The Government’s Proposed Kashrut Bill: What It Would Change and Why It Matters
The legislation would largely repeal reforms passed in 2021, restoring the Chief Rabbinate’s centralized role over kosher certification, reducing competition and limiting religious choice. It could also have significant budgetary consequences.
Photo by Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90
A draft government bill advanced by Israel's Ministry of Religious Services seeks to make sweeping changes to Israel’s system of kashrut supervision. The proposal, approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on May 31, 2026, would largely repeal the kashrut reform enacted in 2021 and restore the central role of the state rabbinate in granting kosher certification. In July 2026, it was approved for its second and third readings in the Knesset.
Kashrut supervision is one of the most significant and complex intersections of religion and state in Israel. It affects the food market, imposes costs on businesses and consumers, and raises broader questions concerning freedom of religion, freedom from religion, and freedom of occupation. According to the Israel Democracy Institute’s 2024 Religion and State Biennial Report, 68% of Jewish Israelis report that they observe kashrut to some degree: 45% say they always keep kosher, and another 23% say they usually do. In 2023, religious councils issued kosher certificates to approximately 15,250 businesses. Together with certificates issued by religious departments in local authorities without religious councils, the state kashrut system covers approximately 16,400 businesses in food production, food sales, catering, and hospitality. Today, the system involves more than 8 million hours of supervision annually, at a cost of around NIS 500 million, and employs approximately 6,000 kashrut supervisors, some of them in part-time positions.
How Israel’s Kashrut System Has Worked
Israel’s kashrut system has traditionally been regulated under the Prohibition of Fraud in Kashrut Law, enacted in 1983. Under the original law, kosher certificates could be issued only by a local rabbi within his jurisdiction, by the Chief Rabbinate Council, or by a rabbi authorized by the Chief Rabbinate Council. Private kashrut bodies, such as Badatz organizations, could operate only as an additional layer of certification on top of an official certificate issued by the local rabbinate.
In practice, most kashrut supervision was provided by city rabbis and regional council rabbis through local religious councils. The law did not establish uniform national kashrut standards, meaning that each local rabbi could set his own requirements. As a result, businesses in different localities could be subject to different rules. For imported products, the Chief Rabbinate effectively held a monopoly: applications for kosher certification of imported food products or raw materials were submitted to the Chief Rabbinate Council.
In 2021, then-Minister of Religious Services Matan Kahana advanced a major reform through an amendment to the Prohibition of Fraud in Kashrut Law. The reform was designed to open the kashrut market to competition. It allowed licensed private kashrut bodies to issue kosher certificates as an alternative to local rabbis, subject to regulation and licensing by the Chief Rabbinate. It also allowed local rabbis to issue certificates beyond their own jurisdictions. In addition, the reform provided for kashrut standards to be set not only by the Chief Rabbinate Council, but also by rabbinical committees composed of local rabbis.
The 2021 reform also addressed imports. It ended the Chief Rabbinate’s exclusive control over kosher certification for imported products by allowing private kashrut bodies to certify imports, subject to recognized standards.
What Happened to the 2021 Reform?
Although the 2021 amendment was enacted, it has barely been implemented. The law was scheduled to take full effect in January 2023, following a transition period. During that period, the Minister of Religious Services was empowered to issue six-month orders allowing local rabbis to continue providing certification under the existing framework where preparations for the new system had not been completed.
Since then, the minister has repeatedly used this authority to extend the transitional arrangement. However, the legal opinion emphasizes that this authority does not permit the government to cancel or freeze the reform itself. Under the law, the Chief Rabbinate was supposed to establish a regulatory framework beginning in January 2023 that would license and oversee private kashrut bodies seeking to operate under the reform.
In practice, that framework was not established. The Chief Rabbinate and the Ministry of Religious Services did not take the steps required to implement the reform, citing the government’s intention to promote new legislation that would reverse it. The result has been that private kashrut bodies seeking licenses have been unable to operate under the legal arrangements created by the 2021 law.
What the New Draft Bill Would Do
The new draft bill would largely repeal the 2021 reform. It would restore the rule that kosher certificates may be issued by local rabbis only within their own jurisdictions. Private kashrut bodies would not be able to issue kosher certificates as an alternative to local rabbis, and local rabbis would not be able to certify businesses outside the local authority in which they serve.
