* Rabbi Marvin Hier Great conversation, fascinating guests
* Rabbi Ari Hier Charming erudite host
* Rabbi Elazar Muskin Great food, great Torah, a great long seder
* Rabbi Kalman Topp Understated rabbi who allows room for others
* Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky Gracious, stimulating
* Rabbi Robert Wexler Erudite, gracious, hospitable
* Rabbi Mimi Feigelson Great food, fascinating conversation
* Rabbi Dov Heller Great food, masters of hospitality
* Rabbi Nachum Braverman Understated empathic rabbi
* Rabbi Moshe Cohen Learned, funny
* Rabbi Boruch Sufrin Smart, funny
* Morey Levovitz Accomplished, generous
* Rabbi Yaacov Pinto
* Richard Horowitz Masters of hospitality, stimulating conversation
* Marc Firestone Masters of hospitality, low key, interested in others
* Peter Lowy – rich, generous, Australian
* David Sacks Funny, smart, unexpected
* Stuart & Enny Wax The gold standard for hospitality
* Sam Glaser Not your typical Orthodox home, this one is a lot of fun!
* David Suissa
* Monica Osborne
* Selwyn & Glynis Gerber Good Israeli wine, good food, Glynis owned Serravalle – the original gourmet Kosher meat restaurant in town
* Rabbi Marc Mandel
* Rabbi Uri Pilichowski
* Rabbi Lisbon (Chabad Bais Bezalel)
* Chazzan Netanel Baram
* Rabbi Sharon Brous
* Rabbi Bradley Shavit-Artson
* Don Etra
* Mark & Debbie Goldenberg
* Robert J. Avrech
* Mitch Julis
* Professor Aryeh Cohen
* Bob & Judy Millman
* Rabbi Aryeh Markman
* Rabbi Yitz Jacobs
* Rabbi Motti Shenker
* Fred and Susie Toczek
* Harold and Brenda Walt (Catering by Brenda!)
* Billie & Jenny Gelb
* Larry and Andrea Gill
* Jeff Fishman
* Richard Kellner
* David Nimmer
* Etan Cohen
* Steve Tabak
* David Nagel
* Ian & Lisa Tofler
* Steve & Daisy Cohn: Healthy food, hearty conversation

I simply posted this list because my soul is so in love with truth. Who knew that it would score me invites? I am not worthy. I just want to cover myself in dust and ashes, sit at the feet of the sages, and blog all day (except for Shabbos and holidays).

The food is largely Israeli.

My omelette wrap Sunday night seemed lacking in flavor, but I didn't care because the women all around me were so beautiful.

I'm coming back. I want to try the melawach wrap.

In the evening, I went to yoga with Monica, a friend of mine who teaches Jewish Literature at UCLA. Then we all went to dinner at Delice Bistro with my buddy David. He pays!

It's 10 pm. We all order what I want — the cold peach-tomato-cucumber soup. My friends have a glass of wine. We kick back and tell outrageous stories. Then we shmooze with the owner. He notices that I've lost weight.

I feel like a big shot.

"There was this girl," I say and open up my notebook and read selections from my morning pages.

"She would just say my name and I would be rapt. She had my complete attention. Just the way she said my name, 'Luke.' I had no idea what was coming next. She was that exciting. She was totally unpredictable. Her life was drama. But it was more than that. She made life so exciting. She saw life in such rich technicolor and I learned to see more hues and shadows and colors.

"She painted life with a rich palette for me. I loved it.

"What I loved most was the way she'd cry my name while climaxing. It was, 'Luke, Luke, Luke, I'm coming, Luke, Luke, Luke!'

"God, I loved it. What a guy most wants (says Dennis Prager) is to feel like the most important thing in a girl's life.

"This was a tough girl. A bi girl. She was more into girls than guys the past few years. And she gave herself totally to me. She made me feel important. Needed. Vital. Alive.

"But she cheated on me. So goodbye."

After staging a valiant fight for a long time, Doheny has caved into right wing pressure and become Glatt. That means regular (“Stam”) Kosher meat – the stuff most of our grandparents and great grandparents grew up with in Europe (when they could afford meat) is no longer available at Doheny.

Notch it up to another victory for the right wing sects of our religion and another blow to Modern (Centrist) Orthodoxy.

How ironic that it seemingly happened in a week when the Torah portion expressly prohibits both adding to and subtracting from G-d’s commandments (in that order). And how sad it is that we live in times when “adding to” the yoke is not seen as a violation of the law but an enhancement.

