\u201cHundreds of businesses with Tzohar certification, and hundreds of thousands of their customers, can already eat in places that are certified kosher by Tzohar with the authority and permission of the Chief Rabbinate, starting yesterday evening,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n
\u201cTzohar provides excellent kashrut and its procedures, and we call on the general public and business owners to start consuming Tzohar\u2019s kashrut,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
The Chief Rabbinate has not issued a final clarification on the matter, which remains unresolved.<\/p>\n
If Tzohar, a Modern-Orthodox, liberal-leaning organization founded to bridge gaps between religious and secular Israelis, were ultimately cleared to give kashrut certification, it would likely lead to significant shakeups within Israel\u2019s food industry, experts said, increasing transparency and reducing prices while decentralizing state control over the kosher certification process.<\/p>\n
However, the Chief Rabbinate will likely resist efforts to weaken its control over kosher certification, said Benjamin Porat, Director of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law at Hebrew University. According to reports<\/a> in the Hebrew press, ultra-Orthodox parties in the government are looking to overturn the 2021 reform that opened the door for organizations outside the rabbinate to provide such certifications in the first place.<\/p>\n In Israel, the right to use the word \u201ckosher\u201d on food labeling is highly regulated, with only certification bodies recognized by the Rabbinate allowed to recognize a product or establishment as meeting religious requirements. Unlike in other countries, where Kashrut is seen as a strictly religious matter, any business claiming to be \u201ckosher\u201d without receiving certification from a recognized body would be in violation of Israeli law.<\/p>\n However, critics of the current system say the Rabbinate\u2019s certification process is expensive, bureaucratic and inflexible, while others object to its religious standards or its role as Israel\u2019s sole kashrut regulator.<\/p>\n \t In response, Tzohar has offered an \u201calternative\u201d supervision service since 2018, saying that the supervisors [mashgichim] it sends to establishments are more likely than the rabbinate\u2019s to work fairly and transparently with vendors to establish kashrut compliance. Its certificates don\u2019t state that food is kosher but offer ambiguous statements like \u201cAll raw materials were checked and approved by the Tzohar rabbinic organization.\u201d<\/p>\n That effort led to the 2021 kashrut reform, spearheaded by then-MK Matan Kahana, which allows private Orthodox organizations to issue kosher certificates in their own name, provided they meet the state\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n \t In principle, that opened Israel\u2019s kashrut market to competing certification bodies, although it requires any competition to the Rabbinate\u2019s monopoly to receive recognition from the Rabbinate itself.<\/p>\n Since then, Tzohar has worked to get this approval. The decision Thursday \u201cwas reached following years of efforts by Tzohar to ensure its kashrut supervision should be established as a recognized certifying agency based on the perspectives of justice and impartiality,\u201d the organization said in a statement.<\/p>\n The High Court\u2019s ruling on Tzohar\u2019s Kashrut operation put the Rabbinate into a unique political bind, Porat said.<\/p>\n Ultra-Orthodox members of the current government have been seeking to overturn the 2021 Kashrut reform and disallow anyone outside of the Rabbinate to offer kosher certification. Their success now depends on the results of the upcoming Knesset elections in September or October, and members of the Rabbinate will likely look to stall the rollout of Tzohar\u2019s new authority until then, he said.<\/p>\n \t Granting power to Tzohar would have significant impacts on the nation\u2019s kashrut regime, bringing greater transparency and moderation, Porat said.<\/p>\n \u201cToday the world of kosher is controlled exclusively by the Rabbinate, which very often is subject to the dictates of Haredi or extremely religious elements,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce Tzohar comes into power, there will be competition between two visions of kashrut \u2013 one that is more moderate and one that is more extreme.\u201d<\/p>\n It would also challenge the current operating system in which supervisors receive their salaries from the venues they supervise, Porat said. This arrangement creates endemic conflicts of interest that harm the entire system\u2019s integrity, critics charge, while Tzohar pays supervisors a flat salary to do their work.<\/p>\n One of the biggest changes Tzohar could bring to the system could be allowing restaurants open on Shabbat to receive kosher certification, Porat noted. Currently, working seven days a week automatically disqualifies most venues from certification, but a more liberal approach could create criteria that would allow some restaurants to have it both ways, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat change would be quite significant, assuming that the ruling doesn\u2019t change after the coming elections, Porat said.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident \u2013 ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded \u2013 I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.<\/p>\n There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.<\/p>\n As a Times of Israel reporter, I\u2019m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit\u2019s. But my colleagues and I can’t do this alone. If you value work like this,<\/strong> please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community.<\/strong> Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.<\/p>\n \u2014 Stav Levaton, military reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n \t\t\t
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<\/a>
\n\t\tRepresentatives of the Chief Rabbinate deliver a kashrut certificate to a local restaurant in central Jerusalem, on December 31, 2019. (Hadas Parush\/Flash90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/F180226FFPR04-2-640x400.jpg\")
<\/a>
\n\t\tRabbi Rafi Feuerstein (L), Rabbi Dr. Moshe Be\u2019eri (C) and Shai Berman, CEO of the Israel Restaurant Association, at a press conference on the establishment of a new kashrut system, in Tel Aviv on February 26, 2018. (Flash90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2018-04-27-at-09.44.29-1-640x400.jpeg\")
<\/a>
\n\t\tSupervisors from the Tzohar organization work to prepare a branch of the Aroma coffeehouse chain in Tel Aviv that was awarded a kosher license on May 9, 2018. (Tzohar)<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\tWe can’t do this work alone.\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Untitled-design-4-200x200.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\tYes, I’ll join\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/334x334-200x200.png\" "\\"\\"\/")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n