If you question Yechiel Steinmetz hechser then you can't eat in a lot of Monsey restaurants, but a chabad rabbi somewhere in Mexico you would have no issue eating at the hotel under his supervision? Why is the hechser on the boat different?
If you question this one ( unless you've heard already on this hechser) you can't rely on any other hechser at the other side world or program
I don't know monsey, and I've never eaten anything supervised (excusively) by a random chabad rabbi.
The mehalach I got from my Rav was that a non-local hechsher (when good local options exist) is a red flag, and needs explaination.
Aygart has it right
there is definitely good reason to differentiate between the local establishments under a hechsher and something given a half a world away that has many added complexities.
The questions on this thread are mainly real hard questions that Dan has asked, with no answer coming from anybody.
I mixed in a few curiousities of mine (childhood nickname was George for a reason
), and wrote clearly that that was what it was and not criticism.
@BOOKY no one here is attacking, we are truly curious what is done about these shaylos. If you care enough to come back and report on what you remember noticing on your cruise about the issues dan has raised, we would all be happy.
And if you want me to work through my curious questions and explain them... Here goes... It would seem inefficient for a US based rav to come in and kasher a EU facility to supply the cruise when these facilities exist under local hechsherim, so likely this was outsourced to a EU hashgacha. Once we assume that, the question becomes why the expense of transporting US based mashgichim to the EU to do the actual cruise, when there are plenty of locals who can do it. Unless A. the locals wont do it, so why?, or B. there's a specific reason to take this particular Rav from the US, (like there are eruvin issues and he happens to also be an expert in that or the like) or C. the mashgichim are local, but the Rav Hamachshir is from the US... which leads to further curiosities... Do the rabbanim who put their names as "Rav Hamachshir" on complicated situations like hotels and cruises over shabbos, actually come down to the venue over shabbos, or are they relying on "mashgichim". If they are not on site what happens when there's a shayla on shabbos? who is the rav who paskens? are the mashgichim trained in complicated shabbos, amira leakum sugyos ect or just kashrus...
Since Dan has brought up major shabbos issues, who is in charge of making sure the agreed upon solutions are done (if they even thought of the shayla) especially if the 'rav hamachshil' is not on site?