With Rosh Hashana only a week away, Newton residents wanting to buy meat products from a kosher butcher will have to look outside the city, after their only local option decided to end its kosher supervision.

Gordon & Alperin owner Ricardo Bosich said he dropped the food-handling oversight last month. He will offer prepackaged kosher meats, as local supermarkets do.

"I can't afford the kosher supervision," said Bosich, who said he is looking for a less-expensive provider. "It's a hard time for everyone right now, since the economy is so bad."

A message from Bosich's former supervisor, Rabbi Aaron Hamaoui of the Sephardic Community of Greater Boston, published on Kosher Blog explains that this "was not due to a violation, but a business decision made by the proprietor."

Traditionally, kosher restaurants and bakeries maintain their certification by hiring rabbis who oversee the food products that are sold in the facility. Rabbis inspect all canned and prepackaged goods to make sure they have kosher labels and check the origins of meat to confirm that it is from a kosher meat processor. Kosher supervisors are also vigilant in making sure that dairy and meat are not stored together.

"One wants the source of meat and how it is processed to be supervised and certified by experts," said Rabbi Benjamin Samuels, with Congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Newton Centre. "And for the kosher consumer, that is an absolute requirement."

Ellia Kassoff (CEO of Strategic Software Resources, Inc.) had a different experience.

He emails:

Hi, I watched your video of Delice Bistro and I have to say, I did not have the same experience.  Here is my post:

This place was awful!!!  I'm kosher, and a friend recommend I try it out for my dad's birthday.  I was so excited to try a French, Kosher restaurant and it went downhill from there.  We had a new server who was nice but didn't give the greatest service.  We all ordered and I asked for the most expensive dish which was the beef rib eye.  It sounded so good.  I asked the server to make it medium well but not dry.  Next, we began to wait and wait…the people next to us who came in 20 minutes after us got their food but we had to wait 30 min. for ours!  When I got my plate, the steak was small, burned, dry and fatty.  I cut into it and it was sooo dry and fatty.  I polity let the waitress know I was unhappy and she said there was nothing she could do.  That was interesting..Next, when she came to my table, I gave her the plate, uneaten and was never asked if I wanted anything else.  After my dad and his wife, ate the over-priced salad, and entree, the manager came over to see how things were. I mentioned the problem and he looked puzzled, like I was expecting.. I don't know… food?  Since the waitress just took the dish, I thought they were re-making the steak but nope..He then asked if I wanted anything else and I said it was too late and no one had asked till now.  So, you would now think when the check comes, the steak would be off the bill?  Nope!  The steak was still there and the manager said he was told by the owner that it could not be taken off, since I ordered it well done, which I never did.  Here is the REAL kick; I went to speak to the owner; (who never came over to discuss the problem) and told him the problem.  He then told me it was my fault for ordering the steak well-done and he instructs his wait staff never to recommend well-done because it come out dry. I was never told by the server and then told him I eat well and med-well all the time at other places and they never are this bad.  I also said that I never ordered it well done and he insisted I did.  It didn't matter. To my shock, he said he was charging me for it and it was my entire fault.  Can you believe that?  It gets better!!  Then the waitress comes over and explains that it was actually her fault since I was correct that I did not order the steak well done.  The owner said nothing and still insisted I still had to pay for it, after the server said it was her fault.  He then said that they don't make mistakes!
I'm sorry, but would you eat at a place where the owner doesn't care about his customers?  He actually told me that it was my problem and he gets enough customers so he wasn't worried about losing a few.  
What really upsets me is many kosher restaurants seem to have this arrogance..until they close and wonder why… This was the first time eating out in my life when something I ordered came out bad and the restaurant insisted it was my fault and made me pay for a dish I never even ate.

I hope he closes and then he will see why customers are so important..

All I can say is try to go to places where they understand that mistakes are made and try to fix them quickly, politely and make sure the customer will come back.  I will never go back again…

A gutsy op-ed in The New York Times has sharpened the debate over the Agriprocessors kosher meat factory scandal – and perhaps pointed the way toward rapprochement between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews.

Written by an Orthodox rabbi, Washington's Shmuel Herzfeld, it calls on the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, bastions of mainstream Orthodox Judaism, to appoint an independent commission "that would make sure the plant upholds basic standards of kashrut and worker and animal treatment – and that it is in full compliance with the laws of the United States."

