Yet more on heter, shmetter
Another addendum
According to the JPost, a group of religious Orthodox rabbis affiliated with the group Tzohar, a group working for coexistence with secular Israelis (a mighty good idea; we’ll see if they’re any better than the other lot), announced on Tuesday that they will be issuing alternative kashrut certificates to restaurants and stores who buy produce depending on the heter mechira.
The Jpost article cites three rabbis affiliated with Tzohar
“If local rabbis refuse to recognize fruits and vegetables grown by Jewish farmers during the shmita year as kosher, then we will,” said Rabbi Rafi Freuerstein, chairman of the Tzohar organization.
“We believe it is important to strengthen Jewish farmers and Jewish agriculture and provide reasonably-priced produce to the Jewish nation,” he said.
“The Chief Rabbinate is not fulfilling its function as a rabbinic authority for the entire Jewish nation,” said Rabbi David Stav, a member of Tzohar, during a press conference Tuesday. “Rather, it has been taken over by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Lithuanian haredi interests. We are trying to save the Chief Rabbinate from itself.”
The chief rabbinate, predictably, has attacked Tzohar as “undermining state-recognized rabbinic authority and risking a break between religion and state.”
Yawn.
In fact:
“If the rabbinate is dismantled as a result of internal fighting, we risk losing national recognition for rabbinic authority,” said Rabbi Ratzon Arussi, chief rabbi of Kiryat Ono and a member of the Chief Rabbinate’s governing council.
Rabbi Moshe Rauchverger, another council member, said that Tzohar threatened to break the rabbinate’s monopoly over religious services and open it up to Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism.
“If Tzohar starts providing kosher supervision, what is to stop Reform and Conservative from doing the same?” said Rauchverger.
Yes, indeed, what? Well, if the Reform movement gets interested in the kosher supervision business, I say kol haKavod, since that means that there are enough Reform Jews keeping kosher that that would be seen as a worthwhile expenditure of energy. Fabuloso! What’s the problem? And IMO, it’s about time for the Masorti Jews toget more involved in kashrut supervision anyway, hechsher tzedek notwithstanding (see all the various posts on the Rubashkin’s scandal and the hechsher tzedek*.
Tzohar responded to the attacks by saying that it would, first, only provide kosher supervision in cities where the local rabbi was haredi and refused to provide kosher certificates to restaurants, supermarkets and other food-serving venues selling fruits and vegetables grown by Jewish farmers, and second, will be getting around the legal problem of the Chief Rabbinate being the only body authorized to provide kosher supervision in Israel by not calling what it does kosher supervision.
However, Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, group chairman of Tzohar claims in Ha’aretz that they just want to save the Chief Rabbinate from itself, “If it doesn’t want our help, we’ll do it ourselves. We see [its conduct] as blasphemy and contempt of the nation’s great rabbis. We won’t help those hard-liners who are ruining the farmers’ livelihood and providing food and money to Hamas and its economy.”
Well, aside from the gratuitous poke at the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s about time someone stepped up to help out the Chief Rabbinate, whose antics are getting more bizarre over time.
Jpost says:
Israeli commentators described Tzohar’s initiative as possibly an unprecedented challenge to the authority of the Chief Rabbinate, which generally enjoys cross-Orthodox backing. Tzohar called on the Chief Rabbinate to avert a schism by re-endorsing the status quo.
*The Rubashkin scandal see:
öÄéÌåÉï” title=”http://jewschool.com/2006/12/19/11635/\”>öÄéÌåÉï” target=”_blank”>jewschool.com/2006/12/19/11635/”>öÄéÌåÉï áÌÀîÄùÑÀôÌÈè úÌÄôÌÈãÆä åÀùÑÈáÆéäÈ áÌÄöÀãÈ÷Èä, Where’s the beef now? Kashrut update on Rubashkin’s, Another beef with kashrut in the news, and Kashrut Brouhaha Has Legs; Agriprocessors: Still trayfin’ it up,
Rubashkin Arrest
and Failed Messiah
hechsher tzedek see:
When Is It Kosher?
Less brains …more meat
Eating Right
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The chief rabbinate, predictably, has attacked Tzohar as “undermining state-recognized rabbinic authority and risking a break between religion and state.â€
[...]
“If the rabbinate is dismantled as a result of internal fighting, we risk losing national recognition for rabbinic authority,†said Rabbi Ratzon Arussi, chief rabbi of Kiryat Ono and a member of the Chief Rabbinate’s governing council.
From his mouth to God’s ears!
—BZ · September 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
I’m generally suspicious of Zohar. Let’s reserve judgement till we see what this really means.
—Amit · September 28th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Says one of my Israeli dati cousins: The Rabbanut Tzohar is a group of people trying to do the right thing for the right reasons. She claims they’re “not political.” I don’t know much about them yet. Amit- can you tell us why you’re generally suspicious?
—Rooftopper Rav · September 28th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Tzohar is an organization of young Israeli rabbis who got together to make the state-mandated Orthodox wedding ceremony more palatable to secular Israelis. They focused on form - not content. Their agenda is not a pluralistic one, but closer to Kiruv: they want things to look and smell and taste better, so secular Israelis may want to learn more about Judaism. From weddings, they moved on to other “nice-looking” kiruv endeavors: Yom Kippur services for the Secular, and now this.
Sometimes they try to do the right things for the right reasons. Sometimes they don’t, since at the end of the day, its Kiruv. They will not cooperate with the Conservative and REform movements, and have only bad things to say about them, they have a right-wing political agenda (i.e. “quite political”), and their emphasis is more on Israeli nationalism (”our rabbis served in the military”) than on Judaism. This, of course, hasn’t prevented the rabbanut from seeing them as a threat and trying to close down their (free) wedding service. Now they’re fighting back.
Tzohar has a journal which circulates to member rabbis and Yeshiva libraries, which is the best way to listen to their inner workings. The members and contributors are almost all right-wing, almost all nationalist and anti-arab and almost all haters of Liberal Judaism (since they’re trying to differentiate). THis is essentially pretty Kiruv.
—Amit · September 30th, 2007 at 10:58 am
That was my sense, looking at their website, also; still, sometime people do the right things for the wrong reason. And the heter mechira problem is certainly an example of this.
—Kol Ra'ash Gadol · October 3rd, 2007 at 5:13 am
[...] allows eating produce grown and harvested on the shmita year. See Kol Ra’ash Gadol’s recent pieces on the controversy of the rulings.] The chief rabbinate, which controls the vital kosher [...]
—Jewschool » Blog Archive » The irony of shmita: making the poorest poorer · October 8th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
[...] has popped up. Last month I blogged on the reaction to the scandalous no-heter for shmitta matter(and here); a group called Tzohar had announced that it would simply go around the Rabbinate. Well, [...]
—Jewschool » Blog Archive » Another Bitch-slap to the Rabbinate · October 18th, 2007 at 10:04 am
[...] at Jewschool, we’ve been reporting on the machinations regarding the shemitah year in Israel. As you may have heard, the rabbanut went [...]
—Jewschool » Blog Archive » Shemitah update · October 24th, 2007 at 5:33 pm