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Israeli Supreme Court declares Messianic bakery ‘kosher‘

A bakery in Ashdod, Israel, owned by a Messianic Jew, may now continue to bake its own kind of bread, according to a news report from the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

Following a lengthy legal battle, Israel's Supreme Court on Monday (June 29) ordered the Chief Orthodox Rabbinate to grant 'kashrut' (or 'kosher') certification to an Ashdod bakery owned by a Messianic Jew, a decision likely to spark further confrontation between the nation's highest legal arbiter and the ultra-Orthodox community.

In its verdict, the court ruled that the 51-year-old Yemenite baker's belief that Jesus was the Messiah did not make her baked goods unkosher.

Furthermore, ICEJ reports, the court found that the Chief Rabbinate Council had exceeded the authority granted them by the Kashrut Law when they demanded that the bakery meet special conditions such as promising not to engage in missionary activity and turning the keys to the bakery over to a kashrut supervisor, conditions demanded solely because the owner is a Messianic Jew.

The ICEJ report says the owner, Pnina Conforty, who became a believer while working in Ohio for an evangelical Christian family, enjoyed impressive business success after returning to Israel and opening the bakery in 2002.

ICEJ says Conforty, however, quickly saw a sharp decline in sales after her faith was publicized in an article in a Messianic Jewish magazine. She suffered from demonstrations outside her bakery and posters with her picture distributed throughout the city warning that she was a missionary.

"Finally I won. This is my baby," said Conforty after giving credit to the Ohio family that led her to Christ.

"God arranged it that I arrived at a place where there were Christians who love Israel more than most Jews do. Their love and faith were so different from the religion I learned at home that was based on fear. I was never taught to serve God out of love until then," she said.

According to the online encyclopaedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut , Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus, כַּשְׁרוּת) refers to Jewish dietary laws.

Food in accord with halakha (Jewish law) is termed 'kosher' in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér (כָּשֵׁר), meaning "fit" (in this context, fit for consumption by Jews according to traditional Jewish law).

Jews who keep kashrut may not consume non-kosher food, but there are no restrictions on non-dietary use of non-kosher products, for example, injection of insulin of porcine origin.

Food that is not in accordance with Jewish law is called treif (Yiddish: טרײף or treyf, derived from Hebrew: טְרֵפָה‎ trēfáh). In the technical sense, treif means "torn" and refers to meat which comes from an animal killed by another animal, killed with a dull knife (so that it felt pain) or having a defect that renders it unfit for slaughter.

Many of the basic laws of kashrut are derived from the Torah's Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with their details set down in the oral law (the Mishnah and the Talmud) and codified by the Shulchan Aruch and later rabbinical authorities.

The Torah does not explicitly state the reason for most kashrut laws, and many varied reasons have been offered for these laws, ranging from philosophical and ritualistic, to practical and hygienic.

Islam has a related but different system, named 'halal', and both systems have a comparable system of ritual slaughter (shechita in Judaism and Dabīhah in Islam).

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TAGS: Israel Messianic bakery ultra-Orthodox community kosher missionary activity Messianic Jew

[07/06/2009]

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