It's the conflation of two ideas – "standards of kashrut" and "worker and animal treatment" – that makes Herzfeld's essay controversial in the world of kosher supervision. As for workers' rights and humane treatment of animals – that's the purview of government agencies, says the OU.

Herzfeld isn't the first rabbi to call for an ethical dimension for kosher certification. Conservative rabbis, led by Minnesota's Morris Allen, are pushing for a hechsher tzedek – a righteous certification – that would do just that.

AGRIPROCESSORS FOUGHT back this week, distributing a rebuttal to Herzfeld written by one of its attorneys, Nathan Lewin, a legend in Washington for his defense of Jewish religious freedoms. The rebuttal is remarkable for its focus not on the allegations against the plant, which Lewin largely ignores, but for its attack on Herzfeld's premise that a plant's kosher certification should be linked to its business ethics.

Lewin does this by trying to discredit the validity of Herzfeld's reference to Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883), the pillar of the ethics movement known as Mussar. According to Herzfeld, Salanter "refused to certify a matza factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly." Lewin can't find a solid scholarly reference to the Salanter story, and calls it "fallacious." Imagine the credit it would bring to Torah-observant Jews were leaders to immediately draw up their own set of labor and animal welfare standards. NON-ORTHODOX RABBIS like Allen have been way out front on this one. I grew up in a Reform synagogue and was taught why classical Reform chose to reject kashrut. That too many institutions and individuals – and that includes many Conservative Jews – have failed to take up this challenge is a loss for Judaism, and Jews.

I understand why a temple would bristle at adopting standards set by Orthodox supervisors. Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews have grown distant over the years, and the mutual recriminations over Agriprocessors won't help.

I hadn't yet eaten at Delice. I wrote that post on the recommendation of a friend who knows food. I don't know food. My favorite restaurant in the world is Poquito Mas but I shouldn't eat there because it's not kosher.

So last week my friend Holly Randall said she wanted to talk to me. She offered to buy me dinner.

I decided on Delice Bistro.

I made reservations Friday.

A few minutes later, I got a call back from the owner confirming.

I felt like a big shot.

I almost never eat at places requiring reservations.

I walk in Sunday with a ravishing Holly. Her arms are uncovered. Her top swings low over her Adirondacks.

There's a tall beautiful blonde maitre'd.

We take a table outside beside Pico Blvd.

A waiter brings three types of bread. I choose two slices, head to the basin to say the blessing netilat yadayim and come back to my table to make hamotzi.

I see half a dozen friends from shul.

This is definitely the place to see and be seen.

It's full.

I order the linguini (only a couple of entree selections for vegetarians) and Holly orders the roast duck.

In her first dip with the bread, Holly smears balsamic vinegar on her face.

I don't say anything, figuring it would be rude.

Holly gets all serious.

I start laughing.

Holly: "The reason I wanted to meet with you…" and she goes off about her spiritual journey while her face is smeared with orange vinegar.

Our dinner comes. Holly usually finishes in twice the time I take (and I think of myself as a fast eater).

She goes to the ladies room.

Five minutes later, she comes back and demands, "How long have I had balsamic vinegar on my face?"

"The whole night," I say. "I didn't know whether to say anything or not."

"You should've said something," Holly says. "Did I have it on my face when I was making my serious speech?"

"Yes."

"I hate you."

Unlike me, Holly's not a very spiritual person.

Julien Bohbot, the owner, comes by. It feels like he's welcoming us into his home.

"I'm Luke Ford," I say.

Surely he know the power of Luke Ford.

Hmm, mustn't flaunt it. Not very spiritual.

"So I have this friend," I tell Holly. "I mean, she's just a friend. I've never spent so much time alone with a woman without crossing the line. And whenever anyone suggests that we're romantically involved, she laughs. Would you laugh in that situation?"

"I'd laugh."

"The other night, we were at Sheva Brachos (a week of parties for a newly married Jewish couple). And as we were getting up to leave, we say mazal tov to the newly married couple. And the host says, 'Soon by you two.'

"And my friend starts laughing. And I feel like it's a diss. I feel like she's saying I'm not in her league."

"That's what she's saying."

"I'm Luke Ford. I have awesome powers. What's this?

"And then she says as I walk her to her door, still giggling five minutes later, 'In what life?'

"She keeps going off on variations of 'In what life would I be together with you?'

"I feel like this is a giant diss. Would you say, 'In what life?'"

