Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein met with journalist Miki Heimowitz in his office. She is spearheading the campaign in Israel for “meatless Mondays”.
Towards advancing that cause, MK (Yesh Atid) Rabbi Dov Lipman is launching a new Knesset lobby, explaining he feels the Knesset restaurant should adopt the policy.
The meatless Monday campaign began in 2003 and spread around the country. It expanded to schools and many cafeterias and now, it appears Edelstein supports it and wants to persuade colleagues to adopt it in Knesset.
Other elected officials signaling their planned inclusion in the meatless Monday lobby are Minister of Environmental Affairs Amir Peretz, Minister of Communications Gilad Erdan and MK Reuven Rivlin, who happens to be a vegetarian.
On his Facebook page, Edelstein writes how Rav Kook spoke of vegetarianism and how Adom, the first man, was vegetarian. He calls the idea “one that should be welcomed and difficult to oppose.”
Seeking to calm the meat eaters, Lipman explains his vision is not a meatless Monday in Knesset that would ban meat, but the cafeteria will offer specials on non-meat dishes on Mondays to encourage patrons to buy them. Lipman feels that the cooking staff must be encouraged to use their creativity to produce more vegetarian dishes that will attract patrons and steer them from the meat dishes.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
5 Responses
lets vote for a lipman-less knesset on monday, tues, etc.
Rather than ‘Meatless Mondays’ how about encouraging ‘Kosher Mondays’ where at least once a week knesset Jewish ministers will eat kosher which would be good for their Jewish soul too.
Why is zafdig oprah being used as a spokesperson in the meatless Monday video? Couldn’t they find somebody a bit less corpulent?
#2 The religious ones already do, and the not religious ones most of the time do too due to the simple fact that you need to go out of your way to eat non-kosher here.
(Yes there are non-kosher restaurants, and yes you can get non-kosher products, but it is generally easier to get kosher products so you’d be going out of your way to eat non-kosher, in all likelihood all the cafeteria in the Knesset are kosher)
AThought – are you aware that by law, all food served at Israeli government institutions, including the Knesset, is required to be Kosher? Granted, it’s not Mehadrin, but it does meet the basic requirements of Halacha.
Additionally, it should be noted that the vast majority of Israelis do, in fact, keep Kosher. They may not (yet) be fully Frum, but they’re “masorati” – traditional, and if Kosher food is easily available, they’ll keep Kosher. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons the Rabbanut gives a basic-level Hechsher – to ensure that Kosher food is so available that it’s easy for the typical Israeli to keep Kosher.
an Israeli Yid