Wineries outraged: words of Chief Rabbi - scandal

"The vilification of the Sephardic Chief Rabbi against the wineries are a big scandal," kashrus specialist Hagaon R' Yosef Zeritsky attacks in a conversation with Behadrey Haredim.

As first reported last night (Tuesday) in Behadrey Haredim, the Chief Sephardi Rabbi ruled that one should make a brocha of "shehakol" on many of the wines and that they are not kosher for Kiddush.

The kashrus systems reacted angrily to his words. As Harav Zeritzky, who spoke about the issue with vineyards and heads of kashrus systems relates: "Everyone tells me they do not know which winery the chief rabbi visited. No winery dilutes such high percentages of water in wines. The kashrus of Eida Hareidis does not allow less than 95% of wine in each bottle, so too the wines of Carmel Mizrahi. With the Barkan Winery it's 100%. So too with Golan Heights wineries and boutique wines.

"These wineries are the majority of wineries in Israel so please tell which winery did the Rishon Lezion Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef mean that one should make a "shehakol"," he said.

"It can not be that one can just slander," asserts Harav Zeritzky, "I want to know who it is. There's no trick to defame anonymous wineries. Imagine a secular body would speak ill of the legal system and say that all judges thieves. There would be a great outcry, to say that everyone are thieves? It's basically the same. I do not want to drink wine whose blessing is "shehakol". If the chief rabbi thinks there are those like that, he should stand up and say where."

"What the chief rabbi is doing is an unparalleled scandal, it is impossible to denigrate wineries without knowing who it is."

"Anyone who makes a blessing of "shehakol" on wine according to the opinion of the Rishon Letzion," concludes the Rabbi, "will have to answer for this."

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!