At the same time, the proposal would not simply return the law to its pre-2021 form. Before the reform, local rabbis had broad authority to set the kashrut standards in their own localities. Under the new proposal, local rabbis would be required to provide certification according to standards set by the Chief Rabbinate Council. The Chief Rabbinate would be required to establish at least two standards: regular kashrut and mehadrin kashrut. Unlike the 2021 reform, the new proposal would not allow alternative standards to be set by committees of local rabbis.
For imported products, the bill would restore and formally enshrine the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over kosher certification. Private kashrut bodies would no longer be able to certify imported food products.
Key Issues Raised by the Proposal
The draft bill raises several significant policy and legal concerns.
First, it would eliminate competition in the kashrut market and restore the monopoly of the state rabbinate. Previous reviews by state and local auditors found extensive problems in the state kashrut system, including structural weaknesses, insufficient professionalism, weak oversight of supervisors, and cases in which local rabbis or religious council heads used kashrut authority to advance personal or political interests. In some reports, the scale of the deficiencies raised concerns regarding the reliability of the kashrut supervision provided by religious councils. The 2021 reform sought to address these problems by introducing professional private kashrut corporations operating under regulation.
Second, the proposal may increase costs associated with kashrut. A 2015 Ministry of Finance report estimated the cost of kashrut to Israel’s food market at NIS 2.8 billion, including NIS 600 million attributed to the kashrut monopoly. The Competition Authority recently opposed the draft bill, arguing that the regulatory structure it creates prevents competition in the issuance of kosher certificates for food businesses and leads to inefficiency. The 2021 reform, which the new bill seeks to repeal, had the potential to reduce food prices by lowering kashrut-related costs. IDI research also found that 88% of products sold in food retail chains carry an additional kosher certificate beyond the Rabbinate’s certification, pointing to unnecessary duplication in food production.
Third, the proposal raises concerns regarding freedom of religion. A monopoly held by the local rabbinate means that businesses and communities may be required to obtain kashrut supervision that does not reflect their religious outlook. Opening the market to regulated private kashrut bodies, local rabbis outside a business’s immediate jurisdiction, and diverse kashrut standards would reduce this infringement by allowing greater choice.
A further concern relates to centralization. The draft bill seeks to create uniform standards by requiring all local rabbis to operate according to standards set by the Chief Rabbinate. This could address real problems in the current system, including unequal treatment of businesses in different localities and difficulties faced by national chains that operate branches across the country. However, kashrut is a complex and varied area of Jewish law, with multiple halakhic approaches. Requiring all local rabbis to follow only a small number of centrally determined standards would limit the range of kashrut options available to consumers and could also infringe on the religious autonomy of local rabbis. According to the analysis, the draft appears to require a local rabbi to grant certification at the minimum standard set by the Chief Rabbinate even if that standard does not accord with his halakhic position, while also preventing him from granting certification under a more lenient standard even if he believes it is halakhically appropriate.
The bill also addresses the employment of kashrut supervisors. Today, most supervisors are assigned by religious councils but employed by the businesses they supervise. In 2017, the High Court of Justice ruled that the employment link between the supervisor and the supervised business must be severed. The draft bill would implement this ruling by making all kashrut supervisors employees of religious councils, or of local authorities where no religious council operates.
This change could have major administrative and budgetary implications. The Ministry of Finance has expressed concern that this could create substantial additional costs. The proposal also raises concern that, in the context of a more centralized state kashrut system, it could create a large pool of public-sector positions unnecessarily.
Bottom Line
The draft bill would reverse the main elements of the 2021 kashrut reform and restore a centralized, state-controlled model of kosher certification. It would prevent private kashrut bodies from competing with the local rabbinate, restore the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over imported products, and require local rabbis to operate according to Chief Rabbinate standards.
While the proposal may promote greater uniformity, it also raises serious concerns around reduced competition, preserved structural weaknesses in the existing system, a risk of increasing costs, limited religious choice, and weakened autonomy of local rabbis and communities. It would also move thousands of kashrut supervisors into public employment, with potentially significant budgetary consequences.