A quiet revolution is taking shape in the IDF.

“An army marches on its stomach.”

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir (left) gives orders. (photo: IDF/X)

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This is a guest essay by Rabbi Chaim Goldberg, a psychologist and journalist.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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A few months ago, signs were plastered across ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem — including one directly in front of my apartment building — declaring that “Anyone who enlists [in the IDF] will eat treif.” (Treif is a Yiddish word that means “not kosher.”)

Whether these billboards are intended to be literal or hyperbolic, at a minimum, they reflect an assumption that kosher in the army is significantly substandard.

In reality, the kosher standards maintained in the army are often higher than those of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and, in fact, often rival those of the Mehadrin Kashrut agencies (the most stringent level of kosher supervision within Jewish dietary laws), something which these agencies attest to themselves.

The IDF has always provided kosher food to its soldiers, but the past decade has seen the IDF undergo a quiet revolution in this area. Under the leadership of IDF Chief Rabbi Eyal Krim and former IDF Rabbinate head of kosher Rabbi Chaim Weissberg, kosher standards have seen unprecedented advancement.

To learn more, I sat with the most recent head of the IDF Rabbinate’s kosher division, Rabbi Neria Rosenthal, who served in the position throughout the war until his retirement this January. In fact, some of what is written here is being published for the first time.

For starters, as more religious Israelis draft to the army, the IDF Rabbinate receives greater resources to enhance the kosher standards of military food provisions. Back in 2019, it expanded its kosher workforce, deploying additional supervisors to military facilities and food contractors. The IDF Rabbinate recruited rabbis with specialized training to oversee specific kosher domains, including imported products, green vegetables, and ritual slaughter.

The military completed this transition in 2022, implementing a policy ensuring all meat served throughout the entire military meet glatt kosher requirements (chalak). On army bases with ultra-Orthodox units, all meat is glatt kosher in line with the Mehadrin Kashrut, supervised by higher-level kosher certification agencies. Even on those bases, for soldiers who request the highest civilian kosher standard, Badatz Eidah Haredit, it is provided as well.

Rabbi Neria Rosenthal (center left)

After years of investing in strengthening the relationships between the IDF Rabbinate and other army branches, the army’s logistics division eventually consented to having the IDF Rabbinate approve all food items — from oil to meat to spices. Every food shipment entering an IDF base undergoes meticulous inspections, one of which is a kosher inspection. IDF rabbis personally verify kosher certifications and conduct thorough examinations of incoming supplies.

Since the current war began on October 7, 2023, the IDF has been the largest food consumer in Israel, feeding nearly 500,000 people per day. Even in peacetime, the IDF is one of the country’s largest food consumers. As such, when choosing its culinary contractors, the IDF Rabbinate requires high standards, yet faces no resistance. After all, any company wants to land this mega contract.

On the other side of the coin, even after a contract is signed, if a company starts cutting corners or is found to be remiss in one of its kosher requirements, the IDF Rabbinate can cut the contract immediately, knowing that other wholesalers will be more than happy to fill the gap.

In fact, this represents a significant benefit over civilian kosher, even high-level kosher, because when a civilian kosher agency suspects negligence, it is liable to tolerate the issue longer than it should, since the kosher agency itself has an interest in not losing business. Rabbi Rosenthal relates that this phenomenon has actually raised kosher standards across Israel, as many of the IDF’s suppliers also supply civilian customers. And due to the IDF Rabbinate’s insistence on various standards, those civilian customers benefit from the higher standards as well.

This commitment to high standards extends to produce as well. The IDF sources produce from two specific companies, and part of the contract is that IDF rabbis supervise them all the way from the planting stage, ensuring optimal methods are employed to minimize bug infestation.

Importantly, it isn’t just the IDF Rabbinate saying its own food meets a high kosher standard. Many of the most-respected kosher agencies in Israel, widely recognized as reliable certification, even according to ultra-Orthodox standards, have issued their stamp of approval.

My neighbor, an ultra-Orthodox fellow who enlisted in November 2023 and has since served 300-plus days of reserve duty, has arranged meetings between leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis who, after being presented with the IDF Rabbinate’s standards, offered their stamp of approval as well.

I asked Rabbi Rosenthal if he could point me to sources in Shulchan Aruch (“The Code of Jewish Law”) or later commentaries for the stringencies he refers to. “We don’t follow the Shulchan Aruch,” he said wryly. “Many of the standards we enforce go well beyond what the Shulchan Aruch requires.”

For example, he notes that every army base has a separate meat kitchen and dairy kitchen. What’s more, there are separate meat and dairy fridges. There is no law in the Shulchan Aruch requiring meat and dairy food to be cooked on different stoves, and there is certainly no Jewish requirement for cold meat and dairy foods to be stored in separate fridges. Yet the IDF Rabbinate insists on these standards out of an abundance of caution.

Another major area of change, which took effect this past year, is the severing of the chain of command between IDF Rabbinate kosher supervisors and base commanders in charge of the kitchen. On large bases, where an IDF rabbi is stationed full-time and the kosher supervisor is subordinate to him, there is no problem. However, on small bases, the kosher supervisor is subordinate to the commander in charge of the kitchen.

This is problematic from the perspective of Jewish law, since circumstances will arise where the kitchen commander has a direct interest in something being done against the kosher standards — be it convenience, less work, or something else — and the kosher supervisor will be bound to follow his commander’s orders, thus undermining his role as a kosher supervisor.

After extensive efforts, Rabbi Rosenthal reports that the policy was finally changed so that the kosher supervisor reports to a senior commander on the base. As well, a kosher supervisor who sees intentional disregard of the IDF’s kosher standards can report it to Rabbi Rosenthal, who can then cut that kitchen commander’s purchasing power until corrective action is taken. This establishes mirtat, a concept in Jewish law which recognizes external deterrents as a basis for trust in adherence to established guidelines.

Here, too, the IDF’s system is now advantageous in relation to civilian kosher in Israel, where, surprisingly enough, kosher supervisors are employed by the restaurant or hotel that they supervise. Imagine the scene in a hotel kitchen: The kosher supervisor sounds the alarm regarding a kosher issue, only to be informed politely that if he’s not quiet, he’ll be out of a job. Certainly, one hopes the kosher supervisor will act with integrity, but financial pressures are not always conducive to it.

For the IDF, adherence to high kosher standards enables everyone to eat together in the food halls and, thus, is a fulfillment of its foundational value of reut, roughly translated as a deep sense of camaraderie. For Rabbi Rosenthal, though, the kosher standards are not just about a commitment to kosher-observant soldiers; they represent a commitment to the security of the country.

“An army marches on its stomach,” said Rabbi Rosenthal, quoting Napoleon. “If any soldier enters combat or guard duty on an empty stomach, or worrying about how much of their next meal will meet their kosher standards, their alertness and capacity to focus will be affected, leaving them ill-equipped to fulfill their mission properly. Thus, ensuring a high standard of kosher across the IDF is an essential component of the IDF’s ability to fight, and fight effectively.”

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