I'm out of oxygen bleach, and I refuse to buy oxi-clean as it's mostly filler so was looking for "pure" oxygen bleach.  Since it's sodium percarbonate I thought I'd look for that.  A number of them came up saying they are Kosher.  Why?

Anyone have a good cheap source? I used to use Clorox oxi-magic as it was mostly s-p with some sodium carbonate added, but none of my local stores carry it.

I have a basic understanding of kosher, I'm just wondering why this product would ever need to be considered kosher.  I can't fathom using it in food prep, even as a leavening agent.

Any product used in kosher food preparation or the cleaning of the preparation equipment needs to have the production overseen, but not liturgically blessed, by a qualified mashgiach, a rabbi with special training in kashrut. Just as with STPP, there can be kosher food grade and non-food grade categories. While I do not mind that the STPP that I use for the laundry comes from China and is therefore probably not pure, the STPP that I use as a dentifrice is food grade and is probably a product of mines here in the USA. I don't believe that my washers can get cancer, but I am not willing to trust my body to non-food grade STPP even for the two minutes two or three times a day when I brush my teeth.

Books have been written on this and present as many viewpoints as there are authors. I think there is some book called Judaism for dummies, part of the for dummies series which might be a place to start. Herman Wouk's This is my God is a small, but rich book I first read in the 1970s. Essential Judaism by George Robinsom is bigger and richer, but you can pick and choose topics that interest you. Milton Steinberg's Basic Judaism, a book about the Jewish religion--its ideals, beliefs and practices--written for both Jews and non-Jews, is another of the thinner books and decades old.  My sister and I both have copies of a book she bought titled From the ten commandments to chicken soup by Michael Shapiro so that we could look at the same text while discussing it. It has an index in front so you can look up words and terms that make up short chapters divided up into Religion, History and Civilization. These are just the books most readily visible as I look from the computer to the book shelf. There are uncountable others, but a personal account turns too easily into a life story and I am not up to that.

All of these titles can be found for pennies on Amazon plus $3.99 for shipping. I will be happy to answer questions as best as I can. Google can help with questions, also, but the one question I urge you not to ask is "What do Jews believe?" because Judaism is not a religion of fixed dogma and is more a religion of action than of belief.  The study of Judaism is a process of questioning instead of learning what to believe. There is the joke about where you have two Jews you will have three opinions which is really true and is compounded by the "on the one hand you have, but then on the other hand you have" discussion style. Jews are called The People of the Book and while it originally meant the Torah, it can mean much more now.  Tiny Israel has a publishing rate many times that of all of its Muslim neighbors combined and that does not even begin to factor in the publishing of Jewish communities all over the world.

Happy reading and researching. I am here to help if you need it.

I would guess that the coated version of the chemical is where the problem lies.  The word ‘coating’ covers a lot of ground, and organic sources of any type would naturally raise a lot of questions regarding kashrut.  From a quick glance at available brands, it looks like the uncoated varieties are the only ones marked kosher.

The two most helpful books I ever read about keeping kosher (and about Jewish life in general) were Hayim Donin’s To Be a Jew and To Pray as a Jew.  I’m not sure how helpful they would be to someone who knows literally nothing about Jewish life and religion, but with the Internet and all that, I imagine it would be easy to clarify unfamiliar terms or concepts.  For a non-Jew, parts of it are absolutely eye-opening. 

Most people know the simple rules like ‘no cheeseburgers’ and ‘no shrimp cocktail’, but those are so simplistic that they actually distort the real meaning of the laws.  Keeping kosher is an integral part of Jewish life and culture, not just a bunch of menu suggestions.

Great idea, Louis. I didn't even think of my bookmarks.

They would look for kosher certification on any processed product brought into the home because, don't forget, dish cloths and towels are washed in the washer in which the various cleaning agents have been used. Cleaners for glass, floors and walls have to have kosher certification because the cleaning cloths will go into the same washer and some of the cleaners will be used on surfaces that will come into contact with food or dishes. It is a long chain with many links, none of which are unimportant if you are that devoted to your religion.

