Transcript of interview with Rabbi Shea Harlig by Barbara Tabach, March 5, 2014

An Interview with Rabbi Shea Harlig An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach West Charleston Neighborhoods: An Oral History Project of Ward 1 Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ?The West Charleston Neighborhoods: An Oral History Project of Ward 1 University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Editors: Maggie Lopes, Barbara Tabach Interviewers: Claytee D. White, Barbara Tabach, Lois Goodall, Shirley Emerson ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada, Las Vegas iii Preface Arriving in the Artesian Heights, a quiet neighborhood off West Charleston, in 1990 was a stark contrast with his Brooklyn origin. However, Rabbi Shea Harlig was a young man from a respected lineage of rabbinical teachers and orthodox Jewish upbringing. He came with goals and the energy and patience to establish an orthodox alternative for Las Vegas Jews. As Director of Chabad of Southern Nevada, Rabbi Harlig focuses on religious outreach, education and social services. Since the 1990s, Rabbi Harlig and his wife Dina have established their Las Vegas roots. They raised their watched their family of eight children here. They have helped establish seven Chabad locations throughout the community and also built a school and educational program of the highest standards. During this interview, the rabbi gives a walking tour of the surrounding neighborhood and the educational and religious facilities. It is a quiet area where residents may not have been overly welcoming when they bought the land, built the synagogue and school. The roots are deep now and the Chabad is a respected neighbor. iv Table of Contents Interview with Rabbi Shea Harlig March 5, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface........................................................................................................iv Begins with being born and raised in Brooklyn, New York; attended rabbinical school and was ordained there; now the director of Chabad of Southern Nevada. Explains what Chabad is; its history; and how it brought him to Las Vegas. Now seven Chabad Centers in Southern Nevada; mentions Shaarei Tefilla, an variation of orthodox synagogues; locating west, away from other synagogue to better serve the valley in 1990..........................................................1 - 4 Describes neighborhood off West Charleston; purchase of two properties to start their synagogue and preschool; zoning fight; CC&Rs didn't allowed churches, blacks and Jews. Received zoning variance with stipulations for Vista Drive address; then bought next property and has nearly three acres today. Private school and orthodox which limits traffic; has become part of the neighborhood; he lives within two blocks; likes the large lots; other congregants moved into the neighborhood, called Artesian Heights.................................................................5 - 7 Talks about his eight children; attended Chabad school; went away to high school; oldest daughter married to Chabad rabbi. Not many children in the immediate neighborhood; has a gentile neighbor he can call upon and another he hasn't talked to in years; generally an older neighborhood; streets not busy even today...........................................................8 - 10 Access to kosher food at first was from Los Angeles. Doesn't think the CC&Rs have ever changed. Describes who comes to the school, community outreach and volunteer chaplaincy; kitchen provides kosher food to hotels; thoughts about best financial assistance to give those in need; supervision of all kosher restaurants in Las Vegas; explains dietary rules of kosher; list of kosher restaurants on Chabad website; working to get kosher sections in local supermarkets..........................................................................................11 - 15 Talks about traditions of modest dress code; raising his children in Las Vegas; bothered by taxis advertising; how he avoided immodest billboards; understanding his personal mission is in Las Vegas. Family tradition of Chabad, distinguished line of rabbis; community outreach; grandfather was a rabbi, emigrated from Austria/Switzerland in 1940. Discusses relationship with other rabbis in Las Vegas community.......................................................16 - 19 Lack of anti-Semitism; mentions local political and business leaders. Talks about historical names like Moe Dalitz and how Sheldon Adelson's name is on the school; Jewish philosophy v regarding gambling; how much of his day/year is devoted to prayer; story of taking in teenagers during Sabbath, theft and return of charity. His wife's role in running the school............20 - 23 The rest of the interview is a tour of the Chabad property and surrounding neighborhood; also the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus and its Strip view from the second floor library. It includes colloquy of a variety of topics from quietness of neighborhood to matchmaking marriages to an explanation of the mikvah that is on the property.............24 - 32 vi