"No. I wouldn't say, 'In what life?' That's a diss."

"I'm Luke Ford. I shouldn't be getting dissed like this."

Holly's on a new diet. She goes to the beach with this guy she likes and she wants to look good in her bikini.

He hasn't made a move on her in a year because he's working on himself, according to Holly.

"Whenever a guy says he's working on himself, it just means he's bonking some other woman," I say.

We walk home.

"Now I can write that this is the best kosher restaurant in town. And I can do it with journalistic integrity."

"Luke Ford and journalistic integrity? Those are four words I never thought I'd hear together.

"You can write that the roast duck was delicious. Everything was good there."

We go back to the hovel and I show her this website that collects my favorite movie clips.

"You're the first person I've been able to share this with," I say.

"Of course.

"Look, you can watch the rest of this on your own time.

"Is your clock right? 8:30? I've got to get going."

"Great to see you. Thanks for dinner. Thanks for the Borba water. It's doing amazing things for my skin."

Best Place to Get Into a Fender-Bender With a Black Hat: Elat Market Parking LotThe frenzied chaos that overtakes the Elat Market parking lot must be a testament to how good their groceries are. Whether it's innocent-looking Orthodox mothers (with infants in car seats) crossing off their produce list, or hungry men in traditional garb on a Talmud break, or eager yeshiva students racing for the last box of matzah, no one gets in, out of, or through the Elat Market lot unscathed. Just try to enter, exit or drive safely up Wooster Street without honking your horn, slamming on your breaks, stopping short, cursing your brains out and then, finally, getting hit — this is what happens when Jews go food shopping. 8730 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 659-7070.

Best Kosher Market on Pico Boulevard Where You Can Turn Your Cart Around Mid-Aisle: Glatt Mart

The Glatt Mart, on Pico Boulevard and Elm Drive, was just about a year old when it burned down, in December 2004, devastating the group of owners who had invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in designing and building the spacious and well-stocked kosher supermarket. The fire was determined to be arson, but because of a glitch in their insurance policy, the owners received only a fraction of the store's worth. Still, the five owners pooled their resources, got loans and invested $3 million in the market, and after sitting behind scaffolding for more than three years, Glatt Mart reopened in April, just before Passover. Modeled after a European supermarket, with discreet sections for the butcher, a fresh fish counter, an in-store bakery, a well laid out produce section, a computer-controlled refrigerator/freezer case and a room for candy, nuts and wine, it's also unlike any other kosher market on Pico, with aisles wide enough to fit two or even three carts side by side. While co-owner Meir Davidpour's claims of Glatt Mart being a "kosher Whole Foods" is a bit hyperbolic, Glatt Mart has many attractions: There are seven cash registers, so lines are minimal, and 25 parking spaces in back alleviate a small bit of the usual parking headache on Pico. Glatt Mart also has an extensive take-out section of prepared foods, including sushi, deli, and Persian, Israeli and American dinner items. Davidpour says the market is intended to cater to Americans and Israelis, but it does carry a wide selection of Persian foods. The entire store is under the kosher supervision of the Rabbinical Council of California. 8708 W. Pico Blvd. 310-289-6888.

Q All my teachers tell me that swordfish is not kosher, but my grandfather insists that his family ate it when he was a kid. Can you explain this?

- S.F., Tel Aviv

A I first heard about the controversy over the kashrut of swordfish as a college student, when a local Orthodox rabbi told me that the Conservative movement might be correct that it should be kosher. I forgot about the remark, since I was never a big fish consumer (I only started eating tuna a few years ago). Yet a recently acquired taste for fish (aliya will do that to you), plus a fascinating article by Ari Zivotofsky of Bar-Ilan University (B.D.D. 19), from which this column will heavily draw, has resparked my interest.

While the Torah specifies that kosher fish require both scales and fins (Leviticus 11:9-10), an ancient tradition codified by Halacha asserts that all fish with scales necessarily have fins (Nida 51b, YD 83:3). As such, much halachic literature focused on defining halachic scales, a complex project since these coverings vary greatly in different fish. Among other criteria, kosher fish must contain scales attached to their body which can be peeled without damaging the fish's skin (Rama YD 83:1). Scales that shed when fish mature or leave the water, or alternatively, that develop only later in life, were also deemed acceptable.

Nonetheless, it remains difficult to identify which fish possess the biological traits that match these halachic criteria. For starters, there are myriads of fish which must be carefully examined by competent authorities.