Transcript
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
NARRATOR
Jewish dietary law is laid out in the ancient texts of the Torah. One of the most important aspects of a rabbi's role is to use these rules to check whether food is kosher or not.
[SPEAKING HEBREW]
RABBI CHAIM WEINER
We work not so much with restaurants or with factories. We work mainly with the caterers. We would work with people who are preparing a bar mitzvah function or a wedding function and go into the kitchen. We would make sure that all the ingredients being used are kosher. We do something called 'koshering the kitchen', which is a very, very deep clean, and we would watch the caterer from the ordering of the food until the serving and making sure that everything complies with Jewish law.
NARRATOR
Since childhood, Rabbi Weiner and his family have always been careful to ensure that the food they buy and eat is kosher.
RABBI CHAIM WEINER
I grew up as a child in Canada, in Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada. Our nearest source of kosher meat was over a thousand miles away, and that was never a problem for our family. In other words, there was always a strong commitment that we were a family that kept kosher. And if it meant ordering your meat from a thousand miles away, then we ordered the meat from a thousand miles away. Twice a year, a large shipment would come from Toronto. I think part of my identity and part of my understanding that kosher food is part of forming that identity comes from that formative experience.
DAVID SALZMAN
Kosher food is part of our religion. And if I would, for example, be very, very hungry and I'd go ... I'm walking down the road and see a delicious sandwich - a non-kosher sandwich - in the window and I don't eat it, that proves to me that I ... if something, that God will be very happy, that even though I'm extremely hungry, I will refrain from buying a non-kosher product. That is absolutely wonderful thing. If you refrain from eating non-kosher, it would be wonderful for yourself and for your soul and for your religion.
RABBI CHAIM WEINER
The moment you decide I am eating this and I am not eating that because that's who I am is a very formative experience in a person developing their own identity. And I think the decisions we make, what seem like very, very small decisions - am I going into this restaurant, am I ordering that pizza or a different pizza - they seem like they are nothing, but the moment you make those decisions, you're actually really thinking about: who am I, and how do I live?