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Kosher tax conspiracy theory

April 25, 2024

For taxes formerly imposed by European governments on kosher foods, see Kosher tax. For the cost of certifying foods as kosher, see Kashrut § Costs.

The "Kosher tax" (or "Jewish tax") is the idea that food companies and unwitting consumers are forced to pay money to support Judaism or Zionist causes and Israel through the costs of kosher certification. The claim is a conspiracy theory, antisemitic canard, or urban legend.

Common refutations include that consumers who prefer kosher foods include not only Jews but also Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, and others, food companies actively seek kosher certification to increase market share and profitability; the fees collected support the certifying organizations themselves and that extra business generated by the voluntary certification process more than makes up for the cost of supervision and so the certification does not necessarily increase the price of products and may, in fact, result in per item cost savings.

Claims edit

The kosher tax conspiracy theory claims that the kosher certification of products (typically food) is an extra tax collected from unwitting consumers for the benefit of Jewish organizations. It is mainly spread by antisemitic, white supremacist, and other extremist organizations, and is considered a canard or urban legend.[1][2][3][4] Similar claims are made that this "Kosher tax" (or "Jewish tax") is "extorted" from food companies wishing to avoid a boycott,[4][5] and used to support Zionist causes or the state of Israel.[6]

University of Pittsburgh professor of sociology Kathleen M. Blee reported that some racist groups encourage consumers to avoid this "Jewish tax" by boycotting kosher products.[7]

Canada edit

The 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents by the B'nai Brith Canada reported citizens being encouraged to request a refund from the government on their income taxes.[8]

In 1997 the Canada Revenue Agency issued a news release noting the existence of flyers recommending that consumers claim a deduction on their taxes "because they supposedly contributed to a Jewish religious organization when they purchased these groceries." In it Jane Stewart, then Minister of National Revenue stated, "The intent and message in this literature is deeply offensive to the Jewish community and, indeed, to all Canadians. The so-called 'deduction' described in these flyers does not exist and I urge all taxpayers to ignore this misleading advice".[9]

During the 2014 Quebec provincial election campaign, Parti Québécois (PQ) candidate and academic Louise Mailloux defended the PQ government's proposed Quebec Charter of Values by asserting that kosher and halal certification was a religious tax used to fund religious wars and enrich religious leaders. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs called on the PQ to debunk the “urban legend of the kosher tax” but PQ leader and Premier of Quebec Pauline Marois defended her candidate's comments saying of Mailloux, "Her writings are eloquent, I respect her point of view.”[10]

Refutation edit

 
This Orthodox Union kosher certification mark denotes Kosher pareve. Kosher certification is a voluntary process.

Although companies may apply for kosher certification, the cost of the certification is typically minuscule,[6][11][12] and is more than offset by the advantages of being certified.[11] In 1975 the cost per item for obtaining kosher certification was reported by The New York Times to be 6.5 millionths of a cent ($0.000000065) for a General Foods frozen-food item.[13]

Certification leads to increased revenues by opening up additional markets to Jews who keep kosher, Muslims who keep halal, Seventh-day Adventists, vegetarians, and the lactose intolerant who wish to avoid dairy products (products that are reliably certified as pareve meet this criterion).[14][15][16]

Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation refuted what it described as "[t]he most fanciful information is circulating among Quebeckers”[10] about the so-called kosher tax in its 2008 report and stated that there was no evidence of price inflation as a result of kosher certification and that rabbis made little money from granting certification.[10]

According to Berel Wein, "The cost of kashrut certification is always viewed as an advertising expense and not as a manufacturing expense."[12] Dispellers of the "kosher tax" legend argue that if it were not profitable to obtain such certification, then food producers would not engage in the certification process, and that the increased sales resulting from kosher certification actually lower the overall cost per item.[17][18] Avi Shafran adds that "[i]f the kosher item in fact proves more expensive, [the consumer] can simply opt for one that hasn’t been supervised by a rabbi..."[18]

