The following is a Ynet News report:
The Chief Rabbinate on Thursday removed its objection to the establishment of a national authority operating kosher supervisors, instead of the supervisors currently employed by the local rabbinates.
A bill on the matter is slated to be brought before the Ministerial Committee at the beginning of the winter session, and is meant to prevent financial irregularities, nepotism and inadequate supervision – as revealed by a State Comptroller Report.
According to the bill, the new authority will be subordinate to the Ministry of Religious Services headed by Minister Yacov Margi, and will operate three manpower agencies selected through a tender.
If the bill eventually passes, its main advantage will be the ability to hire kosher supervisors that are not obligated to the businesses or factories they supervise, which will help regulate the koshering system in Israel.
However, the initiative also has a downside – factories, companies and businesses applying for kosher certificates will be probably asked to pay a higher fee for external supervision services operated by private manpower agencies.
The initiators of the law claimed that the additional cost will be set off by the illegal payments given to kosher supervisors in order to overlook irregularities and skip visits.
The bill was drafted, among other reasons, following the harsh findings revealed in the 2008 State Comptroller Report, which found severe financial irregularities in several religious municipalities across the country.
One of the cases revealed a city rabbi who received some NIS 1.5 million from several business owners, which he then distributed to supervisors he appointed himself.
In another incident mentioned in the report, a religious municipality employed 23 family members in its koshering apparatus, and in certain cases family members would supervise their own relatives or even themselves.
The bill will be submitted by MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima), who headed the Knesset State Control Subcommittee that dealt with the report, and is currently supported by 25 members of Knesset from across the political spectrum.
Schneller was optimistic over the bill’s chance to pass, saying, “After the long process we went through, I am assuming the bill would pass, despite a possible objection from the Ministry of Finance.
“This will constitute a true revolution in Israel’s koshering services, which will be implemented in the foreseeable future,” he said.
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(Source: Ynet)
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10 Responses
As long as the “central” kashruth supervision is by persons employed by the Israeli government, and as long as the Israeli government is controlled by people who don’t keep kosher (at a quarter of the members of the knesset keep kosher), people who are serious about kashruth will turn to non-governmental groups for reliable supervision.
Instead of looking for a socialist solution (government agencies do kashruth supervision), the Israelis should try the American-style free market solution. Independent agencies compete, and the market decides. Instead of fearing an audit from the State Comptroller, kashruth agencies fear that consumers will lose faith and choose a competitor.
You write:
“One of the cases revealed a city rabbi who received some NIS 1.5 million from several business owners, which he then distributed to supervisors he appointed himself.”
Is that not exactly how a Kashrut agency works? They are paid by the company and in turn pay the maschichim?
Wuz rong?
the american system is just as corrupt if not more than the israeli buisness..
its a dirty buisness…
free market means more money means more chance of corruption..
most in israel and usa are KOSHER – no pun
but sadly there are those that arent.
#2- under the Israeli system, the civil service rabbi is paid by the government and isn’t supposed to paid by companies any more than the person in charge of parking enforcement isn’t supposed to be paid by the people who are double parking.
The result is that “rabbinate” kashruth has a low reputation, and probably would go out of business were it not for the government covering its costs.
kuperma, do you even know the kashrus matzav in eretz yisrael? both systems have their flaws. in america the more money that’s being pushed around also facilitates the chance for corruption. both have their strengths and weaknesses. but don’t go around acting as if you know the matzav. take from someone who lives in eretz yisrael.
Government Government Government Government Government Government Government Government Government Government Government
Sounds like I am watching a debate for US Senator for Connecticut!!!
Wait until they find out about the corruption of the eida chareidas
akuperma:
There is a lot of corruption in ALL kashrut agencies for the simple reason that it’s big money.
The only way to have a truly kosher hashgacha is by it being paid for by the people, so that there is no suspicion whatsoever that there is bribery.
In the current system there is a real gain for an agency to give it’s hashgacha to a place X after all place X will be paying a considerable sum.
Obviously in general the aim will be that place X is truly kosher after all a discovery of the counter would hurt the image of the hashgacha, but take for instance the wild growth of hashgacha on products that completly don’t need a hechsher, that’s 100% profit after all they never need to send anyone and just take money for them printing their logo.
That is morally objectionable behavior from almost all our “respected” kashrut agencies.
Ideally kashrut would be a government or non-profit organization that lives of taxes or donations from private people and not fees paid by companies who need a hechsher.
Why do we have the ridiculous situation that some restaurants are run by frum jews but don’t have a hashgacha because they can’t afford it?
Alternatively by completely separating finance from field and again not having mandatory fees but allowing companies to donate this may also be doable.
The bottom line is that the Israeli government wants a state monopoly. They don’t like the fact that a considerable number of Shomer Kashruth Israelis don’t trust the government in matters of halacha, and want non-state kashruth. Being good socialists, the Israelis want to centralize control. As long as hilonim control that government, no government hecksher will ever be trustworthy.
In America, if you don’t trust one hecksher, you buy another. If a product (e.g. Manischevitz,Hebrew National) gets a bad reputation, other hecksher take their business away. Good reputation wins. If you don’t like Satmar meat, buy Lubie meat. Imagine the situation in New York if David Paterson regulated kashruth, and gave a contract to one vendor, and had the police prevent anyone else from offering kosher food!
akuperma:
Time and time again you show your complete ignorance of what goes on in Israel and your more then willingness to bash Israel for what you perceive to be going on.
I don’t know where you got the idea that “the Israeli government wants a state monopoly”, nowhere have I heard any talk of banning other hashgachot, the only time that the government takes action against private hashgachot is when they give hechsherim on places that aren’t kosher.
The only thing they seem to be guilty of is wanting to raise the quality of the rabbanut hechsher, something I think any well-thinking person should applaud.
What you sketch about America also happens in Israel there are a large amount of different hashgchot and just like in America it’s big business.
However there are plenty of people in Israel who trust the rabbanut which as you could read suffers from corruption and therefor doesn’t in all cases deserve trust so the government wants to fix that.
Here are the 3 government hechsherim and how trustworthy they are according to someone who used to work in the business:
Rabbanut: Has a problem, every rabbanut of a city determines it’s own policy leniencies etc. and some may be corrupt but if I have a factory in city X and all the ingredients I get are rabbanut and can be mixed according to halacha then what comes out of my factory is kosher no matter the trustworthiness of the source cities.
Rabbanut-mehadrin: Does not have the above problem, they are allowed to refuse products from places they don’t trust/like, in some cities (like Jerusalem) it is at the same level as most private “high level” hechsherim.
Rabbanut Harashi: Deals only with foreign imports, is generally considered good/trustworthy/etc. may hold of a leniency you don’t but usually that will be printed next to the hechsher.
As you can see in the description above the rabbanut has the problem that if city X is not trustworthy it can snowball over to a lot of other places, I can only hope that the attempt to fix that will succeed.
And if you think that other “great” hashgachot don’t have their problems then you need to wake up, as long as kashrut is a big buck business it is wide open for corruption.
I know a story of a friend who’s family insisted on him having the wedding with some “high level” hechsher driving the price up, the mashgiach never showed.
Other story religious guy is working at a hall, mashgiach doesn’t show and the customors want to see him so he is asked to pretend to be the mashgiach.
Other stroy similar to the first except the mashgiach shows up late and barely knows anything about kashrut.
These are all stories that happened with “high level” hechsherim in Israel.