The Knesset’s Education Committee, headed by MK Yosef Taieb (Shas), on Monday held a discussion on the issue of kosher food during school activities.
The discussion follows a recent report of an incident in a school in southern Israel which during a trip served its students deli meats and cheeses for breakfast. According to the section in the Education Ministry protocols for food provision, the food suppliers must provide kosher food and present a certificate of kosher certification.
Taieb noted that, “In addition to the kosher [issue], there is also the matter of health. The Committee demands that the Education Ministry inspect and supervise the kashrut of the food, especially on trips, and impose punishments and call for hearings. The Committee demands that the Education Ministry check all of the aspects of a trip, including the kashrut and health of the food on the trips, just like it examines the security permits. The Committee demands to receive from the Education Ministry all of the petitions which it has received on the issue of the health and kashrut of food on trips.”
Gal Kafri, who is the Education Ministry official in charge of school trips, said, “For each of the 200,000 trips annually, the responsibility rests on the school’s principal. Just like the principal is required to coordinate security and busing with companies which have permits, it is the same for the issue of food. The Education Ministry is not the one which receives the certificates from the suppliers. The district Trips Committee examines, each year, around 60 events for which there are found to be flaws. The trips coordinator and the school principal may be called to a hearing with the district manager, and this is very serious.”
“Thus far, there has not been a hearing on the issue of non-kosher food,” Kafri said.

Oshrat Levi, the mother of a girl in a public school who participated in a school trip during which cheeses and deli meats were provided for breakfast, said, “We are a traditional family, and from an examination I did, it turns out that they are not careful about kashrut and food safety every time there is camping during a school trip. It’s really the Wild West. During my daughter’s annual school trip, they ate deli meats and cheeses at breakfast. In the heat and humidity that there was there, the students were even asked to prepare enough sandwiches to eat until the evening. My husband was there and he saw how they passed teaspoons and plates from one food to the other, between tables.”
“I wrote to the Health Ministry and I pointed out a concern of food-borne illness in the coolers for the trip, which was from Eilat to the Golan Heights, but they told me that it was not their business. The Education Ministry replied to me that there had in fact been a mixing of meat and dairy, but the deli meats and cheeses were at tables a reasonable distance from each other, and that it was in accordance with the rules of food eaten while camping. The school principal said that she had permission from the local supervisors. For the next annual trip, my daughter already did not go, because she did not have kosher food – in the Land of Israel. The council head even told me that I made my daughter stick out with my demands.”