The Tzohar Rabbinical Organization announced Feb. 26 the launch of an independent kosher food certification system for restaurants and hotels. The group stated that it did not intend to replace the Chief Rabbinate’s kosher oversight body or to compete with it, but to improve religious services to restaurateurs and also to clients.

This move generated angry reactions by the Chief Rabbinate, but it was rather surprising to see that the most vocal opposition to Tzohar’s new kosher (kashrut) certification initiative came from its own camp. On March 6, a group of rabbis long associated with Tzohar signed a petition opposing the initiative and calling for a boycott. In a conversation with Al-Monitor, Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, a leader of Tzohar, said that those rabbis opposed to the initiative identify with the ultra-Orthodox nationalist sector. In other words, their positions concerning religious law are closer to those of the ultra-Orthodox.

Tzohar was founded by religious nationalist rabbis after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a far-right religious person, as a result of the rift that emerged in Israeli society at the time. One of the group’s main objectives was to make religious services in Israel more accessible and friendly to the wider public, in contrast to existing religious institutions, particularly the Chief Rabbinate.

In Israel, the Chief Rabbinate currently has a legally sanctioned monopoly over marriage and divorce and, according to a Supreme Court ruling, kashrut certification. This means, for instance, that only rabbis certified by the Chief Rabbinate can produce marriage licenses. In September 2017, an expanded panel of Supreme Court justices ruled that the Chief Rabbinate is the only body authorized to grant kashrut certification to businesses. This certification attests that restaurants, hotels and shops obey Jewish dietary rules. At the same time, however, they also allow businesses to present themselves as kosher, even if they do not have proper kashrut certification from the Chief Rabbinate, provided they meet certain religious criteria and are supervised by some other body. In fact, the court gave restaurants broad scope to describe the way in which they observe kashrut standards, without using the term “kashrut certification.”