Last week, a New York state judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Long Island kosher restaurant called Chimichurri against the local Vaad Hakashrus, or kosher-supervision council. Michael A. Helfand explains the facts of the case, and the complex constitutional issues behind the judge’s decision:

According to the complaint, Chimichurri ended its five-year relationship with the Vaad in July of 2020, choosing instead to use Mehadrin, a different kosher-certification company. The restaurant claims the Vaad retaliated by circulating a letter falsely claiming that it was no longer kosher, which Chimichurri said led to $150,000 in lost revenue over a year.

Chimichurri’s claim, legally, hinged on the word “falsely,” which raises the specter of what, exactly, is kosher—a red flag for the court. . . . Whose description of the facts is correct? The pursuit of that question could run afoul of what is often termed the “religious-question doctrine,” which prohibits judges from resolving issues of religious practice.

There are many different—and, sometimes, competing—justifications for this doctrine. But maybe the most intuitive version is that when a court picks one religious view over another, it is using the coercive power of the state to determine which version of a faith is the true faith. And that is tantamount to establishing religion, in contravention of the First Amendment. This is why most courts have, for the past 70 years, consistently refused to resolve kosher cases.

Current constitutional doctrine thankfully ensures good-faith kosher certifiers and rabbinic leaders can, without fear of judicial reprisal, clearly express their views on religious standards within their communities. At the same time, it also means that courts will often lack the tools to root out actual fraud—that is, actual attempts to falsify the kosher standing of food. . . . And that ultimately means that it is up to the Jewish community to build the kinds of institutions that will both ensure the viability and protect the integrity of the kosher marketplace.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].