Erev Shavuos falls out on motzei Shabbos in Eretz Yisrael this year. The Chief Rabbinate has sent out a special memo instructing hotels to serve guests a fleishig meal on motzei Shabbos simply because serving a hotel level dairy meal is far more complex and the fears of chilul Shabbos and yomtov related to preparing and serving dairy are significantly increased.
While the minhag of dairy is quite widespread, the Chief Rabbinate simply feels the concerns surrounding chilul Shabbos must outweigh all other considerations. The directive also instructs hotels to prepare the dairy dining room for the yomtov meal on erev Shabbos, not on Shabbos.
HaRav Yaniv Cohen, who oversees the hotels for the Chief Rabbinate adds that if a hotel wishes to serve dairy on Shavuos night nonetheless, it can make a request and it will be determined if the hotel kitchen and other components of the operation permit approving such a request.
Click HERE to view the Chief Rabbinate directive to hotels.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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11 Responses
It’s good to see that someone at the Rabbanut has a practical mind, and thinks about these things in advance. Of course another solution is to have the Shabbos day meal also be dairy, so there’s no need for a massive changeover after Shabbos, but somehow I doubt many hotels will jump at that solution.
Actually, Erev Shavuos falls out on Shabbos, as it does, coincidently, in Chutz La’aretz as well.
Milchig on Shavuos is my tradition. Your’s too?
Nu, many of others are planning to do the same even outside of ISRAEL.
since when do we eat a dairy meal at night, is it not at lunch following the reading of the Torah?
I don’t get what the concern is. If the hotel has both dairy and meat kitchens what is the issue. Are they planning on kashering the kitchens over night?
This has to be one of the silliest directives that the bureaucrats at the Chief Rabbinate have come up with. There is nothing more “complicated” about milchig than fleishig. Indeed, a milchig meal which would likely involved a salad, smoked fish, cheese platter and perhaps some pasta is much less complicated than a fleishig meal where the fleishig meal where the meat has to be cooked to order. The rabbonim should focus on what they know about and leave menu planning to the hotels.
#6, the issue is changing the kitchen over for a major meal, which takes time. It’s all very well making a dairy snack on motzei shabbos, but for a full yomtov meal the whole kitchen has to be changed over, and there’s too much danger that they’ll start doing it on Shabbos, or else they’ll rush it and there’ll be a mixup.
#5, Who’s “we”? Some people only have a small milchig snack on the first day before their fleishig lunch, and have no other milchigs. For that matter, the whole milchig thing is an Ashkenazi minhag that other communities never heard of until they came to Israel. But there are those who eat no meat for the whole yomtov (both days in chu”l), or who have meat only on the second day (which doesn’t exist in EY). נהרא נהרא ופשטיה. And in a private home it’s easy to do, even on Motzei Shabbos. But in a hotel it’s difficult.
How is someone on a full stomach of meat, going to remain awake all nite?
Is the Rabbanut going to give a unique dispensation, that one can consume dairy coffee & cheesecake already 3 or even 1 hour after meat? to accommodate their preference/ directives for serving meat on Shavu’os nite.
The minhag by many hasidic and yeshivish communities is that all meals are meat and that dairy is served at kiddush before the meal on the first day, only during the day and not at night.
#7 Gadolbe’einav, the Rabbanut has extensive practical experience; what do you have? Changing the whole kitchen and dining room over from fleishig to milchig, in order to cook a fancy meal such as hotel guests expect, is a lot of work. Of course you don’t care about chilul shabbos anyway, so you’d let them start setting up right after lunch, but BH the rabbanut are yir’ei shamayim as well as practical people, and have issued this directive.