Obtaining certification that an item is kosher is a voluntary business decision made by companies desiring additional sales from consumers (both Jewish and non-Jewish) who look for kosher certification when shopping.[15] According to Snopes, the fees charged for kosher certification are used to support the operation of the certifying bodies themselves, and not "some special Jewish fund used to advance Zionist causes".[6]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Lungen, Paul (February 20, 2003). "Jewish, Muslim groups join forces join to protect ritual slaughter". Internet edition. Canadian Jewish News. Archived from the original on May 6, 2005. Retrieved November 3, 2011. Anti-Semites have advanced 'the libel of the kosher tax' to claim consumers are paying an extra tax on products that carry kosher certification.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^ Kaplan, Jeffery; Leonard Weinberg (February 1999). The emergence of a Euro-American radical right. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 163. ISBN 0-8135-2563-2. LCCN 98023536.
  3. ^ Levenson, Barry M. (2001). Habeas Codfish: Reflections on Food and the Law. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 188. ISBN 0-299-17510-3. The dark side of this rather uneventful marketing fact is that some anti-Jewish hate groups have developed a bizarre and baseless theory that there is a 'kosher tax' levied on food, a kind of Jewish conspiracy to extort money from the population at large.
  4. ^ a b Tuchman, Aryeh. "Dietary Laws", in Levy, Richard S. Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 178. "Antisemites have decried this certification as a 'kosher tax' that powerful Jews have enlisted governments to collect on their behalf; others have alleged that greedy rabbis threaten businesses with a Jewish boycott unless they accept their fee-based kosher certification."
  5. ^ "Anti-Semitism: Patriot publications taking on anti-Semitic edge". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 2002. Retrieved April 25, 2007. Media Bypass, for one, offered a story about a 'Kosher Nostra scam,' in which 'major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars per year in order to receive protection' against Jewish boycotts. These 'elaborate extortion schemes' are coordinated, alleges writer Ernesto Cienfuegos, by 'Rabbinical Councils that are set up, not just in the U.S. but in other western countries as well.'
  6. ^ a b c Mikkelson, Barbara (May 24, 2002). "The Kosher Nostra". Snopes. Retrieved October 23, 2006.
  7. ^ Blee, Kathleen M. (2002). "The Place of Women". Inside organized racism: women in the hate movement. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 129. ISBN 0-520-22174-5. LCCN 2001041449. Some [racist groups] urge their members to boycott products certified as kosher.
    See also footnote 70: "For example, see 'Kosher Racket Revealed: Secret Jewish Tax on Gentiles' (pamphlet distributed by an anonymous racist group, ca. 1991)," p. 232.
  8. ^ . 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. B'nai Brith Canada. 2001. Archived from the original on June 2, 2007. Retrieved April 25, 2007. Some antisemitic myths continued to proliferate through the year 2000. The Kosher Tax myth claims that the purchase of foods with a kosher symbol on it means that a portion of that money constitutes a tax which benefits the Jewish people. Individuals are advised to go to their cupboards and estimate the worth of all the foods which have those "hidden" symbols on them and claim the money back from the government in their tax returns. Many of the alerts that our offices received about the distribution of the "Kosher Tax" advisories were from accountants who received them as a mailing or were given them along with instructions from their clients to include the material in their taxes. According to these accountants, the people who wanted the refund were not antisemites per se but had received the letters and were ignorant to the meaning of the symbols on the groceries. However, it could be said that those fooled were all too ready to believe the message of the advisories that Jews are sneakily trying to extort money from an unsuspecting public.
  9. ^ "Revenue Minister concerned by tax deduction misinformation" 2013-08-09 at the Wayback Machine, Canada Revenue Agency news release, March 10, 1997.
  10. ^ a b c "Marois defends PQ candidate accused of anti-Semitic beliefs". Globe and Mail. March 14, 2014. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
  11. ^ a b Brunvand, Jan Harold (November 2002) [2001]. "The Jewish Secret Tax". Encyclopedia of urban legends (Reprint ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 222–223. ISBN 0-393-32358-7. LCCN 2001000883.
  12. ^ a b Wein, Berel (December 27, 2002). . Jerusalem Post. pp. 8B. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved October 24, 2006. …due to the volume of goods produced, the cost of certification per unit is so small that it really does not figure in the cost of the product. Alt URL
  13. ^ Leonard Sloane (May 18, 1975). "Calling It Kosher: How to and Why". The New York Times.
  14. ^ . Anti-Defamation League. January 1991. Archived from the original on October 23, 2006. Retrieved October 23, 2006.
  15. ^ a b Luban, Yaakov (July 18, 2004). "The "Kosher Tax" Fraud". Orthodox Union. Retrieved October 23, 2006.
  16. ^ Levenson, Barry M. (2001). Habeas Codfish: Reflections on Food and the Law. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 188. ISBN 0-299-17510-3. Adherents to other faiths, including Moslems and Seventh-Day Adventists, look to kosher certification for a variety of reasons (including making sure the product is pork free).
  17. ^ Sullum, Jacob (July 1993). "Kosher Cops". The Freeman. 43 (7). Retrieved November 3, 2013. …anti-Semitic propaganda has for years railed against what hate groups call "the kosher tax." This is the alleged increase in price that results when a food company pays for private kashrut supervision, so that its products can display a mark of certification… For those who don't buy Jewish-conspiracy theories, a more plausible explanation is that the companies have calculated that the extra business generated by kashrut certification more than makes up for the cost of supervision. (Hence no price increase is necessary.)
  18. ^ a b Shafran, Avi. "Yes Bubba, It's a Jewish Plot", Cross-Currents, January 19, 2007.

