30 November 2007
But is she yotzei with his kiddush?
An actual New York Times correction, November 25, 2007:
A headline last Sunday about a Muslim man and an Orthodox Jewish woman who are partners in two Dunkin’ Donuts stores described their religions incorrectly. The two faiths worship the same God — not different ones.
¶
LOL!
The woman needs a good halachic advisor. Among other things, she is not forbidden to profit from selling pork, but she is forbidden to profit from selling milk and meat combinations.
The selling of pork is not a simple matter at all. True, there is no prohibition of benefitting from pork as there is from meat and milk. But there is a prohibition of mistaker be ma’achalos assuros — roughly, making a business out of forbidden foods. There is a rabbinic prohibition of running a regular business wherein one profits from the sale of forbidden foods, lest one come to eat them. If one has a business in something else and forbidden foods happen to come to the person’s possession, then he can sell them. (For example, a trapper of kosher animals sets out his traps and happens to trap a non-kosher one. He is allowed to sell the non-kosher one to a non-Jew.)
So yes, the woman needs a good halachic advisor. (Not to mention the Shabbos and Yom Tov issue, already discussed in the article.)
The pork thing is a bit surprising. There are a number of kosher Dunkin Donuts around, and AFAIK they simply leave out the few pork products from the regular menu.
Tal, there is no problem with a generally kosher store selling some items that are not kosher. That is in the same category as the trapper you mention above. The only thing that is not allowed is having ones main business be in forbidden foods. Here the business is doughnuts, as the name implies, and the bacon sandwiches or whatever it is are a side line; that is allowed, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t keep the profits for herself, but it’s nice that she gives them to tzedaka.
“Tal, there is no problem with a generally kosher store selling some items that are not kosher. That is in the same category as the trapper you mention above. The only thing that is not allowed is having ones main business be in forbidden foods. Here the business is doughnuts, as the name implies, and the bacon sandwiches or whatever it is are a side line; that is allowed, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t keep the profits for herself, but it’s nice that she gives them to tzedaka.”
Do you have any authority for what you write? I find it hard to believe that a store that regularly carries non-kosher food is not mistaker be maachalos assuros , notwithstanding that most of its business is in kosher food. (This is apart from issues such as lifnei iver.)
This is quite different from a trapper that seeks to trap kosher animals and by chance a non-kosher animal is trapped one day. Here the owner is regularly ordering and reselling non-kosher food.
Yes, my uncle used to have a business that carried non-kosher items on a regular basis, and this is the psak he was given. I’m not entirely certain whom he asked, but I believe it was R Shmuel Levitin z”l. Certainly if there were the least problem with it he would not have carried those items. If I remember I’ll ask him exactly whom he asked.
There was one incident where a clearly Jewish person tried to buy a non-kosher brandy, and on being told that it was not kosher insisted that he wanted it, until my uncle told him “Reb yid, dos iz nisht kein lechayim, dos iz a lamoves”, and that persuaded him not to buy it…
PS: In the case of brandy, it wouldn’t be a problem anyway, because the prohibition on drinking it is only rabbinic, so it’s completely permitted to sell it. But I believe he also had some other non-kosher items, that might have been de’oraita.
Another issue to explore is whether the partnership with the goy eliminates this prohibition on selling non-kosher food.