TCJN: The Vaad Ha�ir of Winnipeg�s move last month to pull its certification from Winnipeg�s only kosher butcher has left the city without a supply of fresh kosher meat.Both Omnitsky Kosher Foods and the Vaad are talking optimistically about resolving the situation, but in the meantime, observant members of the community have been scrambling to find alternative sources of fresh meat, largely from suppliers in Montreal and Toronto.It�s the second recent blow to kosher consumers, coming on the heels of an announcement that the Bathurst Street Market, Winnipeg�s only all-kosher grocery store and deli restaurant, would close at the end of July due to poor sales.

As well, even if a deal is reached to allow Omnitsky to resume selling kosher meat, supplies would have to come from outside the province, as the Vaad says there will be no more kosher shchitah performed locally. No reason for that decision was given, but the two shochets who slaughter all of Winnipeg�s kosher meat are in their 80s, and one is in poor health.

The showdown between the Vaad and Omnitsky had been building for a few years. The butcher shop has been in business in north Winnipeg since 1922. Sasha (Sam) Gehkt, who immigrated here from Russia several years ago, bought the business in 2000.

It has always been the practice at the store to kasher meat on request, but not as a matter of course. All the meat in the shop had been slaughtered by Vaad shochets, and the shop would complete the kashering process by salting and de-veining the meat. But for the past few years, the Vaad had been urging the Omnistsky, without success, to kasher all of its fresh meat.

Vaad president Don Aronovitch said the Vaad most recently sent Omnitsky a letter to that effect in May, but received no response from Gehkt.

�It wasn�t until we took action and removed our certification on July 14 that Mr. Gekht responded,� Aronovitch says.

When contacted by The CJN, Gekht said he wouldn�t comment while talks are underway to resolve the dispute, and as of press time last week, no deal had been reached.

The Winnipeg Vaad has been trying for the past 10 years to raise the standard of its WK hechsher to a level that would make it acceptable again nationally and internationally.

The WK�s problems go back to the mid-1980s. It had been the tradition that the Vaad Harabbanim, the rabbinical arm of the Vaad Ha�ir that supervises kashrut, was made up of three Orthodox rabbis. In the mid-1980s, a split developed in the community over the creation of a Winnipeg eruv, with two teaching rabbis in favour of creating the boundary and two congregational rabbis opposed. When the eruv was created over their objections, the congregational rabbis declared their colleagues to be in violation of Shabbat and hence not to be followed in matters of Jewish law. When one of the teaching rabbis was elected to the Vaad Harabbanim, the congregational rabbis declared that the WK was no longer a valid hechsher.

The WK�s problems were compounded in later years when the Vaad could no longer muster three Orthodox rabbis to monitor kashrut. One Orthodox rabbi remained as Winnipeg�s only kosher supervisor, but he led a congregation that voted to adopt mixed seating, leaving his Orthodox credentials in question for some people.

In 1996, the predecessor of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg commissioned Justice Roy Matas to prepare a report on the problems of kashrut in the community and recommend steps to remedy the situation.

When Aronovitch, a community leader, assumed the Vaad�s presidency in 2000, he set out to raise the standard of kashrut in Winnipeg to one that would be universally recognized.

Under his leadership, the Vaad created a new heschsher, MBK, which was meant to gradually replace the WK and which enjoyed the support of all Orthodox rabbis in the city. However, one of the community�s key licensees balked at the new kashrut conditions, and the MBK only became the hechsher at one hotel and a limited number of shuls.

Aronovitch and the Vaad then decided to work on strengthening WK. Last February, the Vaad hired a new rabbi, Mitchell Cohen from Ottawa, as a consultant to oversee kashrut in the city. Rabbi Cohen started the position full time on Aug. 1 and has moved to the city.

�We are working aggressively to discharge what we feel is a huge responsibility to ensure that the Winnipeg Jewish consumer has a source of fresh kosher meat,� Aronovitch said of the current situation. �We anticipate this issue being resolved within a few weeks and we are confident that there will not be a material impact on the Jewish community, its synagogues or its other institutions.

Aronovitch added that �we can assure that politics and monetary reasons played no role whatsoever� in the dispute with Omnitsky.

�Another concern voiced was that this action was the result of �Orthodox pressures.� Nothing could be further from the truth,� he said. �The Vaad Ha�ir�s historic transition of its kashrut standard from traditional to COR-equivalent has the 100 per cent support of all synagogue leadership and their rabbis. The drive to effect the conversion for the past 10 years has been 100 per cent a federation initiative � definitely not that of the Orthodox community.