References edit

April 25, 2024
kosher, conspiracy, theory, taxes, formerly, imposed, european, governments, kosher, foods, kosher, cost, certifying, foods, kosher, kashrut, costs, kosher, jewish, idea, that, food, companies, unwitting, consumers, forced, money, support, judaism, zionist, ca. For taxes formerly imposed by European governments on kosher foods see Kosher tax For the cost of certifying foods as kosher see Kashrut Costs The Kosher tax or Jewish tax is the idea that food companies and unwitting consumers are forced to pay money to support Judaism or Zionist causes and Israel through the costs of kosher certification The claim is a conspiracy theory antisemitic canard or urban legend Common refutations include that consumers who prefer kosher foods include not only Jews but also Muslims Seventh day Adventists and others food companies actively seek kosher certification to increase market share and profitability the fees collected support the certifying organizations themselves and that extra business generated by the voluntary certification process more than makes up for the cost of supervision and so the certification does not necessarily increase the price of products and may in fact result in per item cost savings Contents 1 Claims 1 1 Canada 2 Refutation 3 See also 4 Notes 5 ReferencesClaims editThe kosher tax conspiracy theory claims that the kosher certification of products typically food is an extra tax collected from unwitting consumers for the benefit of Jewish organizations It is mainly spread by antisemitic white supremacist and other extremist organizations and is considered a canard or urban legend 1 2 3 4 Similar claims are made that this Kosher tax or Jewish tax is extorted from food companies wishing to avoid a boycott 4 5 and used to support Zionist causes or the state of Israel 6 University of Pittsburgh professor of sociology Kathleen M Blee reported that some racist groups encourage consumers to avoid this Jewish tax by boycotting kosher products 7 Canada edit The 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents by the B nai Brith Canada reported citizens being encouraged to request a refund from the government on their income taxes 8 In 1997 the Canada Revenue Agency issued a news release noting the existence of flyers recommending that consumers claim a deduction on their taxes because they supposedly contributed to a Jewish religious organization when they purchased these groceries In it Jane Stewart then Minister of National Revenue stated The intent and message in this literature is deeply offensive to the Jewish community and indeed to all Canadians The so called deduction described in these flyers does not exist and I urge all taxpayers to ignore this misleading advice 9 During the 2014 Quebec provincial election campaign Parti Quebecois PQ candidate and academic Louise Mailloux defended the PQ government s proposed Quebec Charter of Values by asserting that kosher and halal certification was a religious tax used to fund religious wars and enrich religious leaders The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs called on the PQ to debunk the urban legend of the kosher tax but PQ leader and Premier of Quebec Pauline Marois defended her candidate s comments saying of Mailloux Her writings are eloquent I respect her point of view 10 Refutation edit nbsp This Orthodox Union kosher certification mark denotes Kosher pareve Kosher certification is a voluntary process Although companies may apply for kosher certification the cost of the certification is typically minuscule 6 11 12 and is more than offset by the advantages of being certified 11 In 1975 the cost per item for obtaining kosher certification was reported by The New York Times to be 6 5 millionths of a cent 0 000000065 for a General Foods frozen food item 13 Certification leads to increased revenues by opening up additional markets to Jews who keep kosher Muslims who keep halal Seventh day Adventists vegetarians and the lactose intolerant who wish to avoid dairy products products that are reliably certified as pareve meet this criterion 14 15 16 Quebec s Bouchard Taylor Commission on Reasonable Accommodation refuted what it described as t he most fanciful information is circulating among Quebeckers 10 about the so called kosher tax in its 2008 report and stated that there was no evidence of price inflation as a result of