question is if the keilim were used to cook other items that were bishul akum etc. But I've seen many laxities about keilim (think about all of the people who drink Starbucks- their keilim is washed in hot water with meat and milk treif keilim-most are relying on a heter re keilim - this is not the case with coffee bean)

PinkFridge

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 6:00 am

amother wrote:

Just to clarify: I'm interested in a discussion not a psak. Some people have posted some interesting ideas I never considered.

The discussion is interesting but once you get "my (anonymous) rav said," even by posters using their SNs, it gets pretty meaningless.
You've had some sources given, and issues described. I would say that with this thread, maybe people can fine tune what questions to ask their rabbanim under less than optimal situations.

meyerlemon44

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 8:16 am

amother wrote:

You don't have to go back a generation or two to find large pockets of Orthodox Jews who are lax about halacha, unfortunately.

It's interesting to me that we talk about others being lax about halachah when it comes to things that are concrete and physical, like kashrus, but not about things that are just as important, like hilchos tefillah, maaser, being dan l'kaf zchus, which aren't as easily observable. Indded, those things may be more important than the details of certain hilchos kashrus. For example, having ahavas yisroel is a mitzvah d'oraisa, but bishul yisroel isn't.

(To be clear I'm not paskening anything, but I am saying our community sometimes ranks less important mitzvahs over more important ones because it's easy to point to easily observable things as markers of frumkeit.)

amother

Chartreuse

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 8:31 am

meyerlemon44 wrote:

I was most definitely not referencing kashrus specifically in my comment.

tichellady

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 8:59 am

amother wrote:

Lentils and beans, grains and many veggies need to be cooked to be eaten ( I guess you could argue that lentils could be sprouted)

princessleah

Fri, Mar 29 2019, 8:59 am

amother wrote:

But they do end up eating bugs without realizing.
Since it’s a sin for us we have developed a strong system in checking for microscopic bugs and worms.

If they're microscopic you can't see them