Rabbi Avrohom Adler is the go-to address for information on the kashrus-for-Pesach of a wide range of pharmaceuticals, supplements, and toiletries. Before Pesach, his hotline is busier than ever

RABBI, IS IT KOSHER? There are many leniencies, but Rabbi Adler does his best to help people keep the standards they aspire to (Photos: Ezra Sasoon)

"Hello, Rabbi? We feed our pet snake frozen mice, which we keep in the freezer of a non-Jewish neighbor. Can we get our mice from the freezer over Pesach, if we know that there is chometz there, in close contact with it?”

My son has a dog-walking job. He’s just found out that the dog food he bought contains liver and whey, baked together. Is he allowed to benefit from this mixture of milk and meat?”

The questions that reach the helpline of Rabbi Avrohom Adler, a Gateshead-based pharmacist and pharmaceutical kashrus expert, aren’t all this exotic, although he’s available throughout the year to answer all types of kashrus queries, and especially those related to pharmaceuticals. Medicines, vitamins, and nutritional supplements, cosmetics, and toiletries can all contain traces of chometz from grain-derived ingredients, so before Pesach his hotline is flooded. Ascertaining the status of individual products and helping patients on various medications to find solutions is Rabbi Adler’s specialty; and in addition to responding to thousands of texts, calls, and emails, he is the author of extensive published kashrus listings that have become an essential part of Pesach for the British community.

It all started around 40 years ago, when young Avrohom Adler was studying pharmacy at the London School of Pharmacy, University of London. Son of London’s legendary Dr. Shloime Adler, Avrohom had inherited a keen aptitude for medicine — and for helping the community. In those days in England, there was no special address for enquiries at the crossroads of kashrus and medicine.

“My parents’ phone would ring off the hook before Pesach, and before Tishah B’av and Yom Kippur, too,” he remembers.

At the time, Avrohom Adler was approached by Rav Chaim Feldman of Munk’s beis medrash in Golders Green, who asked if he could help clarify whether some medicines could be used for Pesach. Knowledge of pharmaceutical production at that time was far less sophisticated than today. “Then, we were only really concerned with one question: Do these tablets contain wheat starch?” Rabbi Adler says.

Some frum medicine users concerned about chometz would ask their pharmacist to test the tablets. The most popular test was the iodine test — iodine dropped on a tablet reveals starch by turning blue or black. Different starch particles are discernible under a microscope, and a chemist can identify wheat starch from other types of starch particles.

But this was both time-consuming and impractical. Instead, Adler decided to write letters to the manufacturers, asking them to clarify which of their products contained wheat starch. The responses were compiled into a very basic list, which was published in the British “Kashrus News” periodical compiled by Rav Feldman. Years later, once the Medicines on Pesach and All Year Round list was published, it saved Dr. Adler senior scores of medicine-related queries.

Isn’t Wheat Okay?

Rabbi Avrohom Adler was a talmid of the Gateshead yeshivah before he attended university. He married his wife Dassy while studying pharmacy in London, but once he qualified, the couple decided to move back to Gateshead for a few years, so that Reb Avrohom could rejoin the yeshivah and study for semichah. During that time, he put his pharmaceutical training to good use, researching the halachos of kashrus in medicine in depth together with Rabbi M.D. Spiro of Gateshead, and they published a booklet in English called Medicines and Kashrus.

The Adler family has fond memories of these early booklets and lists, which were endorsed by Rabbi B. Rakow ztz”l — the previous Gateshead Rav, and Dayan Chanoch Ehrentrau of London. The booklets were stapled by hand at the dining room table, and when it happened that a mistake was discovered and one item wrongly listed, they had to go through each booklet and write the correction by hand.

The Adlers chose the small yeshivah community as the place to raise their family; Rabbi Adler learned most of the day, spent a few hours teaching science at the Gateshead Jewish Boarding School, and kept his pharmaceutical knowledge current by working at the local pharmacy once a week.

The Kedassia kashrus organization, affiliated with England’s flagship chareidi Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, eventually asked Rabbi Adler to supply more details about the kashrus of medicines for their annual kashrus journal, called Hakohol. The Hakohol, today a thick, glossy book, serves the British community’s Pesach needs in much the same way as Rabbi Blumenkrantz’s guide serves the American consumer. Rabbi Adler is responsible for the Medicines section, which provides listings for all year round as well as Pesach. He also compiles information for the London Beis Din listings, which appear in newspapers and online.

After Rav Feldman had started him off, questions were slowly added to the annual correspondence between Avrohom Adler and the pharmaceutical giants: Which of your products contain alcohol? Which contain sorbitol? Which contain glucose?

Straightforward and uncomplicated by nature, Rabbi Adler takes a courteous but direct and thorough approach when dealing with pharmaceutical companies and doctors. “I tell them that our enquiry is for religious reasons. Most large companies will respect that and have been very helpful. But I’ve also found that they err on the side of caution. They would rather withhold information than give wrong information.”

