Israel’s chief Sephardi Rabbi, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, decided at the last minute to stop the printing run of this year’s Rabbinate’s Passover instruction manual for hotels and restaurants after reviewing it, instructing the rabbinate’s director Moshe Dagan: “Do not print, we will sit in two days and together we’ll fix this,” Kikar Hashabbat reported.
Rabbi Yosef explained his decision, saying, “They followed the rule of ‘the more stringent the better,’ and made up many, many chumrot (stringent rules).”
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel each year publishes a guidebook for hotels and restaurants for Passover. Among other things, the booklet contains rules on how to prepare the kitchens for Passover.
“I don’t know who did these things, so many chumrot,” added the Rishon LeZion. “They are looking to make matters more stringent for the people of Israel, things that are simply permitted, things that are universally permitted. Don’t let them print the booklet until I add my comments.”
The chief rabbi added that “Even the pamphlet of medicines that are also published in the newspaper, medicine that tastes bad are permissible according to Chacham Tzvi, the [Ashkenazi Haredi posek] Ha’Gaon Khazon Ish writes that it is permitted – they are more stringent than the Chazon Ish, whatever for?”
