On Religion: A Passover Toast to a Rabbi Known for Social Activism, and for Kosher Coca-Cola

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen, of blessed memory, was born in Lithuania in 1870 and educated in the renowned Slobodka yeshiva. In the wake of a pogrom, he immigrated to New York in 1903, and seven years later he moved to Atlanta to become the rabbi of Shearith Israel, a tiny and struggling Orthodox congregation meeting in the battered remnant of a Methodist church.

During his early decades at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Geffen established Atlanta’s first Hebrew school and oversaw its ritual bath. He stood by Leo Frank, the Jewish man falsely accused of murdering a young Christian girl, and after Frank’s lynching in 1915, the rabbi urged his congregants not to flee the South in fear.

At Passover in 1925, he spoke eloquently and presciently against Congress for passing immigration restrictions that “have slammed shut the gates of the country before the wanderers, the strangers, and those who walk in darkness from place to place.” As early as 1933, he warned about the Nazi regime in Germany. Long before feminism, he advocated for Orthodox women who were being denied religious divorce decrees by vindictive husbands.

But all those achievements are not why we invoke the name and memory of Rabbi Geffen today, more than 40 years after his death. No, we come to honor his least likely yet most enduring contribution to the Jewish people and his adopted nation: kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola.

Yes, observant Jews of today, searching supermarket counters for those bottles with the telltale yellow cap bearing the Orthodox Union’s certification, and yes, Coke die-hards of any or no religion who seek out those same bottles for the throwback flavor of cane-sugar Coke, you owe it all to Rabbi Tuvia Geffen.

He of the long beard and wire-rim glasses and Yiddish-inflected English, a man by all outward appearances belonging to the Old World, he was the person who by geographical coincidence and unexpected perspicacity adapted Coca-Cola’s secret formula to make the iconic soft drink kosher in one version for Passover and in another for the rest of the year. To this day, his 1935 rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard.

That ruling, in turn, did much more than solve a dietary problem. A generation after Frank’s lynching, a decade after Congress barred the Golden Door, amid the early stages of Hitler’s genocide, kosher Coke formed a powerful symbol of American Jewry’s place in the mainstream.

“Rabbi Geffen really got the importance of it,” said Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina, who specializes in Jewish life in the South. “You couldn’t live in any better place than the South to get it. To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American.”

Or look at the interplay of Jews and America from another angle. Rabbi Geffen’s solution to the Coke problem was not to forget the kosher rules and melt into the melting pot. But neither was it to decry the spiritual pollution of modernity in the form of a fizzy drink. A half-century before the era of cultural pluralism, his answer was to have the majority address the distinct needs of a minority.

As a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, Adam Mintz, has written in an essay on Geffen and Coke: “Struggling to find their place in a land that was often hostile to their religion, American Jews respected and appreciated rabbis who sought to include them within the Orthodox camp rather than simply condemn them as sinners. Of course his approach would not have been possible had he not felt confident in his powers of persuasion.”

We can safely say, however, that this issue chose Rabbi Geffen rather than the other way around. As early as 1925, as the Orthodox authority in Coke’s home city, he was receiving inquiries from other rabbis about the drink’s kosher status. A few other rabbis had already given certification, without knowing the secret formula. And multitudes of American Jews were drinking Coke regardless.

“Because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink,” Rabbi Geffen wrote in his teshuva, “I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage. With the help of God, I have been able to uncover a pragmatic solution.”

Putting aside God’s props for a moment, we should note that Rabbi Geffen had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola’s corporate lawyer. Through Hirsch, Rabbi Geffen was permitted to enter that industry’s Holy of Holies and receive Coke’s secret formula.

With it, the rabbi was able to identify the elements that rendered Coke nonkosher during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative). Hiding the exact ingredients behind Hebrew euphemisms in his teshuva, Rabbi Geffen explained the needed corrections. Glycerine could be replaced by coconut or cottonseed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars.

Kosher-for-Passover Coke is now produced under rabbinic supervision at bottling plants serving Jewish population centers in New York, Florida, Southern California and Houston, among other areas. A number of other major brands have followed Coke into the Passover market: Dannon, Lipton, Pepsi and Tropicana. There are tequila and blintzes made without forbidden grains.

“It used to be that for Pesach you were limited to matza and hard-boiled eggs,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union’s kosher-certification program. “Now, I’ve got to tell you, I love those cheese blintzes.”

And, whether devout or debauched, Coke fans anticipate Passover for their own cultish reason: the usual sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup, is replaced by cane or beet sugar.

Moshe Feder, an editor of science-fiction and fantasy books, traveled to six supermarkets from his home in Queens before finding four two-liter bottles of Passover Coke. The subject of his quest happened to come up at a seder the other night. The host, a Jewish man, had never heard about the difference between Coke and Passover Coke. But two Roman Catholic guests, Mr. Feder reported, “knew all about it.”

