NY Times’ Kosher Cookie Craze
The Sulzbergers may daven Episcopalian, but the newspaper they own has a surprising interest in the kosher status of Girl Scout cookies.
In the New York edition of the January 24 New York Times — on the same page as a revelation about the motive in a 42-year-old double murder — appeared a news report titled “Kosher Label Missing From Girl Scout Cookies.” The article reported that the kosher certification symbol was inadvertently omitted from 14 million boxes of Thin Mints, a popular variety of Girl Scout cookie.
Was the paper with the motto “All the News That’s Fit To Print” responding to a public clamoring for information about the kosher status of Thin Mints? Probably not. According to the Times, Rabbi Yisroel Bendelstein of the Orthodox Union reported receiving only about a half-dozen calls about the cookies’ kosher status. The Shmooze has an alternative theory: The Times offered up this tasty tidbit mostly so it could publish the following deliciously amusing concluding sentence: “Thin Mints, the rabbi said, are his favorite Girl Scout cookie.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
