Uncategorized
Beer is no longer automatically kosher, rabbis say. Will observant Jews skip the Dos Equis?
There’s a simple reason Halle Goldblatt likes to tour breweries on vacation: People who keep kosher can sample the product. Unlike wine, which requires certification to be deemed kosher, beer has historically received the benefit of the doubt.
“Most people, when they travel, go to wineries,” Goldblatt, a self-described beer aficionado, said in a phone interview. “I can’t do that, but I can always go to a brewery and have a beer.”
But multiple kosher certifiers now say the assumption that beer is kosher has gone flat.
The heads of OU Kosher, Star-K and OK Kosher — three of the five major certification agencies — announced this month that all beer will soon require certification to be considered kosher, attributing the change to the increased use of flavoring and other additives in craft beers.
A list of problematic ingredients rabbinic inspectors recently discovered in breweries included oyster broth, clam juice, wine and milk, according to OK Kosher.
“These ingredients are regularly included in craft beers,” OK Kosher wrote in its letter. “As such, the major kashrus agencies have concluded that the time has come to change our old policy of accepting beer as free of kashrus concerns.”
The agencies provided a list of more than 900 beers that are currently hechshered, or certified kosher, which is typically denoted with an agency’s symbol on the packaging. (Ⓤ is OU Kosher’s mark.) The rest — which includes popular imports like Dos Equis and regional favorites like Sierra Nevada — will no longer be acceptable to serve at OU-certified establishments as of Jan. 1, 2026, OU Kosher said.
The decision undercut a credo that was long a saving grace for kosher travelers, casual drinkers and hopheads. One Facebook thread responding to the news received more than 100 comments, with a few seeing the change as a way for the certifiers to drum up business. But the majority of the commenters — Goldblatt among them — appeared to begrudgingly understand the decision. And a few wondered why it had not come sooner.
“At first, I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is gonna make my life a lot harder,’” Goldblatt said. “But I think it makes sense for the OU. People rely on them to get honest information about the things that they are consuming,” she added, “so I think it’s good for the kosher consumer.”
New brews, you lose
The acceptability of beer even without rabbinic oversight was rooted in an assumption that it only contained four basic ingredients: grain, water, hops and yeast. Those ingredients are each considered inherently kosher, so using them in combination did not pose any challenges.
National regulations helped preserve the four-ingredient standard. Germany’s Reinheitsgebot, a beer purity law dating back several centuries, ensured that breweries there did not use artificial additives, and in the United States, a law mandates that any added flavoring must be noted on the packaging.
“The good, old-fashioned beer everybody would drink was simple,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, OU Kosher’s chief operating officer, said in a video interview. Now, he said, manufacturers “want to enhance the beer — to give them an edge. So they can add all sorts of flavors.”
A major catalyst for the flavor trend is the rise of craft breweries, small and independent manufacturers. They’ve flooded the market with sours, stouts, barrel-aged beers and bocks, and now account for up to a quarter of U.S. beer sales.
The use of additives to make exotic flavors put even the “plain” beer into question, Elefant explained, because breweries often use the same vats for different recipes. And while those breweries surely clean their equipment between uses, cleaning is not the same as kashering. Some cleaning processes are primarily chemical while rendering something kosher requires heat.
Elefant, who is also OU Kosher’s executive rabbinic coordinator, said the organization’s formal policy change was nearly two years in the making, but even before then, “we’ve been grappling with this issue for a while.”
Elefant listed two other beverages that fall into a gray area, but do not currently require certification: Whiskey, which like beer uses basic ingredients, is sometimes aged in barrels that previously held wine; and orange juice, which sometimes shares equipment with grape juice.
Orange juice was spared a certification mandate, Elefant said, because the processes used to clean the equipment between uses were considered sufficient. And while he personally believes whiskey merits a similar reversal to beer, he admitted it was not currently the position of his employer.
“We walk a delicate tightrope,” he said. “On one hand, we want people who keep kosher to be able to have as much kosher food as possible, we’re not looking to be onerous. But on the other hand, we are responsible that when we tell somebody that they could eat something, that we really are convinced that it’s kosher without question.”
And he dismissed comments that the beer policy was financially motivated, saying that certification can cost as little as a few thousand dollars a year. (The price depends on travel costs for supervisors, number of facilities and other variables.)
The law of the spirit, or the spirit of the law?
