KEEPING KOSHER

Rabbi Chaim Levin goes by the moniker ‘The Bourbon Rabbi’. He fits the bill. After all, he often finds himself at a distillery. That’s because he makes his own bourbon. It’s also because he’s the co-owner of Kentucky Kosher, a company that aims to make more kosher products available to consumers by helping food and drink producers become certified as kosher. As if that weren’t enough, he occasionally takes contract work as a mashgiach (kosher supervisor) from organisations like the Orthodox Union – by far the world’s largest kosher authorising body, certifying approximately 70 per cent of kosher foods in the United States.

Like many things in Jewish tradition, what makes a whisky kosher goes back to the Talmud – a record of the rabbinic debate on Jewish law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation that was compiled between the third and eighth centuries. It’s easy for a novice