From the historical revisionists at ArtScroll:
An indespensible [sic] aid for every Kosher kitchen!
• finds bugs easily with LED light no more eyestrain! rechargeable safe to use with wet produce compact size for easy storage One of the biggest challenges in a kosher kitchen is preparing bug-free leafy green lettuce and fresh herbs to serve as part of your healthy, delicious meals. Now, with the Bug Checker Portable Light Board™, you can save time, money, eat healthier and enjoy a greater variety of healthier foods.
The professional mashgichim at OU currently use large, bulky expensive photographic light boxes to help check for infestations. Our new Kosher Innovations Bug Checker™ provides all the benefits of a professional light box, but was designed specifically for the private kosher kitchen.
Why not order a second one for Pesach while you're at it? You'll be able to check mounds of maror quickly.
It makes a great gift! Every Kallah will love it.
Let's be clear:
- The Torah does not mandate light boards or magnifying glasses.
- At he time the Torah was given, there was no such thing as a light board. In fact, there were no eyeglasses, either.
- The halakha is based on average eyes, meaning a range of vision from moderately nearsighted to moderately far sighted. There is no requirement in halakha for a better-sighted person to check for bugs rather than a person with worse vision, within that range.
- Eye glasses have largely put all but a few of us in that normal range.
- Additionally, the Torah envisions intentional eating of bugs. Further it envisions eating a significant amount of bug.
- Rabbis first reduced that amount of bug by half, making the halakha much more strict.
- Then the rabbis added the concept of a baria, meaning a whole forbidden creature. In the rabbinic mind, eating a whole gnat is far worse halakhicly than eating 10 pork chops. (The Christian Bible has a saying composed about the same time din baria was created. It goes like this: "You blind guides! You strain a gnat but you swallow a camel." J himself in Matthew 24 addressing the rabbis of his day, probably rabbis from Beit Shammai rather than Beit Hillel. More on why that may be in another post.)
- In other words, the whole haredi panic over checking for bugs with light boxes, special soaks, magnifiers, etc. or refraining from vegetables and some fruits altogether is taking a rabbinic enactment on another rabbinic enactment to a bizarre extreme. They built a fence around a fence, and now haredim are adding a two foot thick, 12 foot high reinforced concrete wall with barbed wire and broken glass on top.
- What does this all mean?
- Don't waste your money on a light board. Give your $39.99 to a non-haredi tzedaka instead.
[Hat Tip: Ben Max.]