Another responsibility for Orthodox decisionmakers, whether a synagogue rabbi or an umbrella organization like the OU, is to make rules that people can follow.
Quoting the Talmud, Elefant said, “Just like there’s a mitzvah to say something that people will listen to, there’s a mitzvah not to say it if people aren’t going to listen.”
Working in tandem with other certifying agencies was crucial, then, to bolster the authority of what could be a controversial decree. Elefant joked that when they first met to discuss it, each agency said they had wanted to do it but were waiting for the others to make the first move.
Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how well the rule will stick. Confusion has persisted, with some saying the agencies’ list of kosher beers is inconvenient and leaves out brands that have longstanding regional hechshers, like Shiner Bock.
Goldblatt, the aficionado, has been to dozens of breweries and tasted some 200 different beers, according to her profile on the drink-rating app Untappd. But she had been drinking with vigilance long before the OU’s announcement.
When she visits a new brewery, she tends to pepper her tour guide with questions about the brewing process. What ingredients do they use? Do they use only those ingredients? Do they use the same equipment for everything?
Absent rabbinic oversight, she developed her own code: If it contained artificial flavoring, she would steer clear of it and — per the old rules — choose an unflavored option. Natural flavoring would be okay, if she could learn enough about it. On a recent trip to Wisconsin, she picked out a fruity craft beer, having determined the brewery used whole fruit and not grapes.
Though she recognized the value of the OU’s policy — saying it would eventually bring needed clarity to a cloudy landscape — she thought she might stick to her own, at least for now.
“I guess if I looked and the brewery made something like oyster stouts, I may abstain from that brewery altogether,” she said. “But if it’s a brewery that just does regular beer and it’s an unflavored beer, then I would probably still drink that.”
The post Beer is no longer automatically kosher, rabbis say. Will observant Jews skip the Dos Equis? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Iran ‘Has No Choice’ but to Move Capital as Water Crisis Deepens, Says President
People shop water storage tanks following a drought crisis in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian affirmed on Thursday that the country “has no choice” but to relocate its capital, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain — even as the regime spends billions of dollars rebuilding its military and nuclear infrastructure and backing its terrorist proxies.
In a televised national address, the Iranian leader renewed his call to relocate the capital, asserting that the deepening crisis has “rendered the city uninhabitable.”
Pezeshkian said Iran’s water, land, and infrastructure systems are under such extreme pressure that relocating the capital is now unavoidable, adding that when the move was first proposed, the government lacked even a minimal budget to pursue it.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” he said during his speech.
With parts of the city sinking up to 30 centimeters a year and water supplies dwindling, Pezeshkian described Tehran’s current situation as a “catastrophe.”
He urged government ministries and public officials to coordinate their efforts to avert a grim future for the country.
“Protecting the environment is not a game,” the Iranian leader said.
“Ignoring it is signing our own destruction,” he continued, explaining that Tehran can no longer cope with population growth or the city’s expanding construction.
Among the solutions considered to tackle the crisis, one has been importing water from the Gulf of Oman. However, Pezeshkian noted that such an approach is extremely costly, with each cubic meter costing millions to deliver to Tehran.
Earlier this year, the Iranian regime announced it was considering relocating the capital to the Makran coast in the country’s south, a remote region overlooking the Gulf of Oman, in a bid to ease Tehran’s congestion and alleviate its water and energy shortages.
Advocates of this initiative emphasize its strategic benefits, including direct access to the Indian Ocean and significant economic potential through maritime trade, centered on the port of Chabahar, Iran’s crucial gateway to Central Asia.
However, critics argue that the region is still underdeveloped, fraught with security risks, and unprepared to function as a capital, warning that the move could cost tens of billions of dollars — an amount the country cannot bear amid economic turmoil, soaring inflation, and renewed United Nations sanctions.
Notably, the Iranian regime has focused its resources on bolstering its military and nuclear programs rather than addressing the country’s water crisis, a choice that has left citizens’ needs unmet while advancing its agenda against Israel.
The regime has also spent billions of dollars supporting its terrorist proxies across the region and operations abroad, with the Quds Force, Iran’s elite paramilitary unit, funneling funds to the Lebanese group Hezbollah, in defiance of international sanctions.
According to the US Treasury Department, Iran has provided more than $100 million per month to Hezbollah so far this year alone, with $1 billion representing only a portion of Tehran’s overall support for the terrorist group, using a “shadow financial system” to transfer funds to Lebanon.
