The battle on the issue of the heter mechira has led a
number of NRP representatives to publicly declare that they
will fight for the continued reliance on the heter
mechira, only if in order to manifest, as they say, "a
national- religious stance against chareidi extremism."
In this manner, the NRP is perpetuating the age-old approach
of its founders, who championed the ideology that
bideved is l'chatchila as the Chazon Ish
described it.
This approach believes in compromise at all costs, and
demands that one be rather lax in matters of halacha and
kashrus as an ideology in its own right. Often such an
outlook leads to rather absurd scenarios:
A delegation of Israeli MKs visited the Georgian city of
Tibilsi. The Israeli embassy and the local government, which
hosted the delegation, sought to accommodate the guests, and
to fulfill their demands.
They prepared a special sheet for the coordinator of the
delegation, and asked him to check the type of food each
guest wanted. There were three options: "regular" food,
meaning treife dinners supplied by a non-Jewish
restaurant, "kosher food," and "kosher lemehadrin
food"
Most of the members of the delegation, secular MKs said that
they were interested in "regular" food, the chareidi MKs said
that they were interested in kosher lemehadrin food,
while the one delegate from the national religious party,
said that he wanted only "kosher" food.
The Chief Rabbi of Georgia, the emissary of the Vaad
Lehatzolas Nidchei Yisroel, HaRav Ariel Levine, was asked to
arrange the food for the chareidi and religious members of
the delegation.
HaRav Levine ordered the same meal for all of them, because
all of the food from the kitchen of the institutions of the
Vaad Lehatzolas Nidchei Yisroel is kosher lemehadrin min
hamehadrin, as befitting a Torah organization.
When the members of the delegation came to dine, HaRav Levine
told the national-religious delegate with a smile: "I must
apologize to you. All of the food in my kitchen is kosher
lemehadrin. I have no kosher food which isn't
mehadrin, and beg your forgiveness for having been
machshil you with kosher lemehadrin food."
