The Chief Rabbinate claimed today that its “energetic intervention” and “divine assistance” killed a project to raise shrimps and crabs in Israel for export. The rabbis feared that the shell fish, forbidden by the dietary laws, would have wound up in Jewish homes and restaurants.
It had been planned to raise the seafood in warm water pools created by the new electric power plant at Hadera in order to increase foreign currency earnings. But Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren intervened with Yitzhak Modai who was Energy Minister in the previous Likud-led government, to abandon the project.
Modai, now a Minister-Without-Portfolio, complied, according to an account in a publication of the Chief Rabbinate Council’s kashrut department. The Rabbinate now boasts another victory in its drive to impose Orthodox religious practices on the entire populace. They have already succeeded in banning pork for foreign consumption.
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