ANT KATZ

The kashrut department of the Johannesburg Beth Din issued a somewhat confusing “Kashrut Alert” on Monday morning, which read:

“Please be aware, that ‘Fruit Tree’, a fruit juice manufacturer, has made a batch of grape juice that erroneously bares the Beth Din logo. The product is not Kosher. The company apologises for the error and have undertaken to rectify the mistake as quickly as possible.”

Jewish Report, and the head of kashrut at the Johannesburg Beth Din, Greg Bloch, have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out what this is all about.

As Fruitree is a brand of Ceres which is supervised by the Cape Town Beth Din, it took some time to cross the Ts and dot the Is on this one.

But, with the Kashrut Department’s help, Jewish Report is now able to confirm the following:

• The brand referred to was, in fact, “Fruitree”;
• While some Fruitree brand products are kosher, their grape juice has never been;
• The “batch” referred to in the alert was a batch of packaging and not a batch of juice; and
• Only the 1l Tetrapak long-life container, AS ILLUSTRATED AT RIGHT, is affected,

No Fruitree grape Juice is kosher, but only the illustrated pack incorrectly carries the hechsher.

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And now, the good news

As you are reading this, Ceres and Fruitree staffers are out in the marketplace placing tens of thousands of stickers over the incorrect hechsher (diamond-shaped logo of the Beth Din which signifies the product is kosher) to cover up their blapse and ensure that the kosher consumers are not confused about which of their products are kosher.