Restaurant owners petition courts to allow them to open on Shabbos like hotels

According to a report on The Marker, a petition has been filed with the Supreme Court by restaurant owners to compel the Rabbanut to allow restaurants to remain open on Shabbos and keep their kashrut certificate and supervision, just as they do for hotels.

The group of restaurant owners petitioning the court says that the business on Shabbos is 40% of their weekly revenue and not allowing them to function on Shabbos is tremendously damaging to them.

The claim is relatively simple - if hotels can be in business on Shabbos and open and operational, and be certified kosher, restaurants should be able to function the same way.

The fellow behind the petition, restaurant owner Yehonatan Wadi, says it is absurd that all aroudn the world Israeli backpackers can find a Shabbos meal and arrange necessary payment before or after Shabbos, but specifically in Israel and in its capital city Jerusalem, this is impossible and these young people have no solution. And, most ironic, instead of the Rabbanut assisting in providing a reasonable solution to fill this void, the Rabbanut is the one forcing the problem.

The argument is not very accurate. The young people do have a solution - they can go to one of the hotels that are open. Or they can go to a Chabad house, or one of the many people around town that host large meals for guests and walk-ins. Just go to the Kotel and get tapped on the shoulder and invited to a meal!

But seriously, I am not sure if the restaurant owners are asking the courts to allow them to continue functioning as regular restaurants or similar to the way hotels function with advance payment but not taking any money on Shabbos itself. He compares them to hotels and begs for a solution similar to what is found all around the world with pre-payment, but does not seem to include that explicitly in the solution for restaurants here.

Do restaurants here really want to not take money on Shabbos? Do they not want to also cook fresh food but only serve the food they cooked on Friday afternoon and kept warm? Will their customers be satisfied with that? Perhaps there is such a solution, but the restaurants need to acknowledge that they are willing to work in this manner and not just "be open on Shabbos, as the hotels are". The hotels are only allowed to function in certain ways retaining their kashrut - they are not allowed to function as if it were Wednesday.

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