(JTA) — L.A. businessman Shlomo Rechnitz bought a kosher supermarket in Los Angeles that is suspected of mislabeling its meat.
Rechnitz purchased the Doheny Glatt Kosher Meat Market from Mike Engleman at the behest of the Rabbinical Council of California, a kashrut certifier. The RCC said Wednesday that the market will undergo a makeover.
"The store will reopen in the coming days under RCC supervision after undergoing a thorough restocking and will feature mehadrin kashrus standards," the RCC said in a statement, referring to the most stringent kosher supervision. "The previous owner has no financial or operational interest in the store."
The council said it asked Rechnitz, son-in-law of the religious arbiter Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, to buy the popular meat store to ensure the observant community in central Los Angeles had a reliable source of kosher food.
On March 24, the day before the first night of Passover, the RCC revoked the kosher certification of Doheny’s based on video shot some two weeks earlier of Engelman smuggling meat from an unknown source into the market while the rabbinic supervisor was away.
Belsky ruled that meat sold prior to March 24 was considered kosher, even if a small portion in the store was not.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched an investigation of Doheny’s.
