Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Council recently approved revolutionary kashrus reforms recommended by a special panel. The approval immediately prompted the Mashgichei Kashrus Committee to declare war against the proposals.
Chairman of the Rabbinate Kashrus Council Rav Yosef Glicksberg has been appointed to head a committee responsible to implement the recommendations. These include creating a national standard of kashrus for restaurants and small business owners but not bigger businesses, and providing them with the option of being supervised remotely via video camera. Mashgichim will be paid by religious councils and not by the businesses they supervise. The High Court ruled a year ago that although the rabbinate was fit to maintain its monopoly over kashrus, it had suffered a complete operational breakdown, with many rabbonim not even trusting the places receiving their own hechsher, and ruled that it must formulate a reform plan within two years.
Rav Yaniv Shapiro, chairman of the Mashgichei Kashrus Committee, issued an announcement condemning the reform as “a knife stab in the backs of five thousand devoted and trustworthy mashgichei kashrus from the organization that should be caring for their interests and instead turned its back on them.”
“Israel’s mashgichei kashrus, who today belong to the Histadrut Trade Union, absolutely reject the one sided reform,” the statement said.
Rav Oren Duvdevani, who was in charge of rabbinate kashrus in Givatayim near Tel Aviv until now and has worked for the OU and OK in the past, left his job to join the renegade Hashgachah Pratit kashrus organization established by Yerushalayim councilman Rabbi Aharon Leibowitz. Rav Duvdevani already expressed approval of the Hashgacha Pratit certification in December 2015.
Unlike other hechsherim used by stores and factories in conjunction with the rabbinate hechsher, Hashgacha Pratit operates independently of the government mandated supervision and the restaurants under its hechsher are not allowed to represent themselves as kosher.
{Matzav.com Israel News}
“providing them with the option of being supervised remotely via video camera. ”
Absolutely worthless!