We all know about the prohibition of bishul akum - we are not allowed to eat what a gentile cooked for us. The halacha only applies to certain foods. The poskim discuss coffee. This can be a very practical question because many Jews are addicted to caffeine [nicht a gitte zach]. In addition many Jews fly, or more correctly sit on planes which fly [only Superman flies. And of course Jordan in his heyday and me in my dreams - "Ehrman flies in for the slam right in Bryant's FACE"], and get woken up a 3am by a non-jewish stewardess who somehow thinks a sleeping person wants to be woken up to drink a cup of coffee. I can say personally I've been woken up many times by such women [sometimes they lightly tap me and I jump out of my seat and scream NEGGGIIIYYYAAAHH!!!] and haven't drunk a cup of coffee since I sat in the woman's section of the Yeshivat Hakotel beis medrash and learned by myself hoping a] to become a talmid chochom and b] to find a shidduch. But that was about 20 years ago. [For those interested, sitting there didn't help me find a shidduch - I found her in the zoo (or rather she found me in the zoo, chronicled
here and
here). The talmid chochom part I'm still working on].
Back to our coffee-bishul-akum-shyla. Can I have that 3am cup of coffee generously prepared by Christina, my stewardess on Lufthansa? The consensus of poskim is ........ yesssss! If it's kosher coffee of course.
One reason is that the coffee beans are first roasted and not yet fit for consumption and now that the hot water is poured over them it is considered "bishul achar tzlia" cooking that follows roasting, which is not considered cooking. Only the original cooking [or roasting] counts and in our instance at that point it wasn't yet ready to be eaten so it doesn't cause a problem.
One posek says that he sweetens his coffee so that the finishing touches are done by a Jew thus negating the problem of bishul akum.
But I say that coffee isn't good for you and nor is sugar so when you have them together it's a double no-no.
לבריאות!!:-)
