Prominent journalist and radio host Uri Orbach, who is affiliated with the Dati Leumi and right-wing communities, has come out publicly against the increasingly popular cooking shows on Israeli television, frequently featuring non-kosher food and recipes.

Orbach tactfully points out that many people will contact television stations if they see someone on TV in a vehicle without a seatbelt, concerned with the educational message being delivered. He added if a program is too chauvinistic, people complain. Here too he shouts there must be complaints, stating most of the country observes some form of kashrus, buying kosher food, separating meat and milk, separate dishes and not eating pork products. He adds that seeing dishes on television and watching the chefs pour sour cream on meat and cooking meat and milk together is truly sickening and disgusting.

Orbach adds that for years, we do not see cigarette smoke on the TV screen, not because it is law, but because it is an educational message and TV producers are now sensitive to it.

Orbach blames what he calls the “ultra-secular,” the two groups responsible for these popular shows, TV producers and the chefs, both known in Israel for their ultra-secularism, stating they identify with western ultra-secularism, not Judaism. He adds that what people do at home is their business but what is aired on Israel Television is an entirely different matter.

They call it “freedom of cooking,” Orbach states, insisting they can do as they please as they attempt to espouse a western air about themselves.  He compares it to some degree to missionaries, explaining when people watching these shows daily view yogurt and meat soup, shrimp dishes and the like, it begin to break down their Jewish barrier and because it is aired on television, it is our business.

Orbach remains pragmatic, stating he does not expect for a moment that the shows will become glatt kosher, but he does expect and demand that the shows cease highlighting traif as a main feature and stop putting these unacceptable dishes in our faces.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)