Kosher in Silicon Valley

Where to shop, how to read a label, and who to ask when a particular product has you stuck.

Keeping kosher here is easier than people expect. There is a kosher market in San Jose, kosher sections in ordinary supermarkets, a handful of places to eat, and caterers who will do a party. The list below is the one we keep — the same one on our visitors page — and each listing shows its city, because some of them are a real drive.

Hours change, and shops close. Call before you drive, and tell us if you find something out of date so we can fix it.

Reading a kosher symbol

A hechsher is the mark of a certifying agency: an agency inspects the plant and the ingredients, and its symbol on the package is that agency saying the product is kosher. The symbol is a registered mark, which is why it can be relied on — there is a named organization behind it that can be phoned and asked.

Different agencies use different symbols, and reliability is a question about the agency rather than about how official the mark looks. If you don’t recognize a symbol, that’s a question to ask rather than a judgement to make in the aisle.

A few conventions hold across most packages:

• A plain letter K is not in itself a certification. A single letter can’t be trademarked, so anyone may print one; it tells you nothing about who, if anyone, inspected the product.
• D beside the symbol means dairy. DE means the product itself contains no dairy but was made on dairy equipment — which matters if you’re eating it after meat.
• Pareve (sometimes parve) means neither meat nor dairy, so it can be eaten with either.
• P beside the symbol means kosher for Passover — and only that. It does not mean pareve, which is the mix-up that catches people out.
• Meat or Glatt marks a meat product. Meat and dairy are not eaten together, and there is a waiting period after meat.

Fresh fruit and vegetables need no certification, though leafy greens and some other produce need checking for insects. Wine and grape juice are a category of their own and do need a hechsher.

Asking about a specific product

The general rules above will get you through most of a supermarket. They will not settle the case in front of you — a symbol you’ve never seen, a product from another country, an ingredient list with something unfamiliar on it, a pan that was used for the wrong thing. Those are questions for a person, and they are welcome ones. There is no such thing as a question too small to ask about this.

Call the office and ask for the Rabbi: 408-910-2034, write to Info@chabadalmaden.com, or send the question in writing. Photograph the label — the symbol and the ingredient list — and it is usually answered the same day.

Kashering a kitchen, and new dishes

If you’re making a kitchen kosher, or you want to start with one shelf rather than the whole thing, the Rabbi will come and walk through it with you. It is a practical visit, not an inspection, and people are generally surprised how much of their existing kitchen is fine as it is.

New metal and glass utensils are immersed in a mikvah before use — our keilim mikvah page explains how that works and where to go.

Visiting rather than living here? The visitors page adds a mikvah and a weekday minyan, and the local centers list covers the rest of the Bay Area.