To the Half Moon K I say may you go from strength to strength and continue to improve the reliability of your kashruth supervision.

Thus, as far as I can see, the “half moon k” is still unreliable. Some of their products are fine; some are not. Anything with their “heksher” requires further checking. In my opinion, that makes the heksher meaningless!

“Rabbi Sharfman passed away about six years ago. The new people, Rabbi Hollander and Rabbi Jenkins are fine.”

However, I wonder why anyone would retain a heksher with such a bad reputation! Why not design and register a new logo, rather than retain one which “everyone” knows is unreliable, and try to “improve it’s image”?

Oh, I should say that it’s in the regular feature “Kashrus Concerns” by Rabbie Eliezer Eidlitz. He has several sections: Unauthorozed, Mislabeled, Dairy without “D” Designation, Newly Available, No Longer Certified, Certified, and Restaurants. Yhis is the October 2006 issue on page 16 od Jewish Life, Traditional Living in Los Angeles” (and yes, being from Louisville, I know that further East people differentiate between “traditional” and “orthodox”, but here it’s a polite way of saying “orthodox”).
Craig

In the “Newly Available” section:

“Homemade brand organic baby food certified Half Moon K is available at Whole Foods markets.”

It was part of a list of 2 items, ther other one, not quoted verbatim: Les Petites Fermieres shredded 2 lb. mozzarella, OK, available at select Costcos.

Craig

OK, I’ve seen half-moon K products now listed by Rabbi Eidlitz in the latest issue of Jewish Life (an LA publication) in his column. I guess this means that even by Yoni’s criteria, half-moon k has finally “made it”.

Craig Winchell

Yoni, the half moon K is reliably kosher. Rabbi Hollander, who runs it now, is a Telshe semicha who came to California to run Agudah (and now he runs Young Israel of Venice, I believe, though he’s far more “black” than the community). He told me last Spring that everything is up to snuff except for the bagged lettuces, at a time when all bagged lettuces were suspect. He personally does not hold to simply triple washing and chazaka of bug-free status, so he doesn’t eat the lettuce, or at least didn’t eat it last Spring. And I must say that many products lost their hechsher in the process of upgrading.

In any case, I live in the Valley Village community, and see Rabbi Eidlitz often, but I wouldn’t place faith that his list is comprehensive as far as reliable hechshirim. There are plenty which don’t show up on his list. But the list is full of reliable ones. I wouldn’t hesitate to eat half-moon K. Just wish it were on some of the products it used to be on, which were ubiquitous. Now, there’s an item here, an item there… which I guess is because they gave up so many questionable products which under Scharfman were given hechsher, and they no longer have the special half-moon K hechsherim for gelatin and carmine, instead they have hechshirim denoting yoshon, dairy, meat, pareve and Pesach. I fully reject the notion as well that reputable poskim don’t approve of the half-moon K as it stands now. Rather, it hasn’t been the subject of intense scrutiny by poskim unless they need to check. Thus, many don’t even know that the founder died and that a new group of rabbis are doing things to different standards, under their own poskim. As a person who has been involved in the production side, as well as the mashgiach side of kashrus, I know that old notions die hard, and by the time things are adopted by the majority, they’re already old news, and sometimes are not even applicable anymore.

A gut g’bentched yor!