Meat affair: rabbis declared there is no need to kasher utensils

The scandal of non-kosher meat discovered in a kosher butchery in Los Angeles before Pesach continues to make waves: Yesterday (Tuesday) Los Angeles rabbis issued a "Da'as Torah" that anyone who purchased meat at the butcher does not have to tovel or kasher his utensils.

The rabbis explained the ruling with investigations conducted since the explosion of the affair. The private investigator who discovered and documented the affair, Eric Agaki, appeared before the rabbis and presented videotapes documenting Michael Engelmann, the owner of the butchery, loading crates of meat on a truck parked in the parking lot of Mac Donald's restaurant. He then recorded the same truck coming to the entrance of Engelman's store on Pico Robitson street, in the Jewish Haredi area of Los Angeles, where workers remove the meat boxes from the truck and place them in empty boxes in which there were kosher meat products. The kashrus supervisor is not in sight.

Engelman is now faced with two lawsuits and was forced to sell the shop after his kashrus certificate was taken. The store was sold to a businessman engaged in marketing medical devices, Shlomo Rechnitz.

Agaki, who invested about 180 hours in the investigation, said that he will perform the investigation voluntarily: "During the 10 years I worked as a private investigator and security expert I had figured out many crimes, including murder, but the discovery of the non-kosher meat affair is the project that I'm most proud of because it prevented hundreds of observant Jews from eating treif."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!