“I’ve gone to live with my parents until this is worked out,” confided one newlywed man.
Jerusalem, April 17 – A supervisory agency overseeing compliance with Jewish dietary laws at an event hall revoked its approval for the hall today, throwing into uncertainty the legitimacy of marriages performed in the venue, its owners disclosed today.
Asher Brodsky and Shoham Levy, the partners behind the Ulamei Pninim – “Halls of Pearl” – facility in the Talpiot neighborhood acknowledged today that the Jerusalem Rabbinate had declined to extend the facility’s kashrut certification for the next three months, citing unpaid wages to the on-site kashrut supervisor. As a result, couples who conducted their nuptials at Ulamei Pninim between March 29 – the end of the previous certified period – and today, have begun to question whether in fact their marriages have validity under Jewish or civil law, if in fact none of the participants would have come to witness or participate in the ceremony had they known of the revoked certification.
“I’ve gone to live with my parents until this is worked out,” confided one newlywed man. “We can’t live as husband and wife wife if the whole arrangement’s legitimacy is in doubt. I love my bride, but we don’t want to do anything improper.”
His wife appeared even more distraught. “Did I just give myself to man out of wedlock?” she wondered. “That goes against all my values. This is a huge scandal.”
Rabbinate and Ulamei Pninim representatives gave conflicting accounts of the process that led to the kashrut certificate revocation, a fact that further perplexes the affected families looking for a culprit to blame. Brodsky and Levy called the payment fiasco a misunderstanding and a clerical error on the part of the Rabbinate, while a Jerusalem Rabbinate spokesman accused the owners of habitual delays in payment for the supervision and certification, not just the most recent one.
“The patronage and corruption of our system requires reliable cash flow,” explained Rabbi Sallef Tzaddikim. “Without the official kashrut certification system in place, none of our supervisors could earn a decent living. Do you have any idea how many Rabbis there are in Jerusalem alone? There’s an unbelievable glut in the market. The salary of a kashrut inspector far exceeds what any Rabbi can earn as a congregational leader, or, God forbid, a teacher.”
“And it’s not the municipality who pays those supervisors, silly. That would require integrity and actual oversight,” he continued. No, we have the supervisor officially serve as an employee of the food establishment, paid directly by the establishment, so that there’s a contractual relationship of dependency of the supervisor on the establishment that pays his salary, and we pretend that doesn’t create a conflict of interest that can compromise the integrity of the supervisor and employer.”
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