kosher certification and that rabbis made little money from granting certification 10 According to Berel Wein The cost of kashrut certification is always viewed as an advertising expense and not as a manufacturing expense 12 Dispellers of the kosher tax legend argue that if it were not profitable to obtain such certification then food producers would not engage in the certification process and that the increased sales resulting from kosher certification actually lower the overall cost per item 17 18 Avi Shafran adds that i f the kosher item in fact proves more expensive the consumer can simply opt for one that hasn t been supervised by a rabbi 18 Obtaining certification that an item is kosher is a voluntary business decision made by companies desiring additional sales from consumers both Jewish and non Jewish who look for kosher certification when shopping 15 According to Snopes the fees charged for kosher certification are used to support the operation of the certifying bodies themselves and not some special Jewish fund used to advance Zionist causes 6 See also editHalal conspiracy theoriesNotes edit Lungen Paul February 20 2003 Jewish Muslim groups join forces join to protect ritual slaughter Internet edition Canadian Jewish News Archived from the original on May 6 2005 Retrieved November 3 2011 Anti Semites have advanced the libel of the kosher tax to claim consumers are paying an extra tax on products that carry kosher certification a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Kaplan Jeffery Leonard Weinberg February 1999 The emergence of a Euro American radical right New Brunswick New Jersey Rutgers University Press p 163 ISBN 0 8135 2563 2 LCCN 98023536 Levenson Barry M 2001 Habeas Codfish Reflections on Food and the Law University of Wisconsin Press p 188 ISBN 0 299 17510 3 The dark side of this rather uneventful marketing fact is that some anti Jewish hate groups have developed a bizarre and baseless theory that there is a kosher tax levied on food a kind of Jewish conspiracy to extort money from the population at large a b Tuchman Aryeh Dietary Laws in Levy Richard S Antisemitism A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution ABC CLIO 2005 p 178 Antisemites have decried this certification as a kosher tax that powerful Jews have enlisted governments to collect on their behalf others have alleged that greedy rabbis threaten businesses with a Jewish boycott unless they accept their fee based kosher certification Anti Semitism Patriot publications taking on anti Semitic edge Intelligence Report Southern Poverty Law Center Winter 2002 Retrieved April 25 2007 Media Bypass for one offered a story about a Kosher Nostra scam in which major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars per year in order to receive protection against Jewish boycotts These elaborate extortion schemes are coordinated alleges writer Ernesto Cienfuegos by Rabbinical Councils that are set up not just in the U S but in other western countries as well a b c Mikkelson Barbara May 24 2002 The Kosher Nostra Snopes Retrieved October 23 2006 Blee Kathleen M 2002 The Place of Women Inside organized racism women in the hate movement Berkeley California University of California Press p 129 ISBN 0 520 22174 5 LCCN 2001041449 Some racist groups urge their members to boycott products certified as kosher See also footnote 70 For example see Kosher Racket Revealed Secret Jewish Tax on Gentiles pamphlet distributed by an anonymous racist group ca 1991 p 232 Antisemitism in Canada Regional Climates Ontario Toronto 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents B nai Brith Canada 2001 Archived from the original on June 2 2007 Retrieved April 25 2007 Some antisemitic myths continued to proliferate through the year 2000 The Kosher Tax myth claims that the purchase of foods with a kosher symbol on it means that a portion of that money constitutes a tax which benefits the Jewish people Individuals are advised to go to their cupboards and estimate the worth of all the foods which have those hidden symbols on them and claim the money back from the government in their tax returns Many of the alerts that our offices received about the distribution of the Kosher Tax advisories were from accountants who received them as a mailing or were given them along with instructions from their clients to include the material in their taxes According