Haredi leaders employing extortion by threats

On January 4^th, 2022, Hiddush filed a complaint against senior rabbis in ultra-Orthodox Judaism following their declaration that city rabbis who dare to act in accordance with the law after the adoption of a kashrut reform in the Knesset and certify food as kosher outside their city limits will have their kashrut certification banned everywhere, including in their own cities, and they will be considered as " having departed from the congregation of God and transgressing against the will of God." The declaration is signed by Rabbi Shalom Cohen, the spiritual leader of the Shas movement and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox-Lithuanian community.

05/01/2022 11:54

Tags: extortion · kashrut · ultra-Orthodoxy · Haredim · Haredi · kashrut reform

Rabbi Kanievsky, source: Wikipedia

This is the first initiative of the Minister of Religious Affairs from the Yamina party, Matan Kahana, to extend authority on major issues in the field of religious services to Zionist Orthodoxy and streamline these services by limiting the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly. We have written about this quite a bit in recent months, and we have emphasized that in these initiatives, Minister Kahana does not at all intend to promote Jewish pluralism. Rather, he intends to broaden the control of religious services such as kashrut and conversion to wider circles of Orthodoxy.

The reaction of the Chief Rabbinate and the ultra-Orthodox circles that control it was very harsh, as we have reported here before. They are unwilling to put up with any infringement upon the monopoly that Israeli politicians have placed in their hands for decades, and they wrap their opposition in cries of grief over the destruction of Judaism. Nevertheless, it now seems we have crossed a red line, for the resistance took on the character of extortion by threats in order to deter city rabbis from cooperating with the Minister of Religious Affairs in an initiative to streamline, improve, and reduce the cost of kashrut certification services – and all within the world of Orthodoxy.

The issue at hand is not just about kashrut, but rather about the identity of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Is this country governed by law, or are extremist religious elements allowed to force their will upon others through extortion by threats?

In Hiddush’s letter of complaint to the Attorney General, State Prosecutor, Head of the Investigations and Intelligence Division of the Israel Police, and Minister of Religious Services, we emphasized that this was a blatant offense of extortion by threats, under section 428 of the Israeli Penal Code, according to which, "threatening a person in writing, orally, or by one’s behavior, causing unlawful injury… to their livelihood, their good name... Or intimidating a person in another way; anything to motivate the person... to refrain from taking an action that he is legally entitled to take, the sentence will be - seven years imprisonment; if the act or omission was made out of threat or the imposition of such threat or during it, his sentence is nine years' imprisonment."

In the complaint, we made it clear that the issue at hand is not just about kashrut, but rather about the identity of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Is this country governed by law, or are extremist religious elements allowed to force their will upon others through extortion by threats, operating like a state within a state, which is not governed by law, neither Knesset Law on Kashrut, nor by the Penal Code. In our letter, we demanded a criminal investigation be opened against these leading rabbis, especially in light of the widespread publicity given to their threats and the fact that hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis follow their orders.