The Knesset voted early Wednesday to repeal the 2021 kashrut reform, blocking private bodies from issuing official kashrut certificates and returning control over certification to the Chief Rabbinate and authorized public rabbis.
The amendment passed its second and third readings by 46 votes to 41.
Under the law, official kashrut certificates may be issued by the Chief Rabbinate Council, authorized local rabbis, and, within the IDF, the Military Rabbinate. The legislation also regulates national kashrut standards, supervision services, the employment of kashrut supervisors and oversight of the system.
The law repeals the central component of a reform advanced in 2021 by then-religious services minister Matan Kahana, which sought to transform the Chief Rabbinate from the dominant provider of kashrut services into the regulator of a broader certification market.
Under that reform, licensed private kashrut corporations would have been permitted to issue official certificates, subject to regulatory oversight and approved standards. The stated goal was to introduce competition, give businesses alternatives to their local rabbinate, and separate the body regulating kashrut from those selling certification services.
That market never fully materialized.
Although the reform became law, its central provisions were repeatedly delayed after the current government took office. Private national certification bodies were not broadly licensed, leaving local rabbinates in practical control of official certification.
The new law therefore does not close a widely operating private certification market so much as prevent the competitive system legislated in 2021 from fully taking effect.
In practice, businesses seeking basic kashrut certification have generally been required to obtain it from the local rabbinate in the city or area where they operate. Even businesses seeking an additional, stricter certification, such as Badatz, must generally first receive an official certificate from the local rabbinate.
The Competition Authority previously described the arrangement as giving each local rabbinate a geographic monopoly over basic certification in its area, warning that the absence of competition creates inefficiency and burdens businesses, particularly chains operating across several municipalities and dealing with different local rabbinates and standards.
Kashrut must not be subject to commercial considerations, supporters say
Supporters of the repeal argue that kashrut is an inherently public and religious responsibility that should not be influenced by commercial considerations.
Shas chairman Arye Deri called the vote “a day of good news for all those who observe tradition in the State of Israel,” saying his party had fulfilled its commitment to reverse what he called the “destructive reform” of the Bennett-Lapid government.
“Kashrut is not a business. Kashrut is a state responsibility,” Deri said. “One reliable and supervised system.”
Deri said the law returned responsibility for kashrut “to its natural place” under the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, ensuring that certificates would be reliable, authorized and supervised.
Chief Rabbis David Yosef and Kalman Meir Ber, together with the Chief Rabbinate Council, also welcomed the law, saying it would reinforce the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and ensure the reliability and uniformity of Israel’s kashrut system.
They said the law would strengthen the authority of municipal rabbis within their cities, reinforce the role of religious councils, and regularize the status of kashrut supervisors.
The employment of those supervisors is intended to address a separate, long-standing problem within the existing system: the financial relationship between the mashgiach, or kashrut supervisor, and the mushgach, the business being supervised.
Supervisors have often been paid directly by the restaurant, factory, or other business whose compliance they are responsible for inspecting. The arrangement creates an inherent conflict of interest, as a supervisor’s livelihood may depend on the owner whose conduct the supervisor is meant to oversee.
The 2021 reform sought to break that relationship by having licensed certification corporations employ the supervisors.
The new law retains the goal of severing the connection but adopts a different model, under which supervisors are intended to be employed through religious councils, or local authorities where no religious council operates, rather than directly by the businesses they inspect.
Kashrut law will financially burden Israelis, critics say
That solution has itself drawn economic criticism.
Tani Frank, director of the Judaism and State Policy Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute, has warned that moving thousands of supervisors into employment through religious councils could transfer substantial costs and employment liabilities to the public sector.
Critics also argue that competition in certification and import supervision could have reduced costs for businesses, improved service and lowered some kashrut-related costs incorporated into food prices.
“There is no legitimacy for a law that determines that kashrut belongs solely to the Chief Rabbinate,” Frank said following the vote.
“The law will hurt the pockets of Israeli citizens, deepen the Rabbinate’s monopoly while eliminating every trace of competition, and force the religious councils to employ thousands of supervisors,” he said.
The law’s supporters reject the argument that it creates jobs for political purposes, saying public employment is necessary to remove the financial dependence between supervisors and businesses.
Religious Zionist Party MK Ohad Tal, who chairs the Knesset Public Projects Committee that prepared the law for its final votes, said it would establish a uniform and transparent national standard and resolve conflicts of interest within the system.
“This is not a law of the Rabbinate. This is not a law of Shas,” Tal said. “This is a law for the Israeli consumer.”
Unofficial kashrut org. Tzohar undeterred by law
Tzohar, whose kashrut organization has sought recognition as an official private certification body, described the legislation as “a step in the wrong direction” but said it remained undeterred.
“Tzohar will continue to strengthen our services, to operate within the full guidelines of the law and halacha and provide certification and supervision services with an uncompromising attention to professional, transparent, and trustworthy kashrut,” the organization said.
The distinction between private supervision and official certification remains significant.
The repeal prevents private bodies from issuing official state-recognized kashrut certificates under the licensing system created in 2021. It does not necessarily prevent private organizations from providing additional supervision services, as stricter private organizations have traditionally done on top of an official Rabbinate certificate.
The passage also comes amid an ongoing dispute in the High Court over a license issued to Tzohar on July 1 to operate as an official kashrut-certifying body.
The state has argued that the license cannot currently be relied upon because the Chief Rabbinate Council was not formally consulted before it was issued. Tzohar maintains that the license was lawfully granted and that the council had known about and participated in the proceedings surrounding its application for years.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for November 2. Tzohar chairman Rabbi David Stav told The Jerusalem Post that the organization expected its day-to-day supervision work to continue despite the repeal.
“We will continue as usual, only without the word ‘kosher,’ as we did until two weeks ago,” Stav said.
Stav was referring to the arrangement that existed before July 1, when Tzohar received a license to operate as an official kashrut-certifying body.
Tzohar has operated as an alternative food-supervision service since 2018, but before receiving the license, its certificates could not use the word “kosher” because the organization was not officially recognized as a certifying body. The license allowed it to begin issuing official certificates bearing the term.
Keshet Neev contributed to this report.
Source:
www.jpost.com
