I have bought some of Adagio's teaware, and I would love to try some of the tea (the selection looks great), but unfortunately, I can't, because I am Jewish and can only eat kosher. Assuming the tea doesn't have any meat in it, making the tea kosher would be extremely easy. Perhaps Adagio could looki into this?
A list of kosher food certifiers in case you are interested: http://www.kashrut.com/agencies/
May I note that the Kof-K, one of the largest and most respected certifiers, is located right in New Jersey?
Have a good day.
Michael M
I suppose kashrut (the noun, kosher is the adjective) can be used as a certifier of cleanliness. I guess I've never feared that my food is unclean so much that it would occur to me that gentiles would use kashrut as a certifier of cleanliness. In other words, were I not committed to keep kashrut for religious reasons, I don't think I'd keep it for cleanliness, so I assumed most gentiles would be similar.
As a side note, the rabbi does not bless the food. He inspects it for contamination/interaction with unkosher food (like insects, pork, unkosherly slaughtered beef and poultry, and their derivatives, such as many colorants and oils) and unkosher mixtures (like meat and milk) just as someone from the USDA would inspect for the things they inspect. A rabbi has no more power to bless anything than I do. A rabbi is a learned scholar with the authority to make legal rulings, similar to a judge on a bench (in fact, one could compare the Torah to the Constitution, the Talmud to the Supreme Court's rulings on the Torah/Constitution, and the rabbis to the judges).
As a side note, the rabbi does not bless the food. He inspects it for contamination/interaction with unkosher food (like insects, pork, unkosherly slaughtered beef and poultry, and their derivatives, such as many colorants and oils) and unkosher mixtures (like meat and milk) just as someone from the USDA would inspect for the things they inspect. A rabbi has no more power to bless anything than I do. A rabbi is a learned scholar with the authority to make legal rulings, similar to a judge on a bench (in fact, one could compare the Torah to the Constitution, the Talmud to the Supreme Court's rulings on the Torah/Constitution, and the rabbis to the judges).
According to the TeaClass site here, most teas are kosher. The intermediate lesson on organic tea (http://www.teaclass.com/lesson_0204.html) says, "because most teas do not include any man-made add-ons, they are automatically regarded as Kosher", but most flavored teas aren't. I guess getting officially certified as Kosher by some company or organization is another matter though. My guess, though you may want confirmation from an Adagio rep, is that you ought to be safe with almost any of the non-flavored teas here.