Schwartz Bakery leaves RCC for Kehilla

Schwartz Bakery, a kosher bakery and caterer with six retail locations across Los Angeles, has dropped the Rabbinical Council of California (RCC) as its kosher certifier. The 59-year-old family-owned business announced the news on May 20, posting on its Facebook page a photograph of a Kehilla Kosher sign hanging in the window of one of its shops.

“All Schwartz Bakery locations are now under Kehilla supervision,” the Facebook post stated, referring to Los Angeles’ other prominent Orthodox kosher agency. 

According to its Web site, Schwartz is “the first kosher bakery in Los Angeles.” It is the third kosher establishment to leave the RCC in the wake of the recent scandal that has tarnished the certifier’s reputation, and the largest to do so thus far. 

The move was announced almost exactly eight weeks after the RCC revoked its certification from Doheny Glatt Kosher Meats, which had been the largest distributor of meat under its supervision. In March, Doheny’s owner was videotaped allegedly bringing unidentified animal products into his store at a time when the RCC’s kosher overseer was absent. The breach was discovered by a private investigator not affiliated with the RCC; the agency revoked its certification on the eve of Passover and has been trying to mitigate the damage to its reputation ever since. 

Speaking to the Journal at his store on Pico Boulevard on May 23, Marc Hecht, whose family has owned Schwartz Bakery since 1979, confirmed the change in supervision but declined to comment further about the decision to leave the RCC, which had supervised the bakery for decades. 

In addition to its retail business, Schwartz Bakery caters events, sells packaged baked goods to retailers across the Southland and runs the lunch program at Yeshivat Yavneh, an Orthodox day school near Hancock Park. 

RCC President Rabbi Meyer May also declined to speak about Schwartz’s departure. In an e-mail to the Journal on May 26, May said he was “much more interested in speaking about the unilateral decisions the RCC has taken to elevate our community’s kashrus.” 

May and Rabbi Jonathan Rosenberg, chairman of the RCC’s committee overseeing kosher certification, outlined those “unilateral decisions” in a letter May sent to the Journal on May 27. 

According to the two-page letter, the RCC has hired or appointed at least eight different rabbis to oversee various aspects of its kosher operations. 

What impact, if any, the described changes will have is hard to predict. The letter says the RCC has “addressed the issues raised” during its own internal review of the establishments under its supervision, and noted that the RCC had also received recommendations from the Orthodox Union’s kosher agency. 

But the letter does not list specific changes to RCC policies, beyond a pledge from May and Rosenberg that the RCC “will adhere to universally accepted kashrus standards recommended by the Association of Kashrus Organizations,” a Chicago-based umbrella organization for kosher certifiers.

May declined to answer any follow-up questions about the letter, including whether the higher standard of kosher the RCC says it is aiming for will cost merchants — and consumers — more money. 

“The RCC Update statement is all we have to say at this time,” May wrote in an e-mail on May 28. 

With neither the RCC nor Schwartz’s owner speaking about the bakery’s move, individuals have been left to speculate on what may have motivated the switch. 

“RCC is not as good for the bottom line as the other hechshers,” Rabbi Eliyahu Fink, the rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center, wrote on his blog, FinkOrSwim. “The only real reason a restaurant will switch is to increase business,” Fink suggested.

In the wake of the Doheny scandal, Fink writes, even merchants who have never been certified by the RCC are going to notable lengths to put their customers at ease. Fink reported that Shiloh’s, a steakhouse on Pico Boulevard, has put up a “splash page” on its Web site that assures customers that they are and always have been “under the supervision of Kehilla Kosher.”

“A significant number of people have been spooked by the kashrus scandal,” Fink wrote, to the point that they are effectively rejecting the ruling by Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, a noted halachic authority with the OU. 

When the Doheny scandal broke, Belsky declared that all meat purchased from Doheny before 3 p.m. on March 24 was kosher according to religious law. Furthermore, individuals and businesses that had bought and used Doheny meat before that time did not, according to Belsky, have to kasher their utensils or kitchens afterward. 

But while the RCC relied on Belsky’s ruling, Kehilla, its chief competitor, has so far declined to either affirm or reject it. The May 20 post on Schwartz Bakery’s Facebook page, however, made explicit mention that Kehilla, in taking over the Schwartz Bakery hechsher, also “kashered” the Schwartz deli on Fairfax Avenue.