This is Barbara Tabach. Rabbi, if you would just pronounce your name and the spelling for our transcriber. It's Rabbi Shea, S-H-E-A, Harlig, H-A-R-L-I-G. And today is March fifth, 2014, and we're sitting in the?Chabad? Did I say that close? Close. Chabad. Chabad, okay. It's like Hanukkah. It's not Hanukkah; it's Hanukkah [pronouncing], but go on. Okay. [Laughing] There's a sound that you make when you do that. That's a giveaway if somebody is Jewish or not. Well, I've always had trouble saying shiksa, because that's what I am. You're talking about shiksa. Shiksa. See, I've never been able to say that. So I have my own term for that. So this is a non-Jewish person who marries... Yeah. And some people think it's a little derogatory, too, to say that word. Well, it's within the family; they tease me, okay; so I've gotten used to that over the years. I've been married thirty-something years. But the proper pronunciation is shiksa. Okay, go ahead. So I didn't want to impress you with my pronunciations for sure. So we're going to start with a little bit about your background. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I lived there most of my life and I went to rabbinical school there and I was ordained there. I belong to an organization called Chabad of Southern Nevada. Actually, I'm the director. There's a Jewish organization, which is the largest 1 Jewish outreach organization, called Chabad-Lubavitch, which is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. They have like 4,000 branches around the world. So towards the end of 1990, they decided to open up a branch in Las Vegas and they asked me if I would like to come to head up the branch. That's what brought me into Las Vegas in December of 1990, to open up a Chabad. So we opened up with one center. Today we have seven centers in Southern Nevada and one in Northern Nevada. Oh, okay. What makes it a Chabad? What is Chabad? Chabad is part of the orthodox movement, but it's part of the Hasidic branch of the orthodox Jew. What's unique about us is that we actually do outreach to secular Jews. Most orthodox, especially Hasidic Jews, are very insular. They don't want to get involved with the outside because they don't want the outside to come in to influence them. We would be considered missionaries to the Jews, different than the Mormons who are missionaries to everyone, trying to get everyone to convert to Mormonism. We have no interest in converting non-Jews. We want non-Jews to be good non-Jews, to be moral, to be ethical, to follow the seven what we would call "Noahide Laws." But the Jews, we would like Jews to become more observant. The biggest problem with Jewish people is a lack of education and lack of understanding what our tradition is and why is it still relevant in the 21st century. So our job is teaching outreach from children to adults. That's what brought me to start the branch over here. Chabad, it's for three Hebrew words, chochmah, binah, da'at, which means wisdom, knowledge and understanding. I'll give you some pamphlets on the way out. It's not only the doing it, but also to have a better understanding of what it's all about. Our leader passed away 20 years ago. His name was Rabbi Schneerson. Actually, this 2 year is 20 years. We have branches all over the world. So this is what brings me here. So I was probably the first Orthodox Jew to move to Las Vegas with a wife and with my one daughter at that particular time. Now I'm already a grandfather; she's married. So we moved here. There were some?I don't think they were truly strict orthodox, completely. So I believe my wife and myself were probably the first ones. We're talking about strict that the wife always covers their hair, not driving, really strict. So we think we probably were the first ones to be here. Now there is a few hundred families. Most of them moved here over the years because now you have an infrastructure to be able to live an orthodox lifestyle in town. When I first moved here, it was very difficult to get kosher food, to have really a traditional Jewish school, to have mikvah, which is like a baptismal; that wasn't there and we built it over the years. And now there's an infrastructure and there's other synagogues in town. So you said there were seven in Nevada? There's eight in Nevada. There's seven in Southern Nevada, Chabad centers, and there's another couple of non-Chabad orthodox synagogues. There was an orthodox synagogue here before I came, a few years before I came. But they were people who sort of were orthodox, but weren't like following it to the tee 100 percent. That one is on Maryland Parkway. There's one on Maryland and Oakey; that's the original one, Shaarei Tefilla. I think they opened up in the late eighties, I think, a couple of years before I came. But they had no rabbi; it was just lay leaders. And how did you come to open in this particular location, on this part of town? When I moved to town?this is going back to December of 1990?the main Jewish community at that point was on the east side of town. The orthodox synagogue was on Maryland Parkway and Oakey. That was called Shaarei Tefilla. It was on Maryland