Rabbi Geffen, of blessed memory, who’d have guessed you were so ecumenical?

 

For Passover, Quinoa Is Popular, but Kosher?

Little questions, though, sometimes arise that can stump even the experts. Like, what to do about the quinoa situation?

Quinoa (pronounced ki-NO-uh or KEEN-wah) is a grainlike South American crop newly popular among health-conscious North Americans. In the last decade, observant Jews have welcomed it with something like the thrill of seeing a new face at the Passover table after several thousand years of conversation with matzo and potatoes.

Tasty, gluten-free, protein-rich — and, by many accounts, kosher for Seders lacking in carbohydrate variety — it has become a staple of Passover cookbooks. Gourmet magazine hailed it in 2008 as the new “belle of the Passover ball.”

If only life were so simple.

As with most matters under the purview of Jewish law — from how to turn on the lights during the Sabbath, to what kind of cough syrup is certified kosher — a debate has emerged among rabbinical experts about quinoa’s bona fides as a kosher alternative to leavened-grain products like bread. And this has led to confusion and concern in many Passover kitchens around the country on the eve of the holiday, which begins on Monday evening.

“I went to hear two rabbis discussing the quinoa situation at my synagogue last week,” said Arlene J. Mathes-Scharf, a food scientist in Sharon, Mass., who specializes in kosher food and operates a popular consumer Web site, Kashrut.com. (Kashrut is the Hebrew word for kosher dietary law.)

“They had basically the same information, but they came to opposite conclusions,” Ms. Mathes-Scharf said. “Typical.”

Her hot line has received hundreds of “anxious inquiries” on the topic, Ms. Mathes-Scharf said.

At Pomegranate, a large kosher grocery in the heavily Orthodox Midwood section of Brooklyn, customers had more questions than guidance.

“They’re asking me 20 times a day, ‘What is the ruling?’?” Gabe Boxer, the store’s general manager, said last week.

“Look, we have ‘certified kosher for Passover’ quinoa — that’s what it says on the label,” he said, picking up a package and reading the fine print. “So it’s certified, as far as I know.”

There are two camps on quinoa: rabbis who say it is fine, and those who regard it as suspect. But both agree that its suitability for Passover depends on how the crop is harvested and shipped.

A definitive answer is not likely to be reached until a rabbi can be dispatched to a remote mountain region of Bolivia to inspect certain quinoa operations, said Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, director of the kosher supervision service of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. The council is one of several kashrut certification groups involved in the quinoa debate, which was brewing for years before it broke into the open in February with conflicting opinions issued by various rabbinical experts, he said.

“We’d like to get someone up there to inspect the operations, but it’s a four-day trek into the wilderness,” Rabbi Fishbane said. “Until we can get someone there, we’re going to have to make the best decisions we can with the information we have.”

Quinoa was unknown in the Middle East at the time of the Bible’s account of the Jews’ escape from Egypt, when their hurried flight left them no time to wait for their bread to rise. And since it was not part of their diet, it is not on the list of leavened grains forbidden to be eaten during Passover. For that reason, one of the nation’s leading kashrut certification companies, Star-K of Baltimore, issued an opinion in 1997 that quinoa was kosher for Passover. At the time, the crop was grown mainly in Bolivia and was just beginning to gain popularity in the United States.

Increasing demand here for quinoa — which can be boiled or otherwise prepared in a variety of ricelike dishes — has driven up the price, persuading many farmers who grew wheat, corn or barley in Bolivia and Peru to plant quinoa as well, said Rabbi Menachem Genack, director of the kosher department of the New York-based Orthodox Union, the world’s largest kashrut certification agency.

And there is the potential rub, Rabbi Genack explained. Some inspectors have found traces of wheat, and other grains susceptible to leavening in the cooking process, mixed in with quinoa shipped by some farmers, he said.

“They may be using the same equipment or bags to harvest a field of quinoa, and a field of something else,” he said. “Things easily get mixed up.”

The Orthodox Union has not certified quinoa kosher for Passover, leaving the decision to consumers and their rabbis. “We recommend that you inspect any product carefully before using it,” the rabbi said.

Under Jewish law, violating Passover dietary law is a serious offense, referred to by the Hebrew word “karet,” which means to be cut off from one’s soul.

Rabbi Fishbane of the Chicago Rabbinical Council voiced the more quinoa-friendly opinion, posted late last month on the council’s Web site. It says quinoa is proper for Passover if imported from Bolivia by companies that handle the crop exclusively. (The Web site suggests certain brands.) Rabbi Fishbane also recommends that consumers inspect quinoa for foreign matter.

Jesse Blonder, director of the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn, which advertises itself as the only professional kosher cooking school outside Israel, said he found the popularity of quinoa at Passover interesting from a psychological viewpoint.

“When you’re eating this stuff, you know, it tastes different from everything you’ve always had for Passover — different enough that you feel, like, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it,” Mr. Blonder said. “For some people, that makes it taste better.”