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Two Months After Launch, Tzohar Kashrut Division Making Inroads But Still Faces Steep Climb

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When Gadi Piamenta decided to open a coffee bar in downtown Jerusalem in 2012, the process and cost of applying for kashrut certification from the Jerusalem rabbinate was the most natural part of the decision. Although Piamenta is not observant, as a 12th generation Jerusalemite who was raised in an Orthodox home he wanted to ensure his restaurant was recognized as compliant with Jewish law (halacha). Having a kashrut certificate posted on the wall of Halitatea was central to what he was trying to build: A community “coffee shop” with a focus on tea, and to create a special atmosphere where everybody could feel comfortable.

A week before Piamenta opened Halitatea in July, 2012, however, the pride Piamenta had felt at opening a kosher establishment in Jerusalem had turned to sadness and anger.

“I had started the process with the rabbinate ahead of time, they told me how much the supervision would cost, said the supervisor would come an hour a day.

“But ahead of the opening, a regional supervisor (a different guy than I’d dealt with before) came to check out the restaurant, but when he noticed that I don’t wear a kipa, he told me the price of the kashrut certificate would be double what I’d been quoted,” Piamenta told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

Piamenta refused to pay the sudden increase but agreed to keep his rabbinate certification when the supervisor agreedto the original price . At first, he says the rabbinate employee tasked with overseeing the restaurant (known in Hebrew as a mashgiach) did come for about an hour a day, as agreed. Eventually, however, his visits became less and less frequent, and became peppered with demands: Under-the-table payments, free food for him and his wife, ceramic tea pots and loose tea to take home.

“it got to a point where he came in once a month to use the bathroom and pick up his check,” he said.

Ultimately, Piamenta decided to leave the rabbinate last year, when the restaurant moved to new, bigger premises on Hillel Street, also in the downtown area but the regional supervisor said that cost of supervision at the new premises would go up – not that the amount of supervision would go up – but would not commit to a final price for supervision for the new location. Piamenta contacted Hashgacha Pratit, a Jerusalem-based rabbinic body that aims to challenge the rabbinate’s monopoly on religious oversight of restaurants and eventually obtained the group’s “Brit Ne’emanut” (covenant of trust) certificate. Several months later, Hashgacha Pratit merged with the Tzohar rabbinical organization when the latter launched its own kashrut oversight division and finally replaced the certificate on the wall in March.

“The difference is like night and day,” Piamenta says. “The price for Tzohar’s oversight is twice the original rabbinate price I was paying. But they have explained everything about the organization, patiently and carefully – most importantly, the mashgiach is paid by the organization, not the restaurant, which eliminates a major possibility for corruption. For Passover, the rules we had to follow were clear, and the mashgiach came and explained what needed to be done, patiently and thoroughly. It was great.”

Tzohar is careful to observe local trademark laws restricting the use of the word “kosher” to rabbinate-supervised establishments, thus Hashgacha Pratit’s “covenant of trust” certificate and Tzohar’s clumsily-worded “Certification Regarding the Preparation of Food and Oversight” certifications.

Nevertheless, the organization was subjected to fierce criticism when it launched its kashrut supervision department in February, both by rabbinate officials who feared the new body would cut into its lucrative monopoly on oversight and by Jewish Home party MKs, who denounced the group and called for the new oversight department to be disbanded.

“Even if some people are critical of the chief rabbinate, the fact remains that it is the elected rabbinate of the State of Israel – the first flowering of our redemption,” said MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) at the time, using a phrase common in religious Zionist circles to describe the modern state. “Any attempt to make divisions or to privatise in this area and to create an alternative to the chief rabbinate means sowing divisions amongst the Jewish people, and could also cause members of the public to make unwitting mistakes (by unknowingly eating non-kosher food).

“Their intentions may be in the right place, but their actions are not acceptable,” Yogev said, quoting from The Kuzari, an 11th century book of Jewish philosophy by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi that is a staple of religious Zionist thought.

Notably, the group has also been consistently criticised for its marriage assistance program which helps brides and grooms streamline the often challenging process of registering for a marriage license with the chief rabbinate, the only body in the country authorized to grant a license to Jews and provides “user-friendly” Orthodox rabbis to help couples craft individual, yet halachically-binding, weddings with. Like the kashrut branch, criticism of the marriage program has focused on concerns about emasculating the chief rabbinate.

But defenders of Tzohar and organization officials say the group plays a critical function in preserving Jewish values in Israel, especially for the secular majority, many of whom keep kosher to one degree or another and who want halachic Jewish weddings, but who feel deep revulsion at cooperating with a chief rabbinate that is widely seen as corrupt and punitive to individuals and organizations who dare cross it.

“We need a chief rabbinate that serves individuals, not political groups that want to maintain their hegemony over the Rabbinate in order to use the resources and political influence of that institution to serve the needs of the Haredi political parties,” Rabbi David Stav, the founder of Tzohar told me during his failed campaign for chief rabbi in 2013. “Naturally, that’s a threat to some interested parties, so they incite and criticize. But we are fighting to create a rabbinate that will be in tune with the needs of the Jewish people, that will prevent the disengagement of millions of Jews from Judaism.

“We’re fighting for the right to be able to help millions of Jews to feel proud they are Jewish, to feel connected to their Jewish heritage, to feel joy about their Judaism… today, the chief rabbinate is nothing more than a political appointment which is meant to be a milk cow for special political and economic interests, not for the benefit of Israel or Israel society. So of course, those people are going to fight what we are doing. But we are trying to challenge rabbis to give better service, to create an atmosphere that inspires people to improve service they give,” said Stav, who also serves as municipal rabbi of Shoham, a mostly secular city of some 20,000 people a short drive from Ben Gurion Airport .

By Andrew Friedman
(TPS)

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