NEWS FEATURE: Jain restaurant wins kosher label

c. 1999 Religion News Service VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ At first glance, Mahendra Shah, a follower of the Jain religion and owner of the Surat Sweet Restaurant here, and Orthodox Rabbi Levy Teitlebaum, an inspector for British Columbia Kosher, may seem like something of a spiritual odd couple. But they have something in common _ […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ At first glance, Mahendra Shah, a follower of the Jain religion and owner of the Surat Sweet Restaurant here, and Orthodox Rabbi Levy Teitlebaum, an inspector for British Columbia Kosher, may seem like something of a spiritual odd couple.

But they have something in common _ the food, and the belief that you are what you eat.


While it is not uncommon for non-Jews to own and run kosher restaurants, both Shah and Teitlebaum say they believe the kosher label bestowed by Teitlebaum on Shah’s Surat Sweet is the world’s first Jain-run kosher restaurant.”Judaism has always said that everything you consume becomes part and

parcel of you,”Teitlebaum said in an interview after granting Surat Sweet restaurant his coveted kosher label.”Your body is made up of every atom you ever ingest,”agreed Shah, sitting beside Teitlebaum, who has become a friend over the past few years.

The kosher label means many things for how a restaurant must be run, including that certain vegetables are not served because they may contain insects; that milk products are never produced with utensils that might have touched the wrong foods; and that not even microscopic portions of some meat products, particularly pork, are ever allowed to touch other foods.

Shah and Teitlebaum say they have been able to work together to create immaculately pure cooking arrangements at Surat Sweet, which specializes in vegetarian Indian food, because there are so many similarities between Jainism, an ancient Indian religion with 4 million adherents that teaches nonviolence toward all living creatures, and Judaism, a religion with complex dietary laws.

For example, since Orthodox Judaism is rigorous about not eating insects, and Jainism is devoted to avoiding unnecessarily killing insects, Surat Sweet will either not serve insect-filled vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus tips and artichokes at all _ or it will offer them only in certain low-insect seasons, or after undergoing extremely rigorous preparation.

Such restrictions are acceptable to Shah because he firmly believes it is essential to not poison the body _ as well as to avoid harming all living creatures, even insects, which may have been a human in a previous life.

The Jain and the rabbi say one of the reasons they’re theologically joined in their commitment to trying to live a pure life, on the inside and outside, is they both believe in reincarnation.


The two said their traditions teach that their every action lead to a cosmic reaction and those who live a good and compassionate life in this world will be elevated into a higher realm in the next life.”It’s quite beautiful to have this kosher connection between the religions,”Teitlebaum said.”It’s the ultimate of multiculturalism.” Surat Sweet is the first kosher restaurant in British Columbia, which has 30,000 Jews as well as roughly 200,000 people such as Shah, whose origins are in the Indian subcontinent.

The beneficiaries of the unusual interfaith link, said Teitlebaum, are not only members of city’s traditional Jewish community, who now have a restaurant they can go out to for a kosher meal, but others who also eat kosher food.

Only 25 percent of people who eat kosher are Jewish, Teitlebaum said. The others who support the growing, $4-billion-a-year kosher food industry are health-conscious people, some with allergies or dietary restrictions, who need to be assured the food they eat is entirely uncontaminated by unknown or forbidden substances.

B.C. Kosher inspects Surat Sweet daily to make sure it remains up to standards. And that constant testing is on top of the rigorous process that initially went into kashering (making kosher) Surat Sweet, which took five years to successfully complete.

DEA END TODD

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