Rabbi Nosson Dubin sets a single standard for kashrus supervision

Photos: Golani Photography

When my nephew came from overseas to attend Touro College, he needed a part-time job. He’d never attended yeshivah, but managed to get hired as a mashgiach at a Brooklyn restaurant. He spent his time there washing lettuce and occasionally lighting a burner, but otherwise he didn’t supervise the workers. How could he? He only knew the bare basics.

“Being a mashgiach is too often a default position,” says Rabbi Yosef Eisen of the Vaad of the Five Towns. “Other professionals have to get training and certification, and they get respect because there’s a recognized industry standard. But too many mashgichim don’t receive that kind of training.”

That’s why Rabbi Nosson Dubin, the administrator of Houston Kashruth Association (HKA), young, energetic, and tech-savvy, is on a crusade to change this state of affairs. He intends to ensure that mashgichim receive rigorous, certifiable training — and consequently, higher regard and higher salaries. Rabbi Dubin now provides a formal, online training course that any mashgiach can take to receive an official certification showing he’s learned the halachos of running a kosher kitchen. Already up and running, the Kosher Institute of America promises to become an invaluable resource for the Jewish food industry.

First Course

Rabbi Dubin meets us in Genesis, a small but swanky steak house in Houston that’s under his hashgachah. He’s of medium height, with a trimmed beard, and while only in his thirties, he carries himself with a quiet authority, as befits an expert in the field and his position as the director of Houston’s kashrus association. It’s nine thirty on a Friday morning, too early for customers, but a good time for a conversation.

Like most members of the Houston community, Rabbi Dubin is a transplant; we discover that he grew up just a few blocks away from me in Brooklyn. After learning for multiple years in BMG in Lakewood, he and his wife, Tzirel, decided to try out the Lakewood Kollel in Houston.

“We haven’t looked back since,” he says.

The author of a sefer on kashrus, Hatzaas Hashulchan (now a go-to sefer for people preparing for semichah), Rabbi Dubin was learning and giving shiurim when the former HKA head left the agency. He proposed that Rabbi Dubin take over his job. Rabbi Dubin accepted, and while he continues to learn and give shiurim, running HKA became his day job.

A few years ago, he noticed that there were no courses online to learn kashrus.

“There were articles here and there,” he says. “But there was nothing formal and comprehensive.”

He set out to create one. His first attempt was meant to be a general course to take someone who knows absolutely nothing and educate him in how to set up and run a kosher kitchen. He produced 35 lectures and demos, including guides and flow charts that a person can hang on a fridge for convenient reference. He made his material available online, and before long, Aish reached out, requesting to partner with him and offer it as part of Aish Academy. Rabbi Dubin not only agreed, he also worked with Aish.com developers to adapt the course for their site.

In November 2018, he attended the conference of the Association of Kashrus Organizations (AKO), an umbrella organization of kashrus agencies. The conference drew 200 people representing agencies from all over the world. Rabbi Avrohom Weinrib of Cincinnati Kosher presented the idea of creating a formal online training course for mashgichim, and Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, who heads both the CRC (Chicago) and AKO, asked Rabbi Dubin if he could create the course.

“There are many mashgichim in food services, and lots of hashgachahs, each with its own system for training,” he says. “Many have some sort of course, but often give trainings only once or twice a year.”

Every hashgachah that belongs to the AKO needs to meet minimal standards to join, but the lack of rigorous training was getting embarrassing.

“Almost every field requires training,” Rabbi Dubin says. “Our mashgichim are required to have training, but they aren’t getting it.”

AKO put in seed money, and Rabbi Dubin spent the next year creating the website and demos that would become the training curriculum of the AKO Mashgiach Course, which is developed and offered by the KIA, the Kosher Institute of America. He purposely kept the cost very low — only $30 — to make it accessible.

The result is an elegant, user-friendly website with several free sample classes and 60 lectures — all of them presented by Rabbi Dubin himself, in a lucid, authoritative style. The topics range from pas akum to insect infestation to proper decorum and dress in the workplace. It was meticulously crafted on the halachic level.

“Rabbi Dovid Cohen from the CRC is the expert on kashrus,” Rabbi Dubin maintains. “He went through all the material with a fine-toothed comb, writing hundreds of comments. We created surveys for many different hashgachahs to ascertain the most common psak on a variety of questions, including comments about alternative ways to do it.”

This way, users will learn the most standard practices, but can also learn about practices like using only Beit Yosef or chassidishe shechitah, or the prohibition of leaving an unpeeled egg overnight.