to these accountants the people who wanted the refund were not antisemites per se but had received the letters and were ignorant to the meaning of the symbols on the groceries However it could be said that those fooled were all too ready to believe the message of the advisories that Jews are sneakily trying to extort money from an unsuspecting public Revenue Minister concerned by tax deduction misinformation Archived 2013 08 09 at the Wayback Machine Canada Revenue Agency news release March 10 1997 a b c Marois defends PQ candidate accused of anti Semitic beliefs Globe and Mail March 14 2014 Retrieved March 18 2014 a b Brunvand Jan Harold November 2002 2001 The Jewish Secret Tax Encyclopedia of urban legends Reprint ed New York NY W W Norton amp Company pp 222 223 ISBN 0 393 32358 7 LCCN 2001000883 a b Wein Berel December 27 2002 The problem with Shinui Jerusalem Post pp 8B Archived from the original on September 30 2007 Retrieved October 24 2006 due to the volume of goods produced the cost of certification per unit is so small that it really does not figure in the cost of the product Alt URL Leonard Sloane May 18 1975 Calling It Kosher How to and Why The New York Times The Kosher Tax Hoax Anti Semitic Recipe for Hate Anti Defamation League January 1991 Archived from the original on October 23 2006 Retrieved October 23 2006 a b Luban Yaakov July 18 2004 The Kosher Tax Fraud Orthodox Union Retrieved October 23 2006 Levenson Barry M 2001 Habeas Codfish Reflections on Food and the Law University of Wisconsin Press p 188 ISBN 0 299 17510 3 Adherents to other faiths including Moslems and Seventh Day Adventists look to kosher certification for a variety of reasons including making sure the product is pork free Sullum Jacob July 1993 Kosher Cops The Freeman 43 7 Retrieved November 3 2013 anti Semitic propaganda has for years railed against what hate groups call the kosher tax This is the alleged increase in price that results when a food company pays for private kashrut supervision so that its products can display a mark of certification For those who don t buy Jewish conspiracy theories a more plausible explanation is that the companies have calculated that the extra business generated by kashrut certification more than makes up for the cost of supervision Hence no price increase is necessary a b Shafran Avi Yes Bubba It s a Jewish Plot Cross Currents January 19 2007 References edit The Kosher Tax Hoax Anti Semitic Recipe for Hate Archived October 23 2006 at the Wayback Machine Anti Defamation League January 1991 Retrieved November 3 2013 Blee Kathleen M Inside Organized Racism Women in the Hate Movement University of California Press 2003 ISBN 0 520 24055 3 2000 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents B nai Brith Canada 2000 Retrieved April 24 2007 Dispelling a rumor there is no kosher tax or Jewish tax Boycott Watch December 22 2003 Retrieved November 3 2013 Brunvand Jan Herald Encyclopedia of Urban Legends The Jewish Secret Tax W W Norton amp Company Nov 1 2002 ISBN 0 393 32358 7 Revenue Minister concerned by tax deduction misinformation Canada Revenue Agency news release March 10 1997 Kaplan Jeffery amp Weinberg Leonard The Emergence of a Euro American Radical Right Rutgers University Press February 1 1999 ISBN 0 8135 2564 0 Levenson Barry M Habeas Codfish Reflections on Food and the Law University of Wisconsin Press 2001 ISBN 0 299 17510 3 Luban Yaakov The Kosher Tax Fraud Orthodox Union Retrieved November 3 2013 Lungen Paul Jewish Muslim groups join forces join to protect ritual slaughter Canadian Jewish News February 20 2003 Mikkelson Barbara The Kosher Nostra Urban Legends Reference Pages May 24 2002 Retrieved October 23 2006 Anti Semitism Patriot publications taking on anti Semitic edge Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Winter 2002 Shafran Avi Yes Bubba It s a Jewish Plot Cross Currents January 19 2007 Sullum Jacob Columns Kosher Cops The Freeman Vol 43 No 7 July 1993 Tuchman Aryeh Dietary Laws in Levy Richard S Antisemitism A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution ABC CLIO 2005 ISBN 1 85109 439 3 Wein Berel The problem with Shinui The Jerusalem Post December 26 2006 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Kosher tax conspiracy theory amp oldid 1192015252, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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