Parkway. Beth Sholom, which was the big conservative synagogue, was on Oakey and like I-15. And Ner Tamid, which is the 3 big reform synagogue, was on Emerson and Eastern. I didn't want to set up shop right next to another orthodox synagogue because then I would start pulling people away and they were struggling to get enough people. So I decided if they're east, you've got to head west. They always say with my child go west. I went west. It happens to be that I found a property that worked for me that was west. At that point in 1990, the Westside...and this was a very nice neighborhood. I still believe it is. But this was close enough to the Strip because a lot of tourists would come and need our services, prayers, but it wasn't on the east side where they are so I felt like I was taking away their people. Eventually, like four or five years later, we realized where the community is really going is in Summerlin, the west side. So like Beth Sholom packed up and moved west. I didn't pack up; I stayed here, and we bought another Chabad. So we have a couple of centers in Summerlin. We have one in Green Valley. We opened one in the southwest. We have one on the east side. But I stayed. I came here, I parked myself here, and I'm not moving. And describe the neighborhood when you first moved here. I wasn't really welcomed by some of my neighbors. And I'm not going to say really because I was Jewish. We converted the original house. Now it doesn't exist anymore. You'll see it. It's on the other side of Vista Drive. It was a home. It was a ranch-style home. It was an acre lot. And I thought it would work perfectly for us for a little synagogue and a little preschool. My neighbors weren't thrilled about it. We were two properties south of?there was one residential home north of us before Charleston. So there was a commercial, a house and then there was us. We came in there and we had a huge?we first had a lease with an option to buy the house. When we went for the zoning, we had a huge zoning fight. My neighbors were not happy. Until today they're not happy. I believe the mayor was Jan Jones at that point. I could 4 probably pull out some of the letters. I think our councilman was Frank Hawkins, if I'm correct. This is going back in like '91, '92. And I have some of the letters. I didn't know; you know I'm a guy from Brooklyn and I don't know. I went to the zoning and they all came and they all wrote all these letters that we don't want; we have the CC and Rs in this neighborhood and it doesn't fit in with our...One of the things that they said is?if you want, I can pull out those letters if you need. I think I saved some in the file. We've lived here on this block from 1940 when there were carriages over here or horse and wagons and we don't want you to bring in traffic and all that type of stuff. They weren't thrilled. So they gave us our zoning first and then they gave us a limitation with the preschool, only 21 kids and then 35 kids. I believe what really turned?I think it was Frank Hawkins who did it for me if I remember correctly. They said, well, the CC and Rs do not allow churches or preschools. Then when we went through and read through the CC and Rs, it also says that they don't allow any blacks and they don't allow any Jews in this neighborhood. I think until today in the CC and Rs in this neighborhood it says that. So when we pointed it out to the city councilmen, I think they couldn't say much about the CC and Rs anymore. I'm pretty sure I have them all, but this is going back to '92 and '93. So we ended up having the synagogue on Vista Drive, which is the first property. My biggest opponent was my neighbor just south of me. And I wouldn't say because it's anti- Semitism. I really didn't believe that. I don't believe he wanted to have the school, a small school and a synagogue and all that. He don't like it, even though. For years whatever you do he would complain to the city. And eventually?you know what happened?we bought him out and he sold us the property. Then we bought the next property. So we have?I don't know if you saw our school?closer to three acres. I'll show it to you. So we have the three acres. 5 Even when I came to get this property, the neighbors fought me; they didn't want. It's going increase traffic. It's ridiculous. It's very little. It's a private school. It's quiet. They enforce me that I can't make any rights, only make a left. And we did some traffic studies. There's no traffic whatsoever. And people who were complaining were?streets and the cars don't even go through. But the worst thing is to go to a city council meeting when people have too much free time on their hands and they're fighting everything. So Lois Tarkanian, she had to balance it to appease some of the neighbors. I believe ultimately she agreed that it was ridiculous, some of the stuff what they wanted. But she gave me more or less with some restrictions to build it. Since we're an orthodox synagogue, many of the members, we don't drive on the Sabbath; we walk; we don't use cars on Sabbath. So I'd say we have probably about 30 families live within a mile of this and the only reason they came here