Abraham Goldstein started the kosher certification programs of both the Orthodox Union and OK Kosher Certification, the two largest agencies today; his legacy can be found in the kosher symbols that adorn approximately 40% of the item in a typical supermarket. Yet silence shrouds his historical role as a pioneer of modern kosher certification.

A devout Orthodox Jew and a chemist by trade, Goldstein appreciated the complex challenges of certifying modern kosher food long before many rabbis whose knowledge of kosher law was rooted in non-industrial settings. Born in East Prussia, Goldstein received training as a chemist before moving to America in 1891 and settling in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. In the 1920s he led the nascent certification program of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregation’s subsidiary, the Orthodox Union, and was certainly at the table when the OU created its distinctive U in a circle symbol to place on Heinz’s vegetarian baked beans in 1923. Billed as the OU’s “chemical expert,” Goldstein wrote a monthly “Kashruth Column” in the small Orthodox Union magazine, where he answered queries from observant food shoppers.  

His insistence on the relevance of science, however, increasingly placed Goldstein at odds with central leaders of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis (the Agudath Harabonim) who felt reliance on secular knowledge undermined rabbinic authority. Seeking his own platform, in 1935 Goldstein created the Organized Kashrus (OK) Laboratory to serve as a scientific research lab for rabbis seeking to better understand the chemical composition of food they had been asked to certify. Its quarterly journal, the Kosher Food Guide, grew rapidly in circulation to well over 100,000 and became a magnet for observant shoppers, who sent letters to Goldstein asking his advice on foods commonly found on the shelves of new national food chains such as A&P. Answering dozens of queries in each issue, the dialogue between Goldstein and worried Jewish consumers opens a window on the challenges to kosher traditions posed by modern processed foods.

In his responses, and sharply worded articles, Goldstein presented views at odds with prominent Agudath Harabonim leaders. Relying on his authority as a scientist, he ridiculed their opinions, deeply offending the European-trained rabbis accustomed to deference from laymen. When the OU insisted that he submit issues of the Kosher Food Guide for advance rabbinic approval, Goldstein refused. He ended all association with the OU and constituted OK Laboratory as its own certification agency. Just before World War II a rabbinic court sought to end Goldstein’s influence by directing Jews and businesses to ignore the Kosher Food Guide; while effectively banning him from official Orthodox circles, the edict had little discernable effect on the journal’s circulation and the placement of advertisements by food companies.  
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When Abraham Goldstein died late in 1944, his son George took over OK Laboratory; until the mid-1950s it certified more kosher products than the OU, which took decades to recover from Goldstein’s departure. By then his views were not controversial; both his positions on particular products and his insistence on the use of science in kosher certification were now accepted. Yet, even as Orthodox Judaism moved to embrace Goldstein’s views, the silences surrounding his historical role remained. Even today, Abraham Goldstein remains the invisible chemist. 

I came across an amazing man while looking for information on kosher meat. A Harry Kassel came up in a New York Times search, appearing in a 1973 article about meat shortages and described as the largest wholesaler of kosher meat in the New York area. Other searches turned up nothing more; so I turned to one of the historian’s great resources – the telephone book—and found him living on Long Island just past the end of the Belt Parkway. Spry and sharp at 89, he told me about his remarkable life, and in so doing gave me the backbone of chapter seven in Kosher USA, which I called “Harry Kassel’s Meat.”
 
He was born in Racine, Wisconsin to a Jewish family that tried to keep kosher. He joined the military during World War II, and rather than trying to build up his military service, joked with me in his self-deprecating manner that since the US wanted to win the war, they kept him in the country. Recently demobilized in 1946, he agreed to a blind date with Zeena Levine, who was then a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. The two hit if off (even though she called him a “cheapskate” in our interview since he took her to a bar instead of a restaurant) and were soon married. Harry joked that since she wouldn’t go to work, he had to, and took the easy way out by joining his new father in law’s business.
 
Zeena’s father was a butcher – on a big scale. With his partner Sam Cohen, Joe Levine owned several large kosher butcher shops in Brooklyn and a small chain of non-kosher shops. Kosher meat was a thriving business after World War II, and Levine took in his son-in-law and taught him how to evaluate recently-slaughtered meat and decide which carcasses to buy for his butcher shops.
 
After a few years Kassel went into business for himself and established a meat wholesale company in the Brooklyn plant once operated by Swift & Co. His training made him acutely aware of the peculiar nature of kosher beef – that the same animal yielded kosher and non-kosher cuts. The Ashkenazi tradition was to only consume the forequarters, so even though these cattle yielded kosher briskets and rib roasts, the desirable loin cuts could not enter the kosher trade. Kassel made a name for himself by buying the hindquarters of prime, kosher-killed cattle and distributing the tenderloins and porterhouse steaks so prized in New York’s white tablecloth restaurants.
 
He quickly realized the benefits of buying the entire carcass, and sending the forequarters into kosher distribution channels while the hindquarters went to the high-end restaurant market. By the mid-1960s Kassel’s company was selling all over the United States, and was the nation’s largest kosher beef wholesaler. He was one of the first to work with the new Cryovac technology that allowed plastic packaging to be shrink-wrapped over meat before shipment, vastly extending the time it could spend in transit. Able to send cuts from the non-kosher hindquarters to institutional buyers throughout the United States, Kassel was well-positioned to manage distribution of meat from the forequarters to kosher outlets.
 
A Reform Jew and an active benefactor of Jewish causes, Kassel was able to manage the tricky shifts in kosher meat supply and demand in the 1960s and 1970s. The large slaughterhouses in the New York area that had supplied kosher meat to the region for decades had largely closed by the 1950s, pushing kosher meat production to the Midwest and into small regional plants. It took a wholesaler with feet in both the kosher and non-kosher meat trades to sustain a steady supply to both markets. He was especially adept at provisioning Hasidic and Orthodox customers who wanted glatt beef, a demanding standard that gentile slaughterhouse owners had a hard time understanding. Committed to respecting the preferences of his co-religionists – even if their notion of Judaism was different than his – Kassel worked diligently to make sure that the meat he supplied fully met the requirements of the supervising rabbis.
 
Harry Kassel left the meat business in 1980, convinced that meat consumption was going to fall (it did) and worried about the pressures of the new large meat concerns on his operation. His concerns were well-placed. Turmoil swept through the meat industry in the 1980s, with old firms going bankrupt and new dominant companies forming out of this chaos. He put his skills to use for Israel, helping to create Yarden, an export-oriented cooperative that brought Israeli food products to an international market, and serving for many years as vice-president of his synagogue. And every fall, Harry and his wife Zeena travel to France to see the places they love to visit. It was a great mitzvah to have the chance to get to know this remarkable man.