Iran also provides weapons, training, logistical support, and political backing to the group along with other proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, various militias in Iraq and Syria, and other Islamist entities.
Uncategorized
Columbia University Student Groups Promote Targeting of NYC Synagogue, Where Mob Chants Antisemitic Death Threats
Nov. 19, 2025, New York, New York, USA: Anti-Israel protesters rally outside of Park East Synagogue. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
At least two anti-Israel student groups at Columbia University promoted a riotous demonstration in which hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue on Wednesday night and clamored for violence against Jews.
“We don’t want no Zionists here!” the group chanted in intervals while waving the Palestinian flag outside the Park East Synagogue in the Upper East Side section of the borough of Manhattan. “Resistance, you make us proud, take another settler out.”
HAPPENING NOW OUTSIDE PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE
Antisemites have showed up outside Park East synagogue and are chanting for intifada.
The Rabbi of the synagogue is a holocaust survivor who remembers vividly the horrors of Kristallnacht.
Now, he gets to see the same human… pic.twitter.com/fFDtt8nOhV
— Rabbi Poupko (@RabbiPoupko) November 20, 2025
One protester, addressing the crowd, reportedly proclaimed, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events! We need to make them scared.”
The demonstrators were harassing those attending an event by Nefesh B’nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel.
Footage on social media also showed agitators chanting “death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces, as well as “globalize the intifada” and “intifada revolution.”
Since the incident, which has garnered viral attention on social media, The Algemeiner has learned that at least two campus groups, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and the school’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, used social media to advertise the protest, which was organized by the anti-Zionist activist organization Pal-Awda.
Responding to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment, Columbia said that it does not recognize or meet with CUAD or any of its affiliated organizations.
“The group that refers to itself as CU Apartheid and Divest is not recognized by Columbia and does not receive any funding or support from the university,” a spokesperson for the school said. “Any organization that promotes violence or encourages disruption of our academic mission is not welcome on our campuses.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Columbia University once struggled to contain CUAD, which in late January committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, ADP reportedly distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
In July, Columbia University president Claire Shipman vowed never to “recognize or meet with” the self-titled group, but CUAD insists on touting its university affiliation.
Other campus groups from different schools also promoted Wednesday’s targeting of Parl East Synagogue, such as City University of New York 4 Palestine (CUNY4Palestine). The riotous protest was held nearly a week after a local imam and graduate student in the CUNY system, Abdullah Mady, disrupted an interfaith event with a prolonged rant in which he called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
The Wednesday night demonstration drew reaction from top New York politicians.
“This is [Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik, a leading Republican candidate running to unseat Hochul in next year’s gubernatorial election, said on the X social media platform. “When New Yorkers were looking for strong leadership from our governor, instead of standing against antisemitic hate, Hochul chose to endorse a raging antisemite for mayor of NYC putting Jewish families at risk.”
Hochul endorsed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist who is allied with far-left anti-Zionist groups and has vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit the city. He has also supported boycotts targeting Israel and failed to denounce the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which has been widely interpreted as a call for terrorism against Jews and Israelis worldwife.
The Jewish community has expressed alarm about Mamdani’s rise, expressing fear that New York City, already experiencing a massive surge in antisemitic hate crimes, will become less safe with Mamdani in office.
Elizabeth Pipko, a Jewish civil rights activist and former spokesperson for both the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, lamented how Wednesday night’s demonstration was indicative of a city becoming increasingly hostile for Jews.
“This is my synagogue. My family has proudly belonged to Park East Synagogue since their arrival in America in the 1970s (ironically fleeing from antisemitism and scenes just like this),” Pipko wrote. “It’s also important to note that the entrance being protested in front of here is Park East Day School. Not only is Park East an amazing place where I spent most of my childhood, but it is where children as young as 2 and 3 years old are going to walk in tomorrow morning, to get a Jewish education. A place where they should be allowed to feel safe.”
She added, “My heart breaks for NYC and what it is becoming.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
‘Baby Killer’: Elite Virginia Private School Pays Over $100K to Settle Antisemitism Lawsuit
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas agitators participate in anti-capitalist “Shut it down for Palestine!” protest in Vienna, Virginia, US, on Nov. 24, 2023. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
Nysmith School for the Gifted in Fairfax County, Virginia, agreed on Tuesday to pay $100,000, plus attorneys’ fees and other costs, to settle a lawsuit which alleged that it expelled three Jewish students for reporting antisemitism, avoiding a potentially lengthy trial.
