Hechsher Tzedek definition
While hanging out with Y-Love last night he asked what I thought of the Hechsher Tzedek, I didn’t have such a good response because on first hearing about it my werewolf side of rabid right wing yeshiva guy sprang forth and I started ranting about how the Conservative movement doesn’t really care about kasharus but they are trying to jump on the backs of those that do and say that regular hechshers are not good enough. I also started thinking to myself about the economic impact of another kosher certification required on products and wondered what would happen to the price of kugel if we tried such insanity.
When I thought about it as a sane normal individual I came to the conclusion that its hard to argue against something that requires kosher food producers to treat their workers fairly and higher only documented workers and also comply with animal rights standards. Isn’t that all in the Torah anyway? Isn’t this something that the Charedim should have come up with? Seems like a mighty fine chumra to me.
But then on the flip side you can say the intentions are off, it has nothing to do with kasharus and eventually many of the reform and conservative movements members may take this to mean that a product is kosher when this doesn’t actually say a product is kosher, it just says that the company doesn’t hire undocumented Mexicans to make the pizza and bein hazmanim yeshiva guys to work the counters. I could not imagine all the stores in the Catskills suddenly paying on the books and not working the poor yeshiva guys to the bone for bubkus.
It really could go either way. The heksher tzedek website says that it will only be placed on already certified kosher products, what about things with unreliable hechsherim? What about cost? Is this just a way for the conservative movement to cash in on the lucrative business of kasharus?