Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkady Gaydamak has reportedly bought the Israeli Tiv Taam supermarket chain for an undisclosed sum, and is doing what some consider the unthinkable: he's making the entire chain kosher.

From the New Zealand Herald:

With robust insouciance for the sensitivities of all three great monotheistic religions, Hermina Schlinger eyed with satisfaction her large purchase of pork frankfurters at the checkout counter of Rishon Letzion's Tiv Taam supermarket in Rishon Letzion just south of Tel Aviv this week and declared, "There it is: the Last Supper".

What Schlinger, 60, was referring to was the weekend announcement by the Russian-born billionaire Arkady Gaidamak that he has bought the entire Tiv Taam supermarket company and he proposes to make its famous food counters kosher from now on.

No more highly convenient - if defiantly non-religious - opening on Shabbat. No more ham, salami, shellfish, pork sausages and all the other non-kosher food - that has brought Schlinger and tens of thousands of her Israeli fellow shoppers to the 24-store chain over the past 15 years.

The shock waves sent through Israel by Gaidamak's purchase and plans are underlined by the urban myths it has already generated. Schlinger, whose origins are Romanian Jewish, is from Tel Aviv and confesses to being "very angry" about the impending transformation of her favourite supermarket chain.

With all due respect to my elder Mrs. Schlinger, I have only two phrases to offer as my reaction to this story.

Either "you're damn skippy" or "it's about damn time".

Gaidamak was not at Rishon Letzion to hear these complaints. But he flatly gave his answer, in an interview to