Some company representatives find Pesach difficult to understand — and Rabbi Adler takes that in stride. “I once asked a company representative if his product contains any wheat derivatives,” Rabbi Adler remembers. “He replied, ‘But wheat is okay — you can eat wheat on Passover! Aren’t matzos made out of wheat?’ So I had to explain that yes, we can use wheat for matzah only, and only when it is strictly supervised so it doesn’t ferment or rise at all…”

Rabbi Adler’s semichah notwithstanding, he isn’t a practicing rabbi or a posek. He consults with Dayan Grynhaus of the Kedassia kashrus division and with Rabbi Jeremy Conway of the London Beis Din. He also asks sh’eilos to the Gateshead Rav, Rav Shraga Feivel Zimmerman.

Extra-Careful

One of the trickiest things to keep in mind is that different countries have different sources for their manufactured foods. For example, he says, the sweeteners sorbitol and glucose are more likely to be chometz in Europe than in the States, because in the States they are usually manufactured from maize, rather than wheat.

Rabbi Adler recalls that his own father used to try to avoid prescribing medication in gelatin capsules because he was worried about their kashrus. Once his son investigated and published lists, Dr. Adler relied on the guidelines that permitted certain brands, although for his own personal use, he preferred liquid antibiotics.

Today, though, it’s often the liquid forms of medication that are not suitable for Pesach. In recent years, certain antidepressants, particularly in the liquid form, were found to contain chometz ingredients. Often, the culprit is the sweetener, added to make the medicine palatable. Rabbi Adler has researched different manufacturers who produce the same generic drugs with different non-active ingredients. Substitutes, of course, must be discussed with the patient’s physician to confirm that they present a good solution.

The Adler children — today professional adults themselves — still laugh about the phone call their father received from a family worried that their goldfish was constipated and sought the pharmacist’s advice. But there are many callers who sincerely want to go beyond the letter of the law, and Rabbi Adler does his best to help people keep the standards they aspire to.

“Some people are very particular about what goes into their mouths, and they want to avoid any animal fat products, even those that are not halachically treif. Recently a rebbe in Eretz Yisrael contacted me, seeking a vitamin D product that was entirely plant-based, not lanolin-based. Lanolin is a wax secreted from the wool of sheep, not from the animal’s body per se, and strictly speaking it is generally permitted halachically,” Rabbi Adler explains. “Just like you could eat the wool of a sheep if it were edible, the use of lanolin is permitted, because the sheep doesn’t have to be shechted in order to obtain it. Nevertheless, if someone wants to be very careful, I can help him. A couple hours of work, and we were able to find a product for the rebbe.”

Chometz-free Solutions Rabbi Adler’s son remembers approaching the counter of a supermarket pharmacy in Manchester to buy medicine for his daughter. Seeing his yarmulke, the Asian dispensing assistant pulled out a Hakohol from under the counter. “I’ll just check it on the kosher list for you,” he said. Pharmacists with a Jewish clientele have accepted Rabbi Adler as the last word on suitable medicines.

Still, if you are concerned about a medication possibly containing chometz, the solution is never to just stop taking it for eight days. “It is very important that no person stops taking any prescribed medication without checking with their doctor,” Rabbi Adler stresses.

Pre-Pesach is obviously peak season for the helpline. Rabbi Adler’s children say that he hardly sleeps at this time of the year, due to high volume of sh’eilos that come beeping in through text and email. “He’s responding to emails even as he’s buttoning up his Yom Tov shirt,” his son says. But Rabbi Adler, good-natured as he is when fielding last-minute phone calls, says that leaving questions for the last minute is not a good idea, especially when it comes to medication. Switching medications means getting authorization for changing a prescription, which should never be left to the final minutes under pressure.

This year, Rabbi Adler received a phone call on Rosh Chodesh Adar, regarding a liquid anti-epileptic product. Research revealed chometz ingredients, and so Rabbi Adler recommended taking tablets and crushing them instead. In this case, there was plenty of time to work out how many tablets should be crushed to measure the equivalent dose of liquid. “In the last-minute pre-Pesach frenzy,” says Rabbi Adler, “it’s very difficult to obtain information, work out the patient’s requirements, and give clear guidelines. Rosh Chodesh Adar makes sense for this kind of query.”

Usually, he says, a chometz-free solution can be found. Where this is not possible, a rav should be consulted to rule on how the patient can use the medication on Pesach in a permitted way. He says the most common pre-Pesach questions relate to antibiotics and pain-killers for babies and young children.

Food supplements and meal replacements often contain kitniyos, rather than actual chometz. According to Rabbi Adler, they can be used when necessary for medical reasons, although all utensils should be kept separate. And although high-quality chalav Yisrael and kosher l’Pesach baby formulas are available today, parents of babies who are allergic or underweight need information about the kashrus of more specialized options. “Many baby formulas, especially the hypo-allergenic and vegetarian ones, use enzymes derived from non-kosher sources. But these are sometimes battul in the final product, so they can be used when required,” Rabbi Adler says. “But people should always ask their own sh’eilos for specific situations.”

