The highly controversial kashrut reform bill cleared another hurdle Wednesday, setting up a likely heated plenum debate in the coming weeks over what could be the most significant change to religious oversight on restaurants in decades.
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The legislation, which is sponsored by Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana, was finalized by the Committee on Special National Infrastructure Initiatives and Jewish Religious Services and now heads to the Knesset plenum for its second and third reading.
Video: Anti-kashrut reform headquarters
The head of the committee, Yulia Malinovsky, said the advancement of the bill to the Knesset plenum "is incredible news for the general public. We have broken the Chief Rabbinate's monopoly and opened kashrut [supervision] to healthy competition."
Malinovsky called the bill "revolutionary" because it will "make the kashrut system in Israel more efficient, will reduce expenditures, decrease the cost of living, and benefit business owners who have had to pay exorbitant fees for a kashrut certificate."
The deliberations at the committee stage were particularly long in part because opponents of the bill tried to insert the thousands of proposed changes to the language of the bill as a means of preventing it from moving forward.
The Chief Rabbinate, ultra-Orthodox figures, and Haredi Knesset members have been strongly opposed to the bill from the get-go, claiming it would "destroy" kashrut in Israel.
On Wednesday, hundreds of kashrut workers took to the streets of Tel Aviv against the bill and its chief sponsor.
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