Coca Cola Kosher for Pesach Once Again

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coke-kosherTime Magazine reports: Atlanta, Georgia – If you’ve noticed Coca-Cola bottles with yellow-colored caps materialize each March and April, what you’re looking at is the result of a burgeoning market in kosher for Passover soda.

Jews don’t eat products made from wheat, corn or many other grains during the eight days of Passover. So most commercial sodas, with their heavy doses of corn syrup and traces of alcohol from grain, are forbidden.

Thirsty Passover observers have an Atlanta-based Orthodox rabbi, Tobias Geffen, to thank. In the 1930s, Geffen was given Coca-Cola’s famously secret list of ingredients and managed to persuade the company to create a real-sugar alternative for his congregants. “Because Coca-Cola has already been accepted by the general public in this country and Canada and because it has become an insurmountable problem to induce the great majority of Jews to refrain from partaking of this drink, I have tried earnestly to find a method of permitting its usage,” he said.

According to one of the leading kosher certifiers, OU Kosher, Passover Coke will be available this year throughout the New York City metropolitan area, Boston, Baltimore-Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. And since some foodies think cane-sugar-sweetened sodas taste better anyway, it isn’t just the devout who stock up. Not wanting to be left out, Pepsi, Sprite, Sierra Mist and many others are now available in kosher form for Passover.

{Time/Matzav.com Newscenter}


7 COMMENTS

  1. Making Coke soda kosher for passover was a big mistake & should be stopped.

    Although we all love it & we feel there’s a need for it, the bottom line is that each drink or food that we find a way to make kosher for passover, lowers the holiness of the Holiday-which is a time when we separate ourselves from our desires & hold ourselves in for 8 days-& makes the entire pesach into just a day where i cannot work… Soon there will be kosher for Passover Pizza & Bread, where will that put the holiness of Passover? WAY DOWN that the holiday will not be felt, if we don’t stop now & hold our desires in.

    MAY EVERONE HAVE A CHAG KASHER V”SAMEACH

  2. It is well known that Coke Cola is the epitomie of terrible “junk food.” Several times I have posted here two sharp expressions of this fact.

    1.) I well remember the afternoon when I was sitting in the classroom the fifth grade class I was in and how the teacher related:

    “There are only TWO people in the entire world who know what is in Coke Cola, AND THEY DO NOT LET THEIR CHILDREN HAVE IT!”

  3. Erev Pesach, 5771
    Time: 6:58 PM
    Pacific Standard Time

    (this was also the time of my previous comment)

    (continuation of previous comment)

    2.) To understand the next piece, B’Ezras HaShem, we need to be aware of the following point.

    In the Halachos of Kashrus – the Torah laws of our food – for there to be an issue of whether a particular item is permitted or not permitted for us to eat, that item has to be a piece of FOOD. How can we determine if something is or is not a piece of food? The minimul standard is that the item has to be edible at least for a dog. If the item is something that a dog could eat it, then it is termed a “food,” and then we need to examine whether or not its ingredients are permitted for us to eat. If though, it is so terrible that even a dog could not eat it, then it cannot be called a “food,” and no matter what non-Kosher ingredients it has, there is no prohibition on eating it.

    So again, for an item to be called a “food,” it must be fit for a dog to be able to eat it. In Lashon HaKodesh this is expressed: “Roi L’Achilas Kelev” – “Fit for the eating of a dog.”

    One of the major Torah communal leaders of the mid-1900’s was Rav Eliezer Silver, ZT’L. One time, he was designated to invenstigate if Coke Cola could be given a Hechsher – a certification of being Kosher. So he approached the directors of the Coke corporation with the proposed project. He explained to them that what he wanted certainly had nothing to do with, Chas V’Shalom – G-D Forbid – trying to steal a company’s business secrets; rather, issue was that for him to be able to determine if their soft drink was Kosher, he would have to know what are ALL of its ingredients — including all of its “secret” ingredients. So they told him. At that, in his humorous funny style, he exclaimed:

    “THIS DOES NOT NEED A HECHSHER! IT IS NOT ROI L’ACHILAS KELEV!!”

  4. wake-up call

    Which Shulchan Aruch are you using that says one should’t have Coke on Pesach with a Hechsher and that one is less holy after drinking it? Is this a Jewish Shulchan Aruch? Doesn’t sound like it to me.

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