מתוך הסרטון
מתוך הסרטוןצילום: טיקטוק

In the current government, the head of the Knesset Committee for Religious Services is MK Yulia Malinovsky, a secular member of the staunchly secularist Yisrael Beytenu party. Now, with the government promoting its “reforms” of the national kashrut system, Malinovsky has put forward her own idea of what kosher certification should look like in a video she uploaded to TikTok.

הסרטון של ח"כ יוליה מלינובסקי מעורר סערהמהטיקטוק

The video shows Malinovsky pointing to two of the most widely known kashrut symbols and ruling them out. She then points to a picture of a “kosher seal” with the “supervision of the Beit Din of Yulia Malinovsky” written on it, and gives it a thumbs-up. The video concludes with her expressing her support for opening up the world of kosher supervision to “competition.”

“Malinovsky is saying what [Religious Affairs] Minister Matan Kahana is trying to hide,” said Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, head of the Union of Community Rabbis. “This isn’t a reform of kashrut – it’s a reform of the Jewish identity of the State.”

Rabbi Eliyahu added that, “Using his military background as a cheap promotional tool, Kahana is lying to everyone and destroying the kashrut system of the State of Israel. I find it hard to understand why Kahana insists on being the useful idiot of Gilad Kariv, Merav Michaeli, and Avigdor Liberman,” he said, referencing three prominent members of the government who are known for their hatred of traditional Judaism.

Yehuda Wald, the director of the Religious Zionism party, also responded to Malinovsky’s video, saying, “Everyone knows that this is [Finance Minister Avigdor] Liberman’s kosher reform. In Knesset committee debates, a number of good ideas for changes to the law being put forward were proposed and even received the approval of the representatives of the Religious Affairs Ministry, but in the end, Liberman refused to authorize them. So, it’s going to cost us more money, and it will also harm the State kashrut system, weaken the Chief Rabbinate, and it’s opposed by the majority of rabbis in the country. But hey – the main thing is that Liberman’s happy.”