As part of its efficiency program, named “Gideon” (possibly to emulate the famous biblical judge’s feat of reducing his recruits from 32,000 to 300 — see Judges 7:1-7), the IDF is planning to let go of its in-house kashrut supervisors, both conscripts and career personnel, in scores of bases, replacing them by an outside service. The responsibility for the entire military kashrut service and the certification will remain in the hands of the military chief rabbinate.
The IDF has listed about 30 bases where the kashrut services will be outsourced in the first phase of the program, Ha’aretz reported Monday. To date, those positions have been filled by NCOs or enlisted men whose military assignment was kashrut supervision, who will be eliminated.
Recently, the defense ministry has approached civilian kashrut services asking for cost estimates for the outsourcing. The services were asked to submit their cost estimates with the assumption that the actual program would include as many as 60 IDF bases.
The contracted kashrut supervisors will be responsible for kashrut-related tasks, such as cleaning bugs from leafy vegetables and flour, separating challah (hafrashat challah), instructing kitchen workers, preparing the kitchen for Passover, and supervision of the kashrut in each kitchen. The supervisors will have to spend Shabbat and holidays on base, as well as be available for special events where food is served.
The outsourced kashrut personnel will have to have a high enough security clearance to be able to be posted in operational units, and will have to be to be available in an emergency.
The military chief rabbinate will monitor the contracted kashrut supervisors through a control system called “Kashrut checker,” operated via smartphones.
Over the past few weeks, IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot has been systematically curtailing the authority of the Military Rabbinate, most notably by transferring the area of Jewish Awareness from the Rabbinate to HR, which in turn assigned it to the Education Corp. At the time, the military rabbis argued that the change relegates their corp to nothing more than kashrut supervision. Turns out even that is being taken away.