ABSTRACT
On Tuesday, June 1, 2004, readers of the New York Times, opened their morning papers to the first page of the second (Metro) section to find an article entitled “There’s Something in the Water, And It May Not Be Strictly Kosher.” The article went on to describe the discovery in New York City drinking water of millimeter-long zooplankton called copepods. These creatures, when viewed under a microscope (they are virtually invisible to the naked eye), look like crustaceans or oddly shaped bugs, which would clearly not be kosher if they were larger. The question, for the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, was what to do about the water now that copepods were known to be present. Could the water still be drunk without hesitation? Did it require prior filtering? Not surprisingly, different segments of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox community responded in different ways. But, whatever a particular group decided to do, New York City tap water would—for the observant Jew, at least—never again be the same.
