Source: In Brooklyn’s Kosher Pizza War, Modern Tastes Battle Ancient Law – The New York Times
I’m sure my fervent plaintiff-readers have noticed I’ve been getting away from intriguing lawsuit news lately. Several reasons: my own seven-year, multiple lawsuit adventure ended successfully in late 2014 and then, well, the Horror.
So the segment of my brain fascinated by lawsuits has switched to a concentration upon a defense of democracy.
Still, once in a while, I spot a story about a lawsuit that draws me back into the world of personal litigation. Why sue, who sues–that kind of stuff.
Yesterday, such a story appeared in the New York Times (link above).
How could I not be fascinated? How could I not share my fascination with you?
To give you a (kosher) bite out of this piece, here’s how it begins:
In a city as pizza-crazed as New York, pizza wars erupt with some regularity, from dollar slice joints battling for customers in Manhattan to a Mafia-tinted dispute over a stolen sauce recipe between a pizza shop in Brooklyn and another on Staten Island.
But perhaps nothing compares to a kosher pizza war, pitting 21st-century foodie-ism against the decidedly 19th-century world of an insular Hasidic neighborhood.
Two pizza restaurant owners, both Orthodox Jews, have become entangled in an only-in-Brooklyn lawsuit, not in an august courthouse, but in an obscure hall of justice known as the Rabbinical Court of Borough Park, which hears cases in a simple room above a synagogue on a residential block.
At the center of the battle are not prices or sauce recipes, but cryptic interpretations of holy law set down in ancient Aramaic thousands of years ago. Both sides have invoked rules dictated by the Torah and the Talmud, as well as a cookbook’s worth of interpretations of kosher rules and certification standards.
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Enough. I’ve had my fun for today. (Floaty McFloatface, Floaty McFloatface…)