The harrowing accusations rocked the private institution — which is superlatively acclaimed across the state and charges an annual tuition of more than $46,000 per year — calling into question its commitment to serving all students, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic origin.
One of the victims in the case, an 11-year-old Jane Doe, allegedly endured months of torment related to Israel’s war against Hamas and the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. According to the lawsuit, bullies called her a “baby killer,” proclaimed that Jews should be murdered for launching a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — which included sexually assaulting men and women and murdering the young and elderly — and openly professed that it was her Jewishness that had detonated their explosive, anti-Jewish rage.
Nymith’s headmaster, when briefed on the situation, told the young woman to “toughen up” and declined to discipline the offenders, the complaint said. At the same time, the school began to cancel Jewish history on campus, shutting down an annual week of Holocaust commemoration that would have featured a survivor of the Nazis’ genocide and discussions on antisemitism prevention. The school told the community that the war in Gaza forced its hand to be sensitive to global events, even amid incidents such as a student creating a portrait of Adolf Hitler.
In the end, Nysmith expelled Jane Doe, as well as her two siblings.
Now, in addition paying her family what amounts to nearly $150,000, the school says it will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is used by governments across the world, and submit to monitoring by a third-party watchdog for a minimum five-year period. That monitor will oversee the conclusion of Nysmith’s investigation of the bullying allegations and determine whether school officials did not intentionally violate the law.
“Justice has been served for our clients’ family, and the resulting actions underway at Nymith School will help prevent this kind of discrimination from happening to others. These steps are critical as antisemitism in K-12 education continues to rise,” Brandeis Center chairman and chief executive officer Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “Through this settlement, we send a clear message, one that demonstrates accountability and willingness to improve.”
He added, “It is our hope that other schools and universities around the country will follow suit. We thank [Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares] for the prompt and energetic work of his office throughout this process.”
Headmaster Ken Nysmith issued a public statement of contrition.
“I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge that there are things I could have done differently in this particular situation, and for that, I am truly sorry,” Nysmith wrote in a letter to parents. “For the 40 yeasts I have been at Nysmith, I have always tried to do my personal best, guided by our commitment to our students, families, and staff. In this instance, I will use this experience to reflect, to learn, and to continue improving as a leader.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington issued a comment on the resolution of the case as well.
“To call the facts of this case an outrage would be an understatement,” the organization said. “As antisemitism continues to surge in the United States, we must all do our part to fight back. Every school should offer an environment that is welcoming, inclusive, and free from hate. This agreement provides a roadmap toward the better future that Jewish families need more than ever, and that all of our children deserve.”
The Brandeis Center, one of America’s leading Jewish civil rights groups, notched another major court victory on Thursday which secured a six-figure settlement for a cohort of plaintiffs who alleged that their union fostered a hostile environment against Jewish and Zionist members during an outbreak of pro-Hamas sentiment set off by the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys (ALAA) allegedly became a “cornucopia of classic modern antisemitism” in late 2023. Just weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, it passed a virulently anti-Israel resolution which made only a passing reference to Hamas’s atrocities and launched a smear campaign against Jewish members who opposed it. Following that, the union facilitated the filing of disciplinary, “formal charges” against Jewish and Zionist members, attempting to expel them from its ranks.
Per the terms of the agreement, ALAA, the union for New York public defenders, will shell out $315,000 in damages while admitting culpability in the events which precipitated legal action. The ALAA also agreed to institute new training courses on the rights of union members and accept a neutral third party’s oversight of other organizational procedures.
“We are seeing an increasing trend in labor union antisemitism, much as we have seen a similar increase on college campuses. In both cases, there is bitter irony,” Marcus said in a statement. “Colleges are supposed to be islands of reason and tolerance. Labor unions are supposed to be advocates for social justice and workplace equality. To find the oldest hatred in such places is deeply antithetical to their mission.”
He added, “This settlement is a landmark in the fight against antisemitism in this sector. I am gratified by this outcome and resolved to support Jewish workers at any union around the country that is seeing this problem arise. Based on what we’re hearing around the country, there will be more of these cases coming.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.