(RNS) — On Saturday night, hours after Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel, which left more than 1,300 Israelis dead and more than 120 held captive in the Gaza Strip, “mashgichim” — kosher certifiers — were at work in restaurant kitchens across Tel Aviv, burning out ovens, boiling pots and pans and spreading vinegar over countertops to prepare them for kosher use. 

“We felt we needed to do something, and what we know how to do is cook,” said Yuval Ben Neriah, the owner of Taizu, a chic Asian-fusion restaurant in downtown Tel Aviv. “We took a decision late Saturday after this attack began that we’re going to do everything we can. First of all, to support our soldiers and secondly to support our staff, which is very stressed, and they need obviously something to do.”

“I decided first we’re going to cook everything that we have available and then afterward we want to provide as much as we can,” Ben Neriah said.

Unlike Jerusalem, where many Jewish-owned restaurants are certified as kosher by Israel’s state rabbinate, in famously secular Tel Aviv, kosher is not the norm. Taizu, like many other restaurants in the city, boasts non-kosher staples like shrimp on their menu. 

That’s a problem for restaurant owners hoping to help feed the Israeli army, which, comprising soldiers from nearly every walk of life, religious and secular, requires all the food it distributes to its troops to be certified kosher. 

In normal times, the Israeli army has fewer than 200,000 active personnel, but since the outbreak of hostilities on Saturday, it has more than doubled the number of mouths it needs to feed. More than 300,000 reservists have been called up, as generals continue to consider a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. 

Many displaced residents from Southern Israel, whose towns were among the first attacked on Saturday and who have continued to face rocket fire throughout the week, are also from religious communities. Feeding them requires many hundreds of kosher meals. Ben Neriah said that in the two restaurants he manages, his staff and volunteers are producing between 4,000 and 5,000 meals daily. 

To help make the switch to kosher, Ben Neriah got on the phone with Tzohar, an Israeli nonprofit devoted to bridging the gap between religious and secular communities in the Jewish state, to see what could be done. 

Kashrut, Judaism’s dietary law, is a complex system that goes far beyond forbidding pork or shellfish. Meat and dairy can never mix, for instance, and most kosher restaurants serve one or the other. Utensils and cookware previously used for non-kosher foods need to be purified to make them suitable for kosher use. In a commercial setting, kosher-trained supervisors are usually on hand to make sure things meet the requirements. 

At many Tel Aviv restaurants, kosher certification has long been seen as a tedious, expensive and unnecessary expense. But in recent years, Tzohar has begun offering an alternative kashrut certification program, which, while still stringent, was seen as less financially strenuous on restaurants than that of Israel’s state-run rabbinate. 

“Some restaurants called us and asked us to make their restaurants kosher,” said Rabbi Ohad Tzadok of Tzohar. “We came with some people and we made it kosher; it takes two to three hours and then after that, we’re coming in every day to these restaurants that weren’t kosher, from when they opened to when they close, checking things.”

Mostly, he said, his staff monitors food donations, making sure they are all kosher-certified products. 

“The restaurants are cooperating with us; they really care that every solider can eat the food that they make,” Tzadok said. 

Sharon Cohen, who runs Shila, another hip Tel Aviv eatery that specializes in seafood, has asked certifiers from the Israeli rabbinate to come in on Sunday to turn his kitchen over. 

“I never thought I would have a kosher restaurant,” said Cohen, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. “I’ve had many offers in the past to make a kosher restaurant, but I always said, I’ll never let the rabbis get between my legs like that; I’m a bit of an anarchist, don’t do well with people telling me what to do.”

Cohen was in London when the attack broke out on Saturday but had returned to Israel by Sunday morning. 

Like Ben Neriah, the first thing he did was donate anything his kitchen had on hand. He then proceeded to keep cooking with donated food as the week went on. However, he kept getting feedback that kosher meals were needed. 

“Now you need to decide if you want to be with your ego, be stubborn, or to do the right thing and to do for everybody,” Cohen said. “If we need to be a bit kosher, we’ll be a bit kosher.”

While they are receiving donations in the form of produce and funds, both restaurateurs said the donations don’t cover the amount they are putting out. Cohen estimated his current production cost to make 2,500 daily meals at $15,000 a day. 

Cohen did note that he felt the rabbinate was being more lenient in the midst of the crisis than in the past.

The rabbinate had also challenged Tzohar’s alternative and competing certification before this week, but Tzadok said they’ve heard no such complaints since the attack began. He noted that they are already working with six restaurants including Taizu and will likely expand to more over the coming weeks. 

As for whether they’ll maintain their kosher certification if and when the war ends, Ben Neriah said he was taking things one step at a time. Cohen was more certain: “Never again,” he said.