“Assraelis” (nsfw) producer Oren Cohen shot his adult film in Hebrew with an all-Israeli cast. He stuck the the Hebrew letter kof, with a “k” tucked inside, on the cover. Then came the rabbinic nastygram:
“As a leading company in the area of kosher food certification, companies are only contractually authorized to utilize the Kof-K trademark to promote and/or market their food products,” the letter said.
The symbol is the trademarked property of the Kof-K company, which is based in Teaneck, N.J., and certifies food like bread, juice and cookies as abiding by kosher standards. Those who observe Jewish dietary laws consider any food lacking one of a handful of such symbols, known as hechsherim, as treif, or unkosher.
Mr. Cohen, the son of a Moroccan Israeli and the third generation of his family involved in the pornography industry, was a bit perplexed.
“I thought, what – they own a letter?” Mr. Cohen said in an interview.
They do. And they have for more than 30 years, said Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum, the administrative director of the company.
Link to New York Times article (1/27). Here’s an earlier item at AVN (1/25), and another at TMZ (1/25). Here’s the DVD: Link (nsfw) to “Assraelis: never good enough for his mother!” (Thanks, Jason Schultz)
Reader comment: Anonymous says,
I think there’s an important point glossed over in your blog post… “Kof-K” isn’t *the* kosher symbol, it’s *one company’s* kosher symbol. It’s not “a letter”, as the porn producer indicates; it’s a great big Hebrew letter with a tiny little English letter inside it, something that doesn’t appear anywhere in any language. Basically it’s a trademark in the classic sense, used to indicate that a bunch of rabbis in New Jersey approve of a particular product. While the bounds if intellectual property laws have often been stretched to the breaking point, this one seems pretty cut-and-dry. It’s their brand, and they don’t approve of it’s use. I’m sure Good Housekeeping would feel the same way if their symbol was used to promote Mop Porn.