JERUSALEM “KOSHERGATE” SCANDAL

FROM FAILED MESSIAH

Zionist Orthodox Jerusalem Chief Rabbi’s Office Burglarized In Ongoing Fight Over Control Of The City’s Official Kosher Supervision Company
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

It reads like something out of an American political scandal from early 1970s. Dirty tricks. An office burglarized and sensitive information stolen. But this isn’t Washington, DC – it’s Jerusalem, and players involved are almost all rabbis.

Jerusalem had no chief rabbis for more than a decade due to political infighting between various haredi and Zionist Orthodox factions. That impasse was finally overcome earlier this year, and now former Sefardi haredi Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar is the city’s Sefardi Chief Rabbi, and the city’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is a prominent Zionist Orthodox rabbi, Aryeh Stern.

As Chief Rabbi, Stern is in charge of the city’s official kosher supervision – at least on paper. But the haredi rabbis who ran it for the past decade or more are refusing to cooperate with Stern.

According to a report in Yeshiva World, Stern asks for documents but never receives them. His every move to oversee the kosher supervision is thwarted from within. And Stern’s office was burglarized and the little information he had managed to gather on the kosher supervision’s operations was taken.

Stern has now reportedly asked the haredi Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef to intervene. In a letter to Yosef, Stern talks about the burglary and notes the thieves took the list of mashgichim (kosher supervisors) employed by the Jerusalem Rabbinate. Stern says that besides the lack of cooperation from the kosher supervisions top staffers and from the Jerusalem Religious Council they answer to (in part), he found a number of unacceptable practices carried out by the kosher supervision.

Based on all of that, Stern’s letter reportedly asks Yosef to have the Chief Rabbinate of Israel intervene immediately. Otherwise, Stern said he would have to announce that he no longer takes responsibility for the kosher supervision – meaning the public will know that it is running without the oversight of its elected rabbinic head.

Stern also reportedly sent a similar letter to the Minister of Religious Affairs David Azoulai of the Sefardi haredi Shas Party Yosef’s late father founded and led until his death in late 2013.