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Kosher lubricant slides into market

Trigg Laboratories announces ‘Wet’ line has been certified kosher

By Lazar Berman

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18 July 2013, 7:31 pm

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Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

People kissing in Jerusalem. (Illustrative photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Friday nights just got even better.

Trigg Laboratories, a personal lubricant manufacturer in Valencia, California, hopes to penetrate the Jewish market with its new line of kosher products, according to the New York Post.

Earlier this week, Trigg announced that the Rabbinical Council of California had agreed to certify 95% of its “Wet” line of lubricants. The approval comes after a two-year review of the company’s 52,000 sq. ft. facility.

Trigg hopes that the new certification will help the company insert itself into the Orthodox market, in which relations between married couples are seen as an important commandment.

However, the products will not have a kosher stamp on the bottle. “We don’t put the symbol on the bottle,” Rabbi Yosef Caplan, assistant director of Kashrut Services at the RCC, told the Forward. “The product has a back-up letter.”

Company spokesman Dean Draznin explained to the Post that the RCC checked the company’s raw material and manufacturing methods.

None of the company’s Wet line contains byproducts from nonkosher animals, and animals used in preparing the lubrication gels were treated according to standards imposed by Jewish law.

Draznin also said that he hopes Trigg will now be able to come into its own in Israel, where a variety of non-food products carry kosher certification. “It’s a given that if it’s sold [in Israel], it needs to meet kosher laws,” he said.

The company has been thrust into the limelight by the recent announcement, with coverage in Jewish media, blogs, and mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

“It’s nice to see that rabbis are not shying away from addressing sexual aid, which will facilitate great excitement in the bedroom,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Kosher Sex” told the Post, “People misunderstand Orthodox Jews, in that they believe that they have sex through a sheet with a hole in the middle, that Orthodoxy is profoundly prudish. Nothing can be further from the truth.”

The announcement comes just in time for Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love, on July 22.