For over half a century, Rav Moshe Heinemann has set the bar high on kashrus, as head of STAR-K and as a foremost authority in the ever-more-complex field of kosher certification

Photos: Eli Greengart

When the time came to build a mikveh in Lakewood shortly after Rav Aharon Kotler’s petirah in 1962, that all-important mission was entrusted to a talmid for whom the Lakewood rosh yeshivah had forseen a shining future as a moreh hora’ah for Klal Yisrael: Rav Moshe Heinemann, then a Beth Medrash Govoha yungerman in his mid-twenties.

As we sit together in the conference room of the STAR-K, the Baltimore-based kashrus certification agency Rav Moshe Heinemann has led for half a century, he recalls his visit to the venerable Rebbe Yoel of Satmar to discuss the mikveh project. “I asked the Rebbe, ‘What’s the best way to make a mikveh?’ and he replied with customary wit: ‘The best way is not to make it based on the Shulchan Aruch.’ After a pause, he continued, ‘If you need to look in Shulchan Aruch, it’s already a problem.’ ”

The lesson, Rav Heinemann says, was clear: Optimal mitzvah performance means avoiding sh’eilos, even if ultimately they can be resolved.

Over 60 years later, as the beacon of Rav Moshe Heinemann’s halachic guidance shines forth from Baltimore, Maryland throughout the United States and beyond, the Satmar Rebbe’s long-ago admonition to strive for halachic excellence, not baseline compliance, remains his own guiding principle. His prime vehicle for setting the frum community’s halachic bar high is the STAR-K, through which he has become perhaps America’s foremost authority in the multifaceted, ever-more-complex field of kashrus.

In his varied roles — as the head of the STAR-K, longtime rav of the Agudath Israel of Baltimore, and a sagacious leader of the city’s Torah community — Rav Heinemann has charted a path that prioritizes two values, emes and shalom, above all else. His seamless synthesis of the potentially competing tenets of standing up for truth and promoting peace has helped both his community and his kashrus organization reach great heights of success. With a staff of 60 at its headquarters and some 800 full- and part-time employees around the globe, STAR-K has grown to be one of the largest kosher certifiers worldwide, providing supervision for tens of thousands of producers, products, and eateries on five continents.

And it all started when Moshe Heinemann was just nine years old. Born in 1937 in Furth, Germany, to a family with roots there stretching back to the 17th century, little Moshe left with his parents for England shortly after Kristallnacht.

“We were sent by the British government to live in a small country village where chalav Yisrael, which my father had always insisted on for his family, was not readily available,” Rav Heinemann relates. “But since the halachah permits even a mature minor to supervise the milking process, I — at just nine years old — became the mashgiach over the milk production of a local dairy farmer’s 25-cow herd.”

The family spent the next 11 years in England, where five of his siblings were born, but in 1950, his parents’ dissatisfaction with the available chinuch spurred them to emigrate to New York, where another brother, Shmuel Aron, was born.

An expert in shechitah and nikkur (deveining), Reb Shmuel Aron has been with STAR-K since 1982 and is currently its kashrus administrator for the greater New York/New Jersey region. But 13 years younger than Reb Moshe, Reb Shmuel says that as a child he hardly knew his oldest brother.

“When we moved to New York, my brother attended Torah Vodaath, completing high school in three years,” Rabbi Shmuel Heinemann recalls. “At age 16, he entered the Lakewood yeshivah, which at that time had only 48 talmidim in total. He became very close with Rav Aharon Kotler and learned with great hasmadah, returning home for little more than one week in the entire year — he’d arrive a few days before Pesach and go back to yeshivah the day after Yom Tov.”

With his clear, organized, and detail-oriented mind and a penchant for the practical, Moshe was drawn even then to the study of practical halachah. He and chavrusa Shimon Eider a”h — who’d later earn his own reputation as a venerated posek — would sit in the back of the beis medrash for hours on end learning through the Shulchan Aruch and its commentaries.

“The Rosh Yeshivah lived in Boro Park,” says Rav Heinemann, “remaining there all week and coming to the yeshivah only for Shabbos, when he would deliver his shiur. On Friday nights between Kabbalas Shabbos and Maariv, I was zocheh to have an hour-long halachah seder with him.” Indeed, most of the unpublished piskei halachah of Reb Aharon in kashrus and other areas that have become well-known over the years are those that Rav Heinemann heard directly from him. During the week, when Reb Aharon was absent from the yeshivah, he made sure Moshe would be the baal korei, so that if any sh’eilos were to arise concerning the sefer Torah, he would be able to answer them.

Seeking to nurture his cherished talmid’s aptitude for psak halachah, Reb Aharon encouraged him to acquire shimush with Rav Moshe Feinstein, from whom he eventually received a prestigious semichah, Yoreh Yoreh, Yadin Yadin. He also pursued shimush with renowned posek Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, and also with Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky.