DESCRIPTION:

Join us for an evening of blind soda tasting, hands-on flavor chemistry, and thought-provoking debates about provenance, process, and human psychology. We’ll explore the story of how an Atlanta rabbi forced Coca-Cola to reveal its secret recipe and changed the global food supply chain forever. 

MATERIALS:

• Individually packages brownies from the store 
• Homemade brownies (from a mix is fine) at least 1 day before, left out on the counter (don’t seal them – we want them to dry out a bit) 
• A set of flavoring extracts like this one (or if you need kosher-certified products, McCormick sells over a dozen kosher flavor extracts you can buy online for $2-$6/oz) 
• A set of 1mL pipettes (1 per flavoring extract) 
• A set of 2 oz (60 mL) disposable cups (5+ per participant) 
• Pre-made voting sheets (paper and markers) 
• Additional paper for participants to write down their guesses for the taste test 
• Markers or pens 
• Stickers or sticker dots for voting (optional) 
• Assorted varieties of coke/pepsi 
• A set of pitchers labeled with numbers (1 per coke/pepsi variety) 
• Plain seltzer water (1 large bottle for every 5 participants) 

PROGRAM OUTLINE:

• Arrival / Voting Activity (15 minutes) 
• Discussion of Source #1 (15 minutes) 
• Activities: Taste Test & Bitul Lab (20 minutes) 
• Brownie Tasting, Source #2, and Final Discussion (20 minutes) 

Voting Activity (as people come in)

• Before the program starts, put up papers on the wall or out on the table. Each paper should have the scenario at the top, and then a line below to serve as a spectrum, with the ends labeled. As participants enter, have them review the scenarios and put their initials or stickers or dots at a place on the spectrum that represents their view. 
• A glass of recycled water is guaranteed to be 100% pure H20 under a microscope, but 20 minutes ago it was astronaut urine. Do you drink it?           [Pour Me A Glass] <───────────────────> [Absolutely No Way] 
• Your favorite food drops onto a restaurant floor that was disinfected 2 minutes ago. Scientifically, it’s cleaner than the plate on your counter. Do you eat it?                                                                                                                     [Eat It Instantly] <───────────────────> [Throw It Away] 
• A baker makes a traditional rum cake. After baking in an oven for 45 minutes, chemical tests confirm it still contains 1.5% alcohol by volume.  Assuming sugar isn’t a concern, would you let a baby eat a slice?                                          [Yeah, it’s just cake] <──────────────> [No way, that’s like solid beer!] 
• A factory makes peanut cookies, then deep-cleans the line to scientific purity before making chocolate chip cookies. Your loved one has a severe, deathly allergy. Would you serve them cookies from the cleaned line?                           [Trust The Process] <───────────────────> [Not Worth It] 
• You get a really fancy set of lingerie or underwear that was worn by a stranger, but has been commercially sterilized to medical standards. Do you wear it?                                                                                                                            [Free Premium Underwear!] <────────────> [Never In A Million Years] 
• A priceless 2,000-year-old artifact was destroyed. Luckily, last year conservators recreated it down to the atom using identical synthetic materials. Can the recreation count as the real artifact, or is it just a replica?                                          [It Counts] <───────────────────> [Nope, Just A Replica] 
• A steak is synthesized in a lab from cultured human muscle cells, obtained ethically from naturally-shed DNA. Do you eat it?                                              [I’d Try A Bite] <───────────────────> [Absolute Hard Pass] 

Discussion (15 minutes)

• Welcome everyone into the space officially. 
• Read Source #1 (Bitul B’Shishim) on the Source Sheet 
• Introduce the Blind Taste Flight and Bitul Lab activities 
• SAY: “Before we taste our Cokes and head to our Seltzer Lab to test whether 1/60th is actually invisible to your palates, keep this question in mind: When does a microscopic, invisible input change the fundamental identity of what you’re eating or drinking?” 

NOTE: For larger groups, these two activities should run in parallel as open stations. Half the room does the Coke tasting while the other half crafts sodas at the Bitul Lab, then they swap halfway through. 

Blind Taste Flight (20 minutes)

• Participants try several numbered, unlabeled cups of Coke (e.g., Kosher-for-Passover real sugar, standard American High Fructose Corn Syrup, Mexican Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi). 
• They rate flavor profiles and try to guess which formula is which. 

Seltzer & Extract Bitul Lab (20 minutes) 

• Meanwhile, other participants will be trying out the 1/60^th formula at the Bitul Lab. 
• Participants take one of the 60 mL seltzer cups and drop in exactly 1 mL of a concentrated extract to see if 1/60^th is truly invisible to their palate. 
• Once they see how strong 1/60^th is, they can use the extracts and other cups to craft their own custom formula. (Note: different extracts taste different at 1/60^th)  

Brownie Tasting & Debrief (20 minutes) 

• Bring everyone back 
• Unveil the answers to the Coke flight. 
• Serve the store-bought brownies alongside the day-old homemade ones. Industrial packaged baked goods rely heavily on vegetable glycerin as a humectant to stay soft on store shelves for months. Homemade baked goods don’t have it, so they dry out much faster. This shows the significant difference that glycerin can make. 
• While everyone is enjoying the brownies, read Source #2 (Coke Becomes Kosher) on the source sheet. 
• Discuss: 
  • The secret Coke recipe is a closely-guarded secret, and yet they allowed Rabbi Geffen to view it. He’s still one of only a handful of people who’ve ever learned the recipe. Why do you think Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble were willing to share the recipe, or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to accommodate a tiny minority of kosher consumers in the 1930s and 50s? 
  • Rabbi Geffen ruled that microscopic glycerin couldn’t be nullified (bitul) because it was added intentionally. Do you agree with that logic? Where else in life do we care more about intention than physical impact? 
  • Looking at our voting activity, where do you personally draw the line between scientific purity and your own ‘ick factor’ or ethical boundaries? 
• Finally, circle back to the Voting Activity and connect the story of Rabbi Geffen to how everyone voted.  
  • SAY: “What this activity was meant to get at is the way that science is sometimes at odds with how humans evaluate the world. We care about source, history, process, intimate contact, and moral taboos. These are the same concerns that Jewish law has when it comes to kashrut.” 
  • SAY: “In 1935, Coca-Cola tried to tell Rabbi Geffen that non-kosher glycerin was ‘just a molecule’ present in tiny, invisible amounts. But Rabbi Geffen said no. Under Jewish law, origin travels with the molecule, equipment leaves invisible residue, and process matters just as much as ingredients. He convinced Coke to change its entire supply chain, proving that thousands of years before modern food science, Jewish law was already wrestling with the exact same questions as in our activity tonight. 
  • SAY: “As you taste these brownies, one baked with vegetable glycerin to lock in moisture, and one without, take a look back at our Voting Wall. Whether we’re talking about recycled urine, sterilized underwear, rum cake for a baby, or lab-grown meat, Rabbi Geffen proved nearly a century ago that humans don’t just eat molecules. We eat history, process, and provenance.”