Tzohar petitioned the High Court of Justice earlier this week for the fourth time in its long-running fight with the Chief Rabbinate, asking the court to order that it be recognized without further delay as a licensed body authorized to issue official kashrut certification. The new petition argues that, even after a ruling in November ordering the Rabbinate to decide whether Tzohar qualifies and, if so, to issue a license, the state still has not acted.
In the petition, Tzohar Food Supervision asks that the Rabbinate be directed to explain why it should not already be regarded as a licensed certifier, why enforcement should not be halted against restaurants and factories under its supervision, and why the Rabbinate should not be ordered to grant it a license immediately.
The filing says Tzohar has now come to court “for the fourth time” in an effort to realize what it describes as its constitutional right to provide food supervision and kashrut services.
The case sits at the intersection of a years-long religion-and-state struggle over a 2021 kashrut reform advanced by then religious services minister Matan Kahana. That reform was designed to move Israel away from the Rabbinate’s exclusive operational monopoly by allowing private bodies to issue kashrut certificates, while leaving the Chief Rabbinate in a supervisory and regulatory role.
Tzohar says law remains on books
Government and Knesset materials from the time framed the move as one meant to create competition, widen choice, and separate regulation from service provision. This amendment took effect in January 2023. Since then, however, implementation has been bogged down in legal and political trench warfare. In March 2023, Tzohar applied for a license as a national certifying body; the application was ignored, prompting a second petition.
The state later told the court that the new system had not been completed and that the Chief Rabbinate Council had not set the kashrut standards needed to operate it, while also pointing to the government’s intention to amend the law again. Tzohar says that became the central pattern of the case: the law remained on the books, but the state kept asking for time on the basis of a future repeal that never came.
That argument ultimately ran aground in the Supreme Court. In November 2025, the court accepted Tzohar’s petition and issued an absolute order directing the respondents to decide whether Tzohar qualified for a license under the existing law and, if so, to issue one. The ruling was a direct rejection of the state’s attempt to freeze implementation on the theory that the law would soon be changed.
Tzohar argues that after the November ruling, it submitted an updated licensing request on November 25, 2025, to the director-general of the Chief Rabbinate in his capacity as the licensing authority and reminded him that the law requires a decision within 45 days. It says no response came and argues that none of the grounds that could legally justify refusing a license apply in its case and that the Rabbinate has still not advanced the legislative repeal on which it had long relied in court.
More sharply, the petition casts the impasse not merely as bureaucratic delay but as unlawful noncompliance. It alleges that the Rabbinate has ignored both the statute and the High Court’s ruling and says the ongoing refusal reflects political and economic interests aimed at preserving the Rabbinate’s monopoly over kashrut.
In a statement following the filing, Tzohar said the problem was not the petition itself, but the fact that one was needed at all. After the court ordered the Religious Services Ministry to present the criteria for approving Tzohar as a private kashrut body, the organization said that the instruction was simply not carried out.
The filing is explicit in asking the court to view the delay itself as the equivalent of an unlawful refusal and, in these circumstances, to move from supervisory review to an operative order compelling the license to be issued.
“When a government authority ignores a court order and does not present the criteria required of it, there is no choice but to petition again in order to obtain relief,” Tzohar said. It added that Israel’s kashrut system should operate transparently, strengthen public trust, and serve as a unifying religious institution - rather than a source of unnecessary delay and dispute.
The broader fight did not begin with the 2023 licensing application. Tzohar had already challenged the Rabbinate over imported food certification, and in June 2023, the High Court pushed the Rabbinate to revisit its refusal to allow Tzohar to certify imported products.
Tzohar’s filing also leans heavily on the structure of the law itself. It argues that the licensing authority’s role is administrative: to determine whether an applicant meets the conditions set by statute, not to block an applicant because of ideology, religious stream affiliation, or broader political opposition to the reform.
The petition says the Chief Rabbinate Council’s role is narrower still – limited to objections grounded in the “hard core” of kashrut law – and contends that, in Tzohar’s case, no such valid objection has been advanced.