Kosher Expert Receives His Lost IDF Commendation

By COLlive reporter

Rabbi Kalman Weinfeld, Rabbinic Coordinator of the Food Service Department at OK Kosher Certification in Brooklyn, NY, has recently met up with Colonel Yaakov Cohen under whom he served in the Israel Defence Forces.

He was visiting Israel for the wedding of the daughter of Simon Bergson, CEO of Manhattan Beer Company, which Rabbi Weinfeld has famously helped sell their chometz for Pesach.

He said meeting his former commander was a special experience. “It was a very emotional meeting since we had a very close connection during my time in the Israeli army,” Rabbi Weinfeld told COLlive.com.

“We were 14 soldiers in a frum male division in the army base in Beit Horon (bordering Route 443 between Modi’in and Jerusalem),” he said. “It was an area which has already been given to the Arabs. In our time in the frum division, they were very accommodating to us, making sure we only had male officers and so on.”

At the end of his training, Rabbi Weinfeld received a Commendation of Excellence certificate. “It was for always coming on time, for being a good mediator between the soldiers in my group, and for my sharpshooting skills,” he notes.

Rabbi Weinfeld then served in the Israeli Air Force for almost 4 years as a meteorologist and biometrics technician. After dedicating 18 years in chinuch, Rabbi Weinfeld moved to the US and joined OK Kosher where he maintains the kashrus standards of 100 restaurants with a staff of 200 mashgichim.

Over the years, that certificate from the IDF went missing. “I had lost it many years ago,” he says. “Colonel Cohen somehow located the commendation in the archives and presented it to me again this week.”

“Our meeting was a true Kiddush Hashem,” Rabbi Weinfeld concludes. “He told me that over the last 25 years, he always remembered the behavior of the frum soldiers, and said that we made a positive impression on him that completely changed the way he views Orthodox Jews and religious life.