To sell or not to sell Soviet kosher products abroad is a question which the Ukrainian government has not been able to solve. In connection with the increased activity in Russian export trade, the Vienna Rabbinate offered to buy from the Ukrainian department of conunerce 3,000 kilos of Passover kosher goose fat. The Rabbinate is willing to pay a gold rouble per kilo provided the Soviet permits the entrance of a special rabbi from Vienna to supervise the preparation of the fats. The Rabbinate also requested that Rabbi Grossman of Kiev should personally put this stamp of kashruth on the produced fat.
While the Ukrainian department of commerce is anxious to get the 3,000 gold roubles for exported goods. It cannot nevertheless decide to give in to the religious demands of the Vienna Rabbinate. On the other hand, it has strict instructions to export anything that can be converted into money. While the Viennese offer will most likely be rejected, it has however already harmed the Ukrainian shochtim.
In investigating details of fat export the department of commerce discovered that as remuneration the shochtim receive the feathers of the slaughtered kosher chickens and later sell them to government stores. The department of commerce’s figures indicate that 35,000,000 chickens are killed annually in the Ukraine for kosher purposes. Hence, when their feather are exported they net the Soviet an income of a million and a half roubles in gold. Therefore the shochtim will henceforth be prohibited from collecting the feathers. The work will be done be government agents.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