Correct me if I’m wrong here.  I’m basing this on what I’ve heard and read in the past. 

Since laundry soap is inedible, it shouldn’t be a problem for kashrut, even if it includes treif ingredients. However, for things like tablecloths and cloth napkins and dishtowels, the residual presence of soap made with treif animals is unacceptable to many people. Kosher detergent isn’t required, but for these people, it is apparently desirable.  This may have been more of an issue a few decades ago, when soap was routinely made with animal fat.  That’s not really the case any more. 

The concern about animal fat in soap led me to think that the coatings on the sodium percarbonate were the problem.  Those may or may not be made with animal products, and it really doesn’t matter.  But since some people want kosher detergent, it’s easy to give them what they want with a hechsher for the pure chemical—which is obviously kosher.

This question is really fascinating to me, and after spending way too much time looking up answers on line, I can’t say that there was a lot of information.

I do not refrain from using electricity on Shabbat, but I don't undertake large amounts of work either using electrical appliances or requiring tools. I read, listen to music, watch TV and use the computer at various points in the day. I drive to synagogue. There are some very Orthodox who eschew all use of everything mechanical that involves starting or stopping any device that causes the technical "spark" or "arc" involved in making electrical contact because that involves making light. Ovens can be left on to keep food warm if they were turned on before Shabbat started. When electronic oven controls were introduced, they shut off automatically after a certain number of hours so the "Sabbath mode" was added to ovens permitting them to operate for the 25 hours of Shabbat. In Israel and in kosher resorts elsewhere, on Shabbat the elevators stop at each floor so no one has to push a button and make electrical contact to select a floor or call for an elevator.  To the really Shomer Shabbat (those who really keep the Sabbath) there are many acts prohibited on Shabbat because they are related to the work God performed in creating the world. If you want to get right down to it, talking should be prohibited on those grounds also since everything God did is introduced by the phrase, "God said."  Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." But in the next verse, God divided the light from the darkness. This is an act of separation in the work of creation and is the reason for gefilte fish. Gefilte fish is prepared by separating the flesh of the fish from the bones before combining it with chopped onions, eggs and seasonings to form the quenelles before they are poached. That allows us to eat fish (and horseradish) on Shabbat without separating the flesh from the bones of the fish since you can't eat the bones except from canned salmon so, if the can of salmon is labeled kosher, you could eat salmon loaf or patties on Shabbat.  Fish fillets can also be eaten on Shabbat because there are no bones in them, we hope. To me Shabbat is a day of delight and rest that is anticipated all through the week. My soul or spirit is refreshed by the worship service, the discussion over questions and topics introduced by the Rabbi, the fellowship with friends over food after the service and the rest, a time for me with no deadlines or schedule. Shabbat is, according to Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus,  a cathedral of sanctified, separated time within time, when we take time to enjoy and be grateful for what is ours, and do not seek to create or purchase additional material goods. It is a special gift set apart from the rest of the week. This separation is sanctified and comes from the creation story in Genesis. God rested from the work of creation on the seventh day and was refreshed. God blessed the rest and gave Shabbat as a gift to us.

