HAARETZ: Religious Jewish women, the primary cooks in Orthodox families, have long ruled kosher kitchens and served as crucial, informal kosher watchdogs for their families and guests. But those women are rarely trusted with the even more powerful, formal task of professionally supervising the production of kosher food.
This may be starting to change. For the first time, both the Orthodox Union and Star-K, two large Orthodox kosher agencies, are offering courses for women in the Jewish dietary laws of kashrut this year. Neither course will explicitly train women to be mashgichot, official kosher supervisors, even though there is no religious prohibition against it, and the move has caused some debate and friction within religious circles.
Still, around 25 women came to the New York area in August to attend a five-day advanced course organized by the O.U. that included visits to industrial kosher kitchens and classroom sessions intended to provide "a comprehensive, in-depth overview of the entire kashrut industry, including the home kitchen," said Rabbi Yosef Grossman, education director of the O.U., which is the largest kosher-supervising body in the United States Star-K will offer for the first time a two-day course in the fall "to women who are already in the kashrus field, a chance to enhance their knowledge," said Rabbi Mayer Kurcfeld, Star-K's assistant director of supervision. He said that about 20 percent of Star-K's mashgichot, in local businesses such as restaurants and hospitals, are women. >>> The Jewish Daily Forward | Tuesday, September 22, 2009