is because the synagogue is here. I guess more people that come now don't move here because it's an older part of town. They would move to Green Valley. They would look to Summerlin. The latest one we opened up was in the southwest. But people still come. It's cheap here. I like the neighborhood. So when they first came to complain to us, well, your outside is coming in. But we have a bunch of the houses around here; some of them belong to synagogue, some of them belong to us. So we live here. We're part of the neighborhood. So where do you personally live? I live in Mountain View. I live two blocks down. I live there. I bought my house in June of 1992. And how did you find the neighborhood when you moved in; just to live there what was it like? 6 I'm coming from living in apartments in Brooklyn. When I first moved here I ran it out of my home, which was on like Oakey and Rancho; it's a street called Ivanhoe. It's a small street, a little east of Rancho and a little south of Oakey. And then this came available. Then June of 1992 I bought my house and I've been here ever since. I expanded my home. I was blessed with eight children. It was only a three-bedroom house. So now it's a six-bedroom house. What I like about this neighborhood is it's not Summerlin in the sense that all houses are the same, small lots. I sit in a half-acre lot. My neighbors are all half-acre lots. Of course, my wife still wants to have the high ceiling and she complains to me why we don't have a high ceiling. But this is my mission that it's over here. But the neighbors I don't think gave us a hard time about anything. This is going back to 2008, 2009, when we were going to try to get our zoning for our school, some of my neighbors signed against me. Then I went to some of them and I said?first of all, they come and they didn't realize it was me and somebody came to them and told them to sign it. I said tell me what bothers you if we build a school on Vista that has no effect on the street we're living? Well, the neighbor came; they're changing the neighborhood. You know people. There's a self-proclaimed president of the neighborhood, which I don't know how he was elected, and he's busy. There really isn't much going on between, amongst all the neighbors. I'm very friendly with my neighbor next to me and across the street from me. We know people who have lived here for many years. Not too many changes here. People live here for a long time. It's not very transient. I live on Mountain View, which is two streets down Del Monte here. Myself or some members of the congregation, we own a bunch of the houses around here. So what neighborhood are we situated in? This is called Artesian Heights, if you want to know. Artesian Heights, I believe, goes from 7 Charleston to Oakey from Arville to Valley View, because some of my other people come and they tease me I live in a fancy neighborhood, Artesian Heights. So that's how I know that. What do you know about the history of the neighborhood? I know very little about the history. I could tell you one of my neighbors knows all the history. You can go over to him, Tom Morris. He'll tell you everything. Okay, we'll have to get Tom's contact number. Yeah, anyone who knows anything about it, he's like the sheriff on it; he tells me what goes on. Very nice, watches. He's not Jewish. So whenever I need somebody to do something for me for the Sabbath, he's the one who always does that for me. And your children, you said you have eight children? I have eight children, yes. And so they all went to school here? They all went to my school, to the school. And then eventually when they go into high school, they go out of town. We send them to religious high schools out of town. So the boys go to Chicago?there's a school there?and the girls go to New York. So six of the eight are out of the house. My oldest daughter got married and she moved back here with her husband, also a rabbi, who opened up Chabad in the southwest. We opened that up like six months ago. And my second daughter just recently got married. We did it at the South Point Hotel. She's in New York now. Eventually, obviously she'll move back here. My son-in-law, same thing, Chabad family from New Orleans. So he grew up in the same type of work. They're either going to move here or New Orleans in another year or so. So what was their life growing up in the neighborhood, outside of the school? So they're in that social group. Did they have a social world outside of school? 