What about sh’eilos that arise once Pesach has arrived? Then, Rabbi Adler says, it becomes a bit more complicated. “If a medicine containing chometz is prescribed for a child on Chol Hamoed, there is a heter for the child to consume it, although there is a halachic problem in buying or obtaining the chometz substance. You have to avoid taking ownership of it,” he explains. “There is a way to do this, but please ask your rav about it before collecting the prescription. If it’s already in your ownership, the situation becomes more complicated.”

Rabbi Adler says that it’s rare for someone to be unable to take their medicine on Pesach. “Obviously, if it’s a question of pikuach nefesh, one has to be lenient. Most rabbanim will sell necessary chometz medications to a non-Jew on the condition that they may be used as needed.”

Alcohol Anonymous

The multiplicity of supplements, vitamins, minerals, and homeopathic preparations that abound in many Orthodox households were not common when Rabbi Adler began to compile his listings. “Today, it’s a million-dollar industry,” he says. Many products exist with “vegan” certification, meaning the product has no animal derivatives, but even in these, grape derivatives remain as a kashrus issue, as do non-kosher chemicals used in production of ingredients. The Orthodox public wanted supervised, kosher supplements, and companies such as Solgar, Maxi Health, and Zahler have supplied them. Rabbi Adler is the mashgiach for Solgar’s factory in the UK, as well as kashrus supervisor for Britain’s Highfield vitamin brand.

If vitamins can have certification, why not medicines? Why do medicines need their own special list? Rabbi Adler explains that medicines, which require a pharmaceutical license, cannot be produced under kosher supervision, since it is illegal to write kosher — or any other symbol — on a medicine label.

But while ingredients and processes have become exponentially more complicated in the last few decades, at least one thing has changed to make Rabbi Adler’s job much easier: the availability of information online. “The Electronic Medicine Compendium (EMC) website lists the major ingredients for every single licensed med in the country. That means that before contacting manufacturers about their products. I review the EMC lists, checking for ingredients that could possibly be derived from chometz, animal, or grape products. Then I contact the firm to ascertain the provenance of those ingredients.”

Rabbi Adler’s database is built up from one year to the next. “Every time I get an enquiry, I do my best to ascertain the facts regarding that product, then note it down to include on next year’s lists.”

With regard to cosmetics, creams, and toiletries, Rabbi Adler’s guide offers a brief list of ingredients that are probably chometz and are best avoided, but naturally, the biggest questions are regarding lipsticks. There is room for leniency with regard to non-kosher ingredients in lipsticks, but with his insider’s view of the processes and ingredients, Rabbi Adler contends that hechsherim on lipstick are not as over-the-top as one might think. “Many of them have trace animal derivatives like collagen and colorings like carmine, which are made from insects.”

In other words, they might not have chometz, but they might not be strictly kosher either. “I’d like to prepare a comprehensive list of lipsticks that contain no chometz, because people like to be particular about a product that they literally put onto their mouths,” Rabbi Adler says. “I used to have a list in the Hakohol of some lipsticks that were definitely fine to use over Pesach. But now there are so many on the market that it’s impossible to do a comprehensive list. The London Beis Din asked me to investigate and publish information on 25 popular lipsticks, and in addition, this year I’ve offered that people can scan the ingredients label on their lipsticks and send it in to me to check. But in general, because perfumes and cosmetics are such a matter of personal taste, a very limited kosher range won’t please many people.”

Kosher certification is a status symbol for many companies, especially in the health field. They are willing to spend money for their certification and are generally not out to mislead. And while Rabbi Adler has found the pharmaceutical firms reliable and careful in giving out correct information to the best of their ability, sometimes the companies themselves are ignorant of how their ingredients originate. For example, he says, being certain of the source of alcohol has been a major difficulty in recent years. “The perfume companies themselves don’t always know whether the alcohol they are using is produced from grain. Only one company that we contacted — Bvlgari — confirmed that all the alcohol they use is sugar alcohol. Medical companies are likely to steer away from wheat-based alcohol due to allergies, but no such premise exists with perfumes.”

Rabbi Adler notes that many poskim are of the opinion that when alcohol is denatured — rendered inedible by adding other ingredients — it is not chometz. Rav Moshe Feinstein, however, was machmir about this, since it could be made edible again. “In Russia, Rav Moshe had seen peasants taking perfume and pouring it through bread, then drinking the alcohol that came through. Perfume was cheaper than liquor, and they considered it edible, which is why Rav Moshe considered perfume to be edible chometz.”

Bottom line, says Rabbi Adler, ask your own rav and follow his psak. In fact, Rabbi Adler — who serves both the chareidi and wider Jewish communities in England — says that the varied crowd who all hold Pesach dear is his inspiration year after year. “I get phone calls from a very wide range of Anglo Jewry. People whom you might expect to be more lax are actually extremely concerned about Pesach in particular and kashrus in general. Even if I say it’s okay, they double and triple check and really want to keep Pesach to the best of their ability. There is a lot of chizuk in seeing how much Pesach means to such a wide range of our people.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 703)