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.

In a dramatic statement, the union of hotels in Israel has made an announcement that they are considering switching from kashrut supervision under the authority of the Rabbanut to kashrut supervision under the authority of Tzohar.

The Rabbanut has announced they are considering calling for an investigation, as it is illegal to obtain kasrut certification with any organization other than the Rabbanut.

Tzohar says they have nothing to do with the hotel unions announcement and have not opened a kashrut division and will not do so as long as it is illegal.
source: Kipa

1. being that Tzohar does not have a kashrut division, what are the hoteliers threatening to do? are they trying to encourage Tzohar, by promising Tzohar a lot of business to make it worthwhile, to open one and then they'll switch?

2. is it illegal to say one is considering switching? it is illegal to state kashrut without the rabbanut. Have they done that? what would the Rabbanut have them investigated for?

3. why does Tzohar not have a kashut division? what does it mean they won't open one as long as it is illegal? There are a dozen, or more, Badatzim out there and they are not illegal because they are providing a service using the backbone of the Rabbanut - Tzohar could do the same.

4. If the hotel union wanted to levy a threat, they would do better using a kashrut organization that already exists and has as its stated goal the breaking of the Rabbanut kashrut monopoly - like Hashgacha Pratit of Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz.

5. the hotel union has been in a long fight with the Rabbanut about the expense of their kashrut supervision. They took the Rabbanut to court and, while they lost the case, the courts gave the Rabbanut a period of two years to rework their system and come up with solutions. They recently reopened the case to a broader panel of judges to revaluate the Rabbanut's monopoly. This is another stage in that fight.

A Jerusalem hotel is celebrating the leap year in an unusual way...

Hotel Yehuda in Jerusalem has put out an offer for February 29. Basically, if you are one of the first two couple to come to their hotel and rent a room and "make a baby" in that room on that date, that child will get all future life events for free at that hotel. Free bris ceremony (and free kiddush for a girl?), free bar or bat mitzvah, and free wedding.
source: Jpost

I do wonder, considering we are in Israel, the Jewish State, and in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish State, if they will be making the same offer for the Jewish leap year that is coming up soon - during the entire month of Adar II....

Obviously qualification for the prize will be dependent on a lot of legalities and conditions. I hope there will also be some sort of protection (pun intended) for the couples who win the prize. Let's say they do this and in 3 years the hotel sells out to a different owner - will the new owner be obligated to honor the original commitment? What if they shut down?

Anyways, it sounds like a good game of roulette, and at worst it might just be a lot of fun trying to get the prize.

A new idea is being researched for improving the level of kashrut in hotels. It would be something similar to how hotels are rated for quality - 5 star hotel, 4 star hotel, etc. When you see a hotel advertised as 5-star, you know it includes a pool and a gym and a certain level of food quality and service, luxury etc. When it says 4-star hotel you know they provide tan upscale hotel with quality and comfort. 3-star means quality, style , comfort and convenience, etc.

The same would work with kashrus, if the new system gets implemented.

Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger is looking into creating a sense of competition among hotels and create a rating system for the level of kashrut in the hotels. the desire to retain a higher standard of reliability and kashrut would come not as a demand from the outside - the mashgiach demanding it or some customers. Rather, the hotels themselves would demand it, the thinking goes, so that they can market themselves as a five-star or four-star kashrut hotel.

Personally I would change it from 5-star or 4-star to magen davids. This is a 5-magendavid hotel, and thatis a 4-magendavid hotel, etc.

According to the report in NRG, this is how the rating would go:

• 2-star hotel: bearing a regular teudat kashrut
• 3-star hotel: not employing non-Jews in the food prep process.
• 4-star hotel: using only meat that is mehadrin (it says buying meat only from a machmir haredi butcher. I define that to mean "mehadrin beef")
• 5-star hotel: the entire hotel is shomer shabbat and no tzniyus issues - employee uniforms are tzanua, no music played in the lobbies on shabbat, employees wont talk on the telephone on Shabbat, designating separate times for mens-only and womens-only swimming, Shabbos elevators etc.

------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------

Summer is coming and that means a new committee has been formed to protect us from the dangers of the world...

The following clipping was run on the front page of the Yated Neeman.

It describes how when people go to hotels, even under Haredi ownership and with mehudar kashrus, there are tamei appliances (TV and Internet) and other stumbling blocks that can very quickly bring parents, and for sure kids, to fall spiritually, and many already have, and then they wonder why one of their kids went off the derech. blah blah blah,

We have therefore formed a new vaad - the Committee for Gaurding the Charachter of the Jewish Nation and thank the avreichim who have agreed to be on this committee. They will approach the various hotels to fix these problems. As well, they will approach the various organizations that arrange groups that they should agree to only go to places that accept upon themselves our rules of tznius. blah blah blah, signed by Rabbis Elyashiv and Wosner.





They should just assur going away at all for vacations. It will be much easier, and as many people will listen, as doing this....

We stayed in a cottage... not in the hotel itself.

The dining room was nicely set and the food was good.

They had a group from the Biale shul in RBS there on some sort of a shabbaton. By mistake we davened with that group on Friday night (thinking that was the main minyan), so the tefillot were long. What was interesting was that the "Rebbe" of the Biale shteibel led the services and he sang a number of Carlebach tunes in kabbolas shabbos. That was surprising, but now I hear that is what this particular Biale shteibel is like...Shabbos morning we davened in the regular minyan, and davening was a more normal pace...

There was another friend we saw there from RBS on a shabbaton with a school his wife runs, and I met someone fairly new to RBS as well who was there for shabbos.

One of my kids met a veritable twin of his from Modiin. It turns out they were born a day apart from each other. They played the whole shabbos together and both us and this other kids parents kept mixing up the two of the kids. It did not help that they were both wearing the exact same sweater, so at a quick glance they looked exactly the same!

We got a tour of the moshav, including the petting zoo and the "refet" where the cows are kept. These cows are humongous. Much bigger than the ones I have been shechting. He told us that on average they weigh about half a ton each. I am converting the weight now and it seems that comes out to about 450-500 kilogram each or about 1000 pounds each. That seems too small because the 6 month old calves I shechted were much smaller and they weighed about 300 kilogram (about 660 pounds)...

They showed us how the cows are milked on shabbos, though to be honest I did not understand the process the way he explained the halachic aspects of it. I am not sure the tour guide understood the process either because some of what he said was very unclear..

Speaking of cows, I just found this great site promoting cows to be bought as house pets instead of dogs. It is pretty funny, but the best line is, "And when get tired of them, you can kill them and eat them."

If you are looking for a nice mehadrin vacation spot, look up Nir Etzion. It is about 20 minutes away from Haifa..