Officials of Israel's Chief Rabbinate are seeking to
establish a "kashrut police," in an effort to broaden the authority's
power over businesses that present their merchandise as kosher but have no
rabbinate-issued kashrut certificate.
In a memorandum of law distributed Sunday in the Knesset,
Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben Dahan proposed that the rabbinate's
kashrut inspectors be allowed to enter restaurants and businesses, take food
samples, and oblige citizens to identify themselves and even be summoned to
questioning.
Inspectors of the "kashrut police" - members of
the Chief Rabbinate’s Kashrut Fraud Division - would wear identification badges
and even uniforms, according to the memorandum.
Officials of Ben Dahan's bureau say the measure is the first
step in regulating the kashrut-supervision field in Israel, which is rife with
irregularities and lacks transparency. In future stages, Ben Dahan, a certified
rabbi and a member of the Habayit Hayehudi party, hopes to sever the dependent
relationship between kashrut inspectors and those whom they inspect - the
business owners, who currently pay the inspectors' salaries.
The main purpose of the "kashrut police" is to
stamp out the incidence of establishments that call themselves kosher, but have
no kashrut certificate. In recent years restaurants and cafes in Jerusalem,
and, following in their lead, in other cities, began operating without the
rabbinate’s kashrut certificates.
The business owners said doing so was an act of protest and
disgust over the unreasonable demands made by the rabbinate and its inspectors.
Still, these restaurants and cafes remained kosher, sometimes maintaining an
even stricter standard of Jewish dietary laws than the regulations require.
The
Kashrut Fraud Division slapped steep fines on some of the business owners, even
those whose restaurants displayed no certificate on which the word “kosher”
appeared, but legal proceedings against the owners stopped at a certain point.
Under Israeli law, business owners may not market their
merchandise as kosher, or use the word “kosher” in any form to describe it,
unless they have obtained a valid kashrut certificate from the Chief Rabbinate.
Still, the law is not enforced in neighborhoods such as
Jerusalem's Mea She’arim, where businesses carry kashrut certificates issued by
independent religious courts and private kashrut organizations.
On Sunday, Eli Ben Dahan told Haaretz in a telephone
interview that the employees of the Kashrut Fraud Division do not currently
have enough tools to enforce the law.
“They go to a place, but they cannot take anything from it
or take photographs, and the business owner often throws the inspector out,” he
said. “We want to give them the power of inspectors from the Israel Nature and
Parks Authority, who, if they see a problem, have the right to take the
findings with them and engage in preliminary questioning.”
According to his memorandum, a kashrut inspector wearing a
uniform and an identification badge would be permitted to “require any person
to give his name and address and show an identification card or other official
identifying document; to require any person involved in a case to provide any
information or document that ensured he was abiding by the law... to take
samples of products and materials and send them for examination... to enter a
business or production facility, including places of storage and refrigeration
on the premises or under the control of the one being inspected, including
entering stationary vehicles, as long as he did not enter a place of residence
except by court order.” If the inspector’s suspicions were aroused, he would be
permitted to “question any person connected with the aforesaid violation, or
who might have knowledge of the violation,” and also to “seize any object
connected with the violation.”
This is Eli Ben Dahan’s second move against those wishing to
meet the requirements of Jewish law in various spheres without involving the
rabbinate.
His first move was to add a clause to the “Tzohar Law” mandating
prison terms for Jewish couples who married in private wedding ceremonies
without registering with the rabbinate, and those who officiated at such
weddings.
In reply to a question about his ministry’s policy, which
advocates legislation that would make it difficult for people to abide by
religious law without involving the rabbinate, Ben Dahan said, “As you know, I
support the state of Israel as a Jewish state, and we need to work toward
greater enforcement of the state’s laws. In many spheres there is no law
enforcement, and there are many examples of this, such as construction
violations that nobody does anything about.
But I, at least, in the small sphere that I deal with, will make sure to enforce the law by which the state is the one to issue kashrut certificates and register marriages, and those who do not obey should be punished.”
But I, at least, in the small sphere that I deal with, will make sure to enforce the law by which the state is the one to issue kashrut certificates and register marriages, and those who do not obey should be punished.”
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