When the Mishkan or tabernacle was built in the desert, its furnishings were inscribed with the term Kadosh L'Adonai, Holy unto God. You can see the words in Hebrew in the Tiffany Studio's window depicting the building of the Tabernacle in the desert at the Chapel on Jekyll Island, ironic since it was a restricted private club. The Mishkan was a place where God and the people of Israel might draw close to one another. This holiness extends to other places and our homes are considered mikdashim, holy dwellings because of the commandment "You shall be holy for I the lord your God am holy." So we strive to make our lives and homes holy. Because our homes are holy and the meal table is an altar where sustenance is blessed before being consumed, we do not bring things into the home that would harm or defile the holiness which is one of the reasons for looking for kosher-certified products. It is not that they have been blessed, but that there is something beyond purity and ethically proper preparation in them. Kosher slaughter with one swift severing of the jugular vein is supposed to painlessly render the animal unconscious very quickly. There can be no imperfections in the knife edge that would cause the animal pain if the rough place caught on the animal's flesh.  There is even a prohibition from these ancient times against eating the limb of a living animal. Before refrigeration or preservation techniques, people used to chop off an animal's leg or as much of it as was needed to eat and let the animal stay alive since while it was alive, the meat would not go bad. Kosher products are not contaminated or adulterated by other things. If you will remember from chemistry class, there are purity ratings for certain chemicals: pharmaceutically pure and chemically pure. In the chemistry lab, chemicals have to be chemically pure to avoid messing up chemical experiments, altering reactions or causing other undesired results. The slight impurities tolerated in a pharmaceutical compound will not affect the patient or outcome. The kosher food grade rating is similar this. It is certified to not contain other ingredients which would not be necessarily harmful anyplace else, but would not be good if they come in contact with anything food-related. When CocaCola was made kosher, for example, the source of glycerin in the formula had to be changed because it originally was a pork byproduct.

I know you can see the dichotomy of my using food-grade STPP for a mouth rinse and non-food grade STPP in the laundry. I do not know if the STPP from China sold by the Chemistry Store is kosher or not nor its degree of purity because the only kosher STPP is food grade. My father alav hashalom, is not here to tell me what goes into getting a hechsher or kosher certification for cleaning and sanitation products or the ingredients in them, but I remember him telling me about one of the companies with which he worked getting kosher certification so that they could market to kosher establishments. 

To correct something written above about kosher and pareve. Pareve means dietarily neutral, neither meat nor dairy. Salt, vegetables, fruits, most vegetable oils and flours and eggs are pareve. Depending on any additives added in production of the processed product, these can be kosher or not and pareve products can be combined and eaten with either meat or dairy items in meat or dairy preparations. The same flour that makes a dairy cake can also make meat gravy.  You can't put butter with the meat, but separately, either a meat or dairy food can use a pareve product. Beans are kosher. Pork and beans are not. Heinz vegetarian baked beans in tomato sauce was the first commercially prepared food product mass-marketed in this country. Even though eggs are sold in the "dairy" section of grocery stores, it is more because of the grouping of refrigerated cases, not that they are dairy. As a friend once said, eggs come out of a chicken's ass, not out of a cow's udder.

I wrote earlier about an apartment building owned by a community of diamond cutters in New York. In the late 50s-early 60s, they replaced all of the refrigerators with TOL Westinghouse, I think, models that proved to be a disaster because the residents were in the habit of unplugging the refrigerators before the start of Shabbat. Horror or horrors, these boxes had electric door openers! The were all replaced within a week with a model one step down without the electric door opener.

Lights in refrigerators and ovens were unscrewed before the start of Shabbat so that they would not come on when the door was opened for those who left both plugged in.

with the in-depth explanation on this subject!  I love this site and the wealth of knowledge folk share.  I truly appreciate the education I've gotten on this subject.

Tickets for Passover? Was it  a Seder at a synagogue? Those people pay to attend.

That was not a Passover meal. Kreplach and noodle kugel are chometz and are not foods for Pesach.  Did the onion soup have toast and cheese (au gratin) in it? If so, they just didn't keep kosher or serve traditional Passover foods so what the hell, maybe it was Passover. If you needed a ticket to get into a service, it was the High Holidays and given the meal, it was probably Rosh Hashana. Nobody would take a friend they wanted to keep to a Yom Kippur service and the food was waaay to heavy to break the fast.

The main Passover meal is the Seder, which is usually done at home so even on Shabbat there is no evening service at the synagogue, but there are congregational Seders, and the festival service is the morning after the Seder so I am having trouble understanding the meal, the service and the ticket.

All of this is small potatoes compared to the loss of your friend. I'm sorry your friend is gone.