Israel – Rabbi: Hotel Room Service Only on Plastic Plates During Pesach

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    Israel – The Passover holiday is fast approaching, and with it, a slew of unique kosher stipulations. After ordering that products containing chametz be blocked from sale at supermarkets through barcode identification, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger has ruled that kosher hotels must serve room service meals only on disposable plates during the holiday.

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    The reasoning behind this move is that guests who do not observe the dietary laws of the holiday that prohibit the consumption of leavened products may place non-kosher items on the plates, thus halachically rendering them and all the dishes in the hotel non-kosher for Passover.

    In a circular distributed by the Chief Rabbinate’s National Kashrut Department, municipal rabbis and kosher division managers throughout the country listed how hotels are to be made kosher for Passover. One of the guidelines initiated by Rabbi Metzger stipulated that hotels start using only disposable plates and flatware in their room service starting a week before the holiday.

    The rabbi’s office explained that secular guests or non-Jewish tourists are likely to use regular plates for food that it is not kosher for Passover. Subsequently, upon being returned to the kitchen, the said plates would disqualify for use all other plates in the kitchen being washed along with them. In order to prevent such unnecessary mishaps, the rabbi issued the directive t use disposable dishes only.

    Some two weeks ago, Rabbi Metzger announced that the Chief Rabbinate would demand that supermarkets install a dedicated program in their cashiers that would identify chametz items prohibited from sale during the seven days of the holiday.

    The technological innovation, which was developed and donated “for the sake of Heaven” by a young religious man who cares about the issue, allows the products that are not kosher for Passover to be removed from the list of products for sale by cataloguing and identifying them according to their barcode. This would effectively prevent products containing hametz from being sold accidentally.

    The program was already successfully tested last year, but Metzger, who at first asked that supermarket kosher certification be conditioned on the installation of such a program during Passover, reconsidered his decision after supermarkets claimed they could not make sufficient arrangements for the new barcode in time for Passover.

    Metzger said, however, that an agreement has already been reached with all the supermarkets on the matter ahead of this year’s holiday, and “whoever won’t manage, we will arrange for him a yeshiva student to volunteer to install the new barcode.”


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    8 Comments
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    halb gebaken
    halb gebaken
    14 years ago

    I don’t understand why this problem is only on pesach…why aren’t they worried that even during the year a non religious guest will use a hotel utensil for treif? I believe that plastic should be used year round. Their solution is halb gebaken…

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Why is this only a problem on Pesach? Don’t we have to worry that guests will put non-kosher foods on the hotel’s dishes all year? It seems very likely that non-Jewish guests would mix up meat and milk on the hotel’s dishes in their private rooms. No malicious intent or even carelessness is necessary, they know nothing about Kashrus. How can we be sure the hotel’s dishes are not being ‘treifed up’ during the year???

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    This is an issue mainly on Pesach because the Halachos of Bitul and Rov are much stricter on Pesach than with ordinary Tarfus.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I don’t believe there are any hotels in Israel that are kosher l’pesach and unsupervised the balance of the year.

    If R Metzger has this concern, by definition, it must apply year round — My family, friends and I stay in Israeli hotels regularly all at very different levels of kashrut. We get room service, keep kabanas, sliced meats, cheese, milkshakes and everything else we buy at the makolet, in the room — no question that hotel stuff is going to get treifed up under the R Metzger standard.