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With so many issues dividing the Jewish community today, one wonders why Kashruth continues to be one of them. Why is it, for example, that many Jews continue to make weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other religious celebrations without making arrangements for a kosher hall and caterer? Why are there still synagogues with treyf ?kitchens and synagogue events where non-kosher food is served? Are there genuine philosophical reasons for serving non-kosher foods at Jewish, religious events? Are such reasons, if they exist, important enough to outweigh the discomfort and alienation felt by observant Jews who are invited to these events, or the further division created in Klal Yisrael? Liberal Jews need only recall that the very birth of the Conservative movement resulted from the serving of shrimp at a banquet of Reform rabbis, in order to realize the impact of non-kosher foods on the unity of the Jewish people.

An Orthodox Jew may be able to understand, even if he can in no way justify, certain Reform and Conservative innovations, such as mixed seating, the ordination of women as rabbis, etc., as stemming from philosophical, even ethical convictions which come into apparent conflict with Torah law. An Orthodox Jew may even understand how one, because of a lack of background or even out of personal preference, chooses not to keep the mitzvot of Shabbat and Kashruth in his own home. But what an observant Jew cannot understand, is being invited to a Jewish, and, particularly, a synagogue event in which the participants are served treyf This is even the case in those instances where "special" arrangements arc made for the kosher guests to be served an "airline style" kosher meal. The feeling (to which anyone who has experienced this can attest), is akin to feeling like a stranger or oddity in one's own home.

Is there any ethical or philosophical reason why Kashruth is wrong? Are there groups of Jews who, out of moral convictions, refuse to eat kosher food? Is it simply ignorance or an innocent preference for certain foods that prompts so many to serve non-kosher foods in Jewish places? Perhaps it is overly cynical to suggest that such non-kosher Jewish affairs are occasionally the result of a conscious attempt to foster distinctions between kinds of Jews. Yet, one wonders why it is that those who are appalled at the efforts to disenfranchise the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel (condemning those attempts to divide what we all agree should be a unified people) are not equally appalled at the day-to-day occurrence in which Jews sponsor synagogue events in which the food served is an anathema to so many of their own faith?