Articles

By Rabbi Dovid Cohen, Administrative Rabbinic Coordinator

Q. Are there any foods I can’t eat due to maris ayin?

A. Maris ayin means that there are things a person should not do because it looks like he is doing something forbidden.  Why not?  Either because people might mistakenly believe that the actual forbidden act is really permitted, or because it might lead people to falsely believe you have violated a prohibition.  There are several examples of maris ayin that relate to food.

One is that Rema says that a person should not eat meat with almond milk, unless they put almonds on the table, so others will realize that this is not cow’s milk.  Similar issues are relevant when one serves pareve margarine or non-dairy creamer at a meat meal or makes a “cheeseburger” with soy cheese or with vegan “meat”.  In each of these cases, the person appears to be eating meat and milk, and to avoid maris ayin there must be some “heker”/marker (such as the almonds on the table).

When this occurs in a home environment it is easy to create a heker by, for example, bringing the container of almond milk to the table, which makes it quite clear that the “milk” served is pareve.  At a catered event, the way to deal with this is that on each table there will be a “card” that notes that the “milk” or creamer is pareve.  What about at a restaurant serving cheeseburgers made with soy cheese, for example?  Rav Belsky suggested, based on the Rema cited above, that it would be sufficient if the menu and receipts (for takeout orders) state that the cheeseburger (in this example) was made with pareve cheese.  That will alert most people to the truth, and that satisfies the halachic requirements.

Another example is that Shulchan Aruch rules that if we are certain that a specific egg is not fertilized, bloodspots found in eggs are technically permitted, but due to maris ayin the blood should not be consumed.  [Shulchan Aruch says that one may eat the rest of the egg, but Iggeros Moshe says that the custom is to discard the entire egg when a bloodspot is found.]  In this case, a person eating the bloodspots looks like he’s eating something non-kosher – i.e., bloodspot from a fertilized egg – so to avoid this maris ayin, he cannot eat it.

Lastly, Iggeros Moshe rules that one cannot go into a non-kosher restaurant and order something kosher (e.g., fruit, drinks) due to maris ayin that people seeing the person entering will assume he is eating non-kosher.  Others take a more favorable approach, especially when the person is going into the restaurant for a business meeting, etc.  As there are many factors that affect these types of questions, each individual should address their specific issue to their local Rabbi.

One case where it is accepted that one can be lenient is when purchasing food from a rest stop alongside the highway.  In that case, everyone realizes that the reason the Jewish person is buying food there is because that is the only option during travel, and people will understand that they are just buying kosher items that are available at the rest stop.  Since there is no maris ayin, it is permitted to buy kosher food there.

This article first appeared in the Let’s Talk Kashrus column, Yated Ne’eman, September 6, 2024.