Should the Israeli state mandate kosher Passover food in hospitals? This issue has become the center of a secular-religious battle. A group of secular activists petitioned the High Court against the regulation that prohibits bringing leavened bread, or chametz, into hospitals during Passover. But the petition seems like a fight for the sake of a fight and not motivated by a true desire to allow families to bring food for their hospitalized loved ones. The Israeli public is clearly smarter than those purporting to fight for it and knows how to be flexible and considerate when necessary. 

In general, hospitals in Israel forbid bringing in food except that in its original sealed packaging. In practice, however, the prohibition isn’t meticulously enforced. A deputy director of operations at one of the hospitals in Jerusalem admitted in private conversation with Al-Monitor that the Israeli public cannot comply with this decree, and so long as they don't bring enormous pots or cause real disturbance to the other patients and hospital routine, hospitals turn a blind eye.

According to the kashrut regulations of the Chief Rabbinate and at the instruction of the Ministry of Health, there is also a specific prohibition against bringing in leavened food into hospitals during Passover, since they undergo Passover cleaning and their food service items are intended only for kosher Passover food. Accordingly, hospital security guards have been instructed that from the morning that the hospitals are cleaned for Passover until the end of the holiday, they must enforce the rule and not allow visitors to bring food that’s not kosher into the hospital area. 

This year the Secular Forum, whose stated goals include fighting “religious radicalization,” decided to petition the High Court against the prohibition on bringing leavened food into hospitals. Knesset members Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Camp), Michal Rozin and Mossi Raz (Meretz) joined the effort. The chairman of the Secular Forum, Ram Fruman, claimed, “This instruction takes advantage of patients. The State of Israel is not a state governed by Jewish law, and therefore it isn’t ethical, proper or legal that its institutions trample on the rights of citizens.”