## Facts

- Jewish law restricts working Jewish-owned agricultural land every seventh year (the sabbatical year, *shemittah*) and restricts Jewish consumption of produce grown on such land during that year.
- Some rabbinic authorities permit continued farming during *shemittah* through *heter mechirah*: a temporary sale of the land to a non-Jew under a special sales permit, after which farming and consumption may continue while the land is temporarily non-Jewish-owned.
- The Chief Rabbinical Council of Israel (the Council) is a national administrative body that authorizes local rabbis to issue kashrut certificates indicating that produce from a farm is kosher, including in relation to sabbatical-year rules.
- Kashrut certificates are commercially necessary for many farmers because many observant consumers will not purchase produce lacking certification.
- Some local rabbis rejected *heter mechirah* as an improper workaround and therefore refused to issue kashrut certificates in their jurisdictions to farms operating under the temporary-sale mechanism.
- For several years, the Council addressed this by allowing farmers whose local rabbi refused certification to obtain a kashrut certificate from an alternative rabbi.
- Jewish farmers relied on this longstanding practice in planning for the approaching 2007 *shemittah* year.
- Only weeks before the 2007 *shemittah* year began, the Council conducted a telephone survey of its members and decided to end the alternative-certification practice, directing that local rabbis would have final authority in their jurisdictions.
- The policy change threatened affected farmers’ ability to market produce as kosher and risked loss of market share and financial instability.
- Asif Ynov Gidolim, LTD, a Jewish farming business affected by the change, filed a petition in the Israel Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice (HCJ) to challenge the Council’s last-minute policy shift.
- In the HCJ proceedings, the Council’s submission lacked documentation describing how the policy-change decision had been made.

## Issues

1. Whether the Chief Rabbinical Council, acting through state-recognized regulatory functions over kashrut certification, could validly change a nationwide sabbatical-year certification policy on short notice through an informal process (a telephone survey) without documenting how the decision was reached.
2. Whether ending the longstanding alternative-rabbi certification practice weeks before the 2007 *shemittah* year, after years of farmer reliance, was lawful in light of the anticipated commercial harm.
3. Whether and to what extent the HCJ could review the Council’s certification policy as administrative action without resolving the underlying religious dispute over *heter mechirah*.

## Decision

- The petition placed before the HCJ a challenge to the Council’s late 2007 *shemittah* policy change ending alternative-rabbi certification and assigning final authority to local rabbis.
- The publicly available case summary used here does not report the HCJ’s final disposition (including whether relief was granted, denied, or conditioned), and therefore no specific operative order can be stated from that source alone.
- The record described in the summary indicates the Council did not provide the court with documentation showing how the policy decision was made, which formed part of the dispute presented for judicial review.

## Legal Principles

- When a religious body exercises publicly recognized regulatory power with direct commercial effects (such as kashrut certification), its actions may be tested under public-law standards applied to administrative decision-making.
- A major policy reversal implemented on short notice may be challenged where regulated parties can show prior practice, reliance, and foreseeable economic harm from abrupt change.
- Administrative decision-making is commonly expected to be capable of explanation through an identifiable process and an adequate record showing what was decided and on what basis.
- Courts can frame review around administrative legality and procedure while avoiding a ruling on contested matters of religious doctrine, depending on the claims and the relief requested.

## Conclusion

In *Asif Ynov Gidolim, LTD v. The Chief Rabbinical Council of Israel*, a Jewish farming company petitioned the HCJ after the Chief Rabbinical Council, weeks before the 2007 *shemittah* year, ended a longstanding arrangement that let farmers obtain kashrut certification from an alternative rabbi when a local rabbi refused to certify *heter mechirah* farms. The petition challenged both the timing and the informal, undocumented manner of the policy shift, given farmers’ reliance and the threatened commercial harm.


Asif Ynov Gidolim, LTD v. The Chief Rabbinical Council of Israel, HCJ 7120/07 (2007)