8 Because we are religious in the senses, sometimes they would have things here for the neighborhood. It was on Saturday. Saturday, we can't do that. So they really didn't have? there's not that many kids around on our block here that they had much interaction. Most of their interaction happened to be with the school, with the kids there. I mean they walked to school back and forth. It's not a senior?but there isn't many younger kids living here. You hardly see kids with bicycles around this neighborhood. So they didn't have much interaction with the neighbors. One neighbor who is down the block from me, he has like an empty field. Like maybe the first year or two, in order to cut to my property, I would walk around like the property that unbeknownst to me was his property. I thought it was somebody else's. But I mean one day he came here. Why do always dah, dah, dah? Anyway, that was his welcome to me, that was his hello and that was goodbye. I haven't said another word to him in probably, oh, I don't know, 18 years now. I mean we really don't see it. Some of the older people are a little uptight here. That's my interaction with him. There's some rural land here. Years ago there was?the city came after it. There was a guy. One street is called Del Rey. Mr. Rey on the corner of Hinson and Del Rey had a lot of junk there, maybe ten, 15 years that the city came in and emptied it out. It made the news over that because he was collecting junk on his two acres of land. Let me go see if I can find the file of those letters if you want to see what? Sure. That would be great. Let me see if I can find it. Okay, '94 petition that we're looking at now. Yeah. If you look up the CC and Rs, I'm sure it's?this is the original. I think these are the 9 original people who signed against it. This is going back even?no. This is the original one. Here we go. [Reading protest] But you can read some of the letters. She's the one who writes here about the buggy. Oh, a buggy, yeah. It's hard to believe that that could be written into a CC and R, growing up in a place that never had CC and Rs. Everything was more unspoken as opposed to actually written in something. If you're really interested, you look it up. I probably don't have a copy of it. I know I had it. I'll have to go through the files. But definitely in the CC and Rs tells you how many dogs, how many?there was a funny part of it. Why, does she write in there about all the lives that she lived in? This is about the traffic congestion. [Reading] "I have been approached in former years and asked if I would object to a blacktop area next to one on the north and I saw through this and objected; asked the owner why this proposal." So this was a residential area. It was. How busy were the streets in the nineties? It's still not busy. It's not busy. Yeah. Where was the closest grocery store when you first moved here? That's right. We have a big Wal-Mart here now. There wasn't Wal-Mart then. There was a Vons on?you'd have to ask my wife?on Charleston?I mean Sahara. I don't remember. There was a Phar-Mor here, I believe. And did they carry kosher food? No. We used to get our kosher food from Los Angeles. 10 From L.A.? Yeah. I think those are the?if you want a copy of all those, I'll get it. That would be great. Yes, we would love that. But find the CC and Rs. It still exists. I don't think it ever was changed. It never changed? I don't think it changed. So I'm not allowed to live here even. That's right. [Laughing] And I remember he asked one of them. He asked them, well, does that mean that?Frank, I think asked him?does that mean that I cannot live here? Well, now we don't?because they came with CC and Rs that it's illegal to have a synagogue or a church there. And he knew what else it said in there because we pointed it out to him. So he said, no, that we don't really mean. [Laughing] And so most of the people who belong here, you said, are new residents to Las Vegas? Over the last 20 years. A few people were already here. I noticed Sheldon Adelson's name on the outside. He gave me money to build the building. He gave me substantial money originally. And your children, so once they went away to high school, then did they go to universities? Rabbinical universities. The girls, as well? Yeah, they went to seminaries. They went to Israel for a year. So when they come back?I mean your life really is about the families that belong to this congregation. No, not necessarily, because we do outreach to the entire Jewish community. 11 Okay. So can you tell me more about that... The kids that come to this school are not all from this neighborhood. They come from traditional schools. So those who want to teach more traditional values and Judaism come here. You have to be Jewish in order to come to our school. Okay, you do have to be Jewish, okay. Yes, because they learn Hebrew. If you want to convert?if you want to be Jewish, you could be Jewish and then come. But you have to be Jewish in order to come to our school because half the day is spent in Judaic studies. But we also run the volunteer chaplaincy program to all the hospitals, to the prisons, to the Jewish people, to Jewish inmates that are in the prison. We run senior citizen home. We go and visit them. We have ten Chabad rabbis now living in town. So we just do different regions and we go and visit them. I generally cover UMC and Valley because it's the closest to here. So we do that. And we help people in need. Some people who come to us are not Jewish. If they need some help, we help them what we can. If they're coming for food, then?we don't really run a food bank. People show up here all the time. We have a kitchen that provides kosher food to the hotels. But when someone comes in and needs some food, we provide them, help them eat. We'll give them small