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Conservative movement OKs vegetarian and vegan restaurants without kosher supervision
(JTA) — For years, a subset of Jews who eat only at kosher-certified restaurants have bent the rules by taking advantage of a growing trend: fully vegan eateries.
Now, a ruling issued by the Conservative movement has given that practice its official imprimatur, declaring that Jews may eat at vegetarian or vegan restaurants that don’t have kosher supervision.
In practice, the ruling’s target audience is small. Most Jews who eat only in certified kosher restaurants are Orthodox and pay little if any attention to Conservative opinions on Jewish law. According to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 17% of Jews identify as Conservative and only a fraction keep kosher at home. Even fewer adhere to the strict dietary laws when they dine out.
But the ruling does represent a change in how the Conservative movement approaches one of the core elements of traditional Jewish life. It comes as an increasing number of Americans are going meatless and amid a broader reckoning over what counts as kosher, now that products such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Pork, which are plant-based and contain no animal products, are available in grocery stores.
“It has been the case for a number of years already that many people, making a judgment of their own, have begun to eat at vegan restaurants, looking at them and seeing no obvious kashrut problems,” said Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner, the ruling’s lead author.
A study by Dror Fixler, an Israeli religious Zionist rabbi and physicist, also concluded several years ago that Jews may eat in a strictly vegan restaurant, as long as they refrain from consuming vinegar, which could be non-kosher. The ruling also comes after the Conservative movement updated its Passover guide, permitting Jews to purchase certified gluten-free products ahead of the holiday, as long as they were also oat-free.
Previously, the movement deemed that Conservative Jews who keep kosher should eat only at restaurants under kosher supervision. But the 38-page ruling, issued earlier this month, says that without any meat products, many of the concerns surrounding kosher observance are rendered moot. The decision was voted on by 20 of the 25 members of the committee, the vast majority of whom voted in favor.
Without meat, there can be no mixing of meat and milk, the ruling says, and there is also no possibility of eating non-kosher foods such as pork. Even though the vast majority of kosher supervisors say cheese needs certification, the ruling permits eating at vegetarian restaurants on the grounds of a prior Conservative ruling stating that animal rennet is not prohibited.
The ruling is explicit in that it does not apply to restaurants that serve meat or fish but otherwise have vegetarian options, because there is still the risk of cross-contamination of un-kosher foods.
“The requirement to eat only kosher is not one of health or physical purity, but one of Godliness and the observance of mitzvot,” the ruling concludes. “While there are some levels of risk which the halakhah prohibits undertaking, we have argued that eating in an unsupervised vegan or vegetarian restaurant where government oversight exists and restaurants are generally concerned with their reputations does not overstep that boundary.”
The document adds that ancient rabbinic prohibitions on the consumption of bread baked by non-Jews were instituted primarily to prohibit social interactions with non-Jews.
“The prohibitions are social and unrelated to any concern of kashrut,” the decision says of the ancient ban. “We see ourselves and our gentile neighbors as equal members of society and reject social discrimination that holds us separate from those of other religious persuasions.”
The ruling notes that one of the reasons for the intricacy and strictness of certain kosher laws is to prevent intermarriage. Reisner said that the new openness to vegan and vegetarian dining does not signal a loosening of the prohibition on interfaith marriage.
“The Conservative movement has for some time been moving away from edicts to maintain social separation, arguing a more humanist position about the desirability of good relations with all of our compatriots,” Reisner said. “Now, that is not the same as to say that it approves of intermarriage.”
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US Officials Tell i24NEWS Israeli Concerns About Gaza Board of Peace Are ‘Unfounded’
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
i24 News – Amid the criticism in Israel over the composition of the “Board of Peace” and the bodies set to govern the Gaza Strip, as well as concerns that Hamas could continue to threaten Israel under the new plan, officials in Washington suggest these concerns are unfounded, i24NEWS understands.
A Senior US official tells i24NEWS: “Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt were instrumental in achieving the ceasefire, securing the return of the living hostages, and bringing back the deceased. They have co-signed commitments that Hamas will follow through on its part of the plan, and the Board of Peace will work with them to ensure compliance.”
The underlying message is clear: President Trump will make the calls, and the US will ensure full implementation of all objectives of the plan, first and foremost the demilitarization of Gaza, regardless of the positions or hostile statements towards Israel coming from Turkey and Qatar.
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One Person Killed, 14 Hurt in Blast in Iranian Port of Bandar Abbas, Iranian Media Reports
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Iranian shores and Port of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz, December 10, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
At least one person was killed and 14 injured in an explosion in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a local official told Iranian news agencies, but the cause of the blast was not known.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander had been targeted in the explosion were “completely false.”
Iranian media said the blast was under investigation but provided no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Separately, four people were killed after a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to state-run Tehran Times. No further information was immediately available.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in Saturday’s blasts, which come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests and over the country’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump said on January 22 an “armada” was heading toward Iran. Multiple sources said on Friday that Trump was weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused US, Israeli and European leaders of exploiting Iran’s economic problems, inciting unrest and providing people with the means to “tear the nation apart.”
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
The port suffered a major explosion last April that killed dozens and injured over 1,000 people. An investigative committee at the time blamed the blast on shortcomings in adherence to principles of civil defense and security.
Iran has been rocked by nationwide protests that erupted in December over economic hardship and have posed one of the toughest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers.
At least 5,000 people were killed in the protests, including 500 members of the security forces, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
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