The Massachusetts Supreme Court dismissed today a bill of complaint filed by the United Kosher Butchers Association against the Associated Synagogues of Massachusetts. The suit charged restraint of trade, elimination of a free market and denial of free competition. The high court ruling, holding that civil courts have no jurisdiction in purely religious disputes, upheld a similar ruling by a lower court.
At issue is a program of the Associated Synagogues, comprised of 60 Orthodox, Conservative and Reform congregations in the area, to centralize supervision of application of the Jewish dietary laws to commercial processing of foods and related products, used by observant Jewish consumers.
The complaint of the Butchers Association, made up of Kosher retail meat stores in Boston, said that the Butchers Association had certified and supervised its member stores on kosher meat and poultry with those activities conducted for the past seven years under direction of Rabbi Mordecai Savitsky. The complaint charged that the Associated Synagogues had insisted since 1960 that kosher caterers buy meat only from retail stores supervised by the Association of Orthodox Rabbis (Vaad Harabonim) of the Associated Synagogues. The complaint asked that the Associated Synagogues be enjoined from the practice and also sought unspecified damages.
In its reply, the Associated Synagogues said kashruth certification has always been the responsibility of the organized Jewish community, and that Jewish religious law requires the divorcing, as far as possible, of the business aspect from the religious phase of Kosher production.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