stipends. We don't like to give people cash because it generally doesn't go to what it's supposed to. I mean a person runs in, oh, I need money for gas. So I would send one of my people to go fill up his car. I give him a credit card, not to give people money. But we'll get you some food. So we do that. But basically it's to outreach to all Jewish people who want to or don't even know that they need to learn more about our heritage. So let me understand. So if I'm staying in a hotel and I'm very religious and I want a kosher meal, the hotel calls you here to prepare it? 12 Two things. First of all, there are six or seven kosher restaurants in town. That's under our supervision. Oh, okay. We don't own it, but we make sure that it's kosher. So we're the kosher supervisor. We have people in each restaurant. I can bring you a map of all the restaurants. No. When my husband's cousin came here, we had to look up all of those restaurants. Where did you look them up? I don't know if he looked them up online or where he got that list. They go to our website. On the website you have all the restaurants. Oh, that's amazing. That is amazing because you know where Bagelmania...there is a kosher restaurant in that center. We publish this and it's on our website. See, open it up and you see where our synagogues are. So while we're talking about the restaurants and the dietary, would you explain in general what the dietary rules are? The dietary rules are, well, it goes back to the Bible. There's a couple of elements, first. There are certain types of animals that we could eat and fish. For the animals, it has to chew its cud and have split hooves; that makes it kosher. After it's a kosher animal?like pig has split hooves, but doesn't regurgitate its food. A cow does. So a cow is kosher. It's a biblical commandment. So even if it's a kosher animal, it has to be slaughtered in a way which we believe is least painful; slitting the throat, drain out the blood, check that it's healthy. So that's one part. A fish has to have fins and scales. If it's a lobster, it's out. Shrimp is out. Never ate that in my life. So that's fish. Birds, it doesn't have a general?the Bible tells us which is kosher and which is not. So once we know what's kosher, you also can't mix meet and milk. You can't mix that. 13 So that's another part. So the restaurants you'll see either meat or dairy. If you look at the guide, it will always tell you whether meat or dairy, for that reason. Everything that's natural is kosher. All vegetables, fruit are all kosher. The problem is in some of the processed stuff that they make cookies with non-kosher or pudding, some of the fat, the oil that they use. So therefore, whatever we eat needs to have a kosher symbol. And at these restaurants we have a supervisor that makes sure that all the products they're bringing in are kosher. So when I came here there was one restaurant really that was supervised. What restaurant was that? It doesn't exist anymore. It was on Vegas?I think it's Vegas Drive. It's off Maryland, south of?yeah, I think it was Vegas?south of Oakey. The street runs into the country club. Because Vegas Drive is north. Valley Verde?no, Valley Verde is in? Green Valley. Valley View? No, Valley View is here. We'll find it. Anyway, there's one more opened up that we just updated our list that there's one more restaurant. So the demand, obviously, built up over time. Demand built up. Most of the business, though, comes from out-of-town tourists. So you asked me. If someone comes to town?there's two things. So we get a lot of hits on our website where we direct people. So they go to the restaurants. If they're here for conferences and they can't go to the restaurants, the hotel has deals with some of the restaurants, also a caterer. She just rents our kitchen space, but she runs it and she delivers meals to the hotels. [Pause in recording] So we were talking about food, shopping. 14 There's two supermarkets that have a large kosher selection. When did that start? When did that happen? Actually in like '94 and '95 when I first started, they used to bring in frozen kosher food from Phoenix used to come in and then from L.A., but it was frozen. And I approached at that time I think it was Lucky. It was the original Lucky. I told them, listen, I have this brainstorm; let's bring in fresh kosher meat; we'll cut it under our supervision. I went to a couple of stores. I don't remember which ones. The first one I went to, maybe Albertsons, rejected it; didn't want it. And then I maybe went to Lucky and Smiths and they started it. Eventually it grew. One bought out the other. So now you have a large kosher selection in Smiths in Desert Shores and one in Albertsons at The Lakes. So you just go by there if you're ever there and look at that. What makes food kosher? Can you explain that to us? So we went through the signs. Then we want to make sure that any by-product that goes in also came from?because a lot of stuff they have to put in different spices and different oils. So it has to come from a kosher animal. Make sure that no by-products of a non-kosher animal get in there. That's why most koshe