United Torah Judaism threatened Monday to say "that's all folks" to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, because he ate in a non-Kosher restaurant in Italy that serves such non-kosher delicacies as rabbit, lobster, and suckling pig.
Netanyahu dined in Florence over the weekend with his Italian counterpart, Matteo Renzi at the fancy restaurant Enoteca Pinchiorri, which has been rated one of the world's top 50 restaurants. The menu features such items as rabbit with Taggiasche olives, lobster with lemon grass and apple in its shell, sea scallops in lard, roasted scampi tails, and Mora Romagnola baby pork.
It is customary that prime ministers and presidents refrain from eating blatantly non-kosher foods in official proceedings abroad.
The Prime Minister's office said Netanyahu accepted Renzi's invitation to eat at the restaurant but that he "did not eat any food that can be defined as not kosher." But that explanation was not good enough for United Torah Judaism. A spokesman for UTJ leader Ya'acov Litzman, who was officially approved by the cabinet as health minister Monday, said the prime minister dining at the restaurant was "completely unacceptable." Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) politicians told the Kikar Shabbat website, which broke the story, that they expected the head of a Jewish state to show proper respect to his Jewish heritage and to not eat publicly at such a restaurant.
"A partner of the haredi parties who received votes from followers of Jewish tradition should behave more sensitively, especially because he speaks so highly about his warm feelings for tradition and the Bible," a haredi politician told the site. "Maybe if he was on vacation, it would be different, but this is an official visit, so he was openly mocking and really harming the feelings of the religious and haredi population in Israel." The same website reported last year about a meal in which Netanyahu dined with his American patron Sheldon Adelson at the non-kosher restaurant Fresco by Scotto, which serves pork and shellfish. Following the report, Netanyahu told Channel 2 that he "never ate non-kosher food." But the prime minister's disgruntled former housekeeper, Meni Naftali, tweeted Monday that he ordered shrimp for Netanyahu's residence.
By Gil Hoffman and Lahav Harkov
