Consternation As Rabbinate Discovers Kashrut Cash Cow A T’reifah

It spells the end of a cash cow that the Rabbinate has milked for decades, relegating the institution to the more traditional Rabbinic role of  not engaging in the flagrantly problematic dynamic of having a kashrut inspector draw a salary directly from the supervised establishment.

Jerusalem, July 29 – Establishment religious figures voiced dismay today at both an impending reform of their lucrative monopoly on certification of adherence to Jewish dietary standards in food preparation, and at the news that the cash cow that said monopoly has constituted suffers a fatal defect that renders the animal and its edible products forbidden according to those standards.

Chief Rabbinate insiders acknowledged Thursday that the organization and its subsidiary local affiliates throughout Israel face an existential challenge, both from the anticipated collapse of the Rabbinate’s exclusive legal right to stamp foodstuffs as “kosher,” and the discovery that the monopoly may already be a “t’reifah,” an animal with an injury that the Talmud classifies as causing death within a year, and which therefore renders it not kosher.

“They’re kind of the same development,” observed Rabbi Natan Baksheesh Doron. “Either way, we’re discovering that a major source of our institutional staying power will likely disappear, and that has all sorts of disturbing implications for our customary policies of patronage, leniency bordering on negligence, insistence on certain suppliers despite acceptable alternatives, sloppy record-keeping, inconsistent application of standards, unrealistic inspection regimes, and rampant opportunities for corruption.”

The kashrut reform package under government consideration would empower independent agencies outside the government-run Rabbinate to certify kashrut by restaurants, manufacturers, importers, and other food producers. Such organizations already exist, but must employ inconvenient – and, to the uninitiated consumer, possibly compromising- workarounds to avoid falling afoul of the Consumer Protection from Fraud Law that underlies the Rabbinate’s authority in the kashrut realm. If or when it takes effect, the reform will bring the Israeli kashrut supervision and certification sub-industry closer to its counterparts abroad, where separate organizations both compete and collaborate in facilitating the availability of clearly-labeled products for the kosher-consumer.

Consumers and communities will continue to decide for themselves which organizations have gained a reliable reputation and which remain suspect, either because of excessive leniency or because they refuse to share with the public the standards they bring to the supervision and certification processes. Such a development will spell the end of a cash cow that the Rabbinate has milked for decades, relegating the institution to the more traditional Rabbinic role of teaching, issuing guidance in questions of Halakha (Jewish Law), maintaining public religious facilities such as an Eruv, and not engaging in the flagrantly problematic dynamic of having a kashrut inspector draw a salary directly from the supervised establishment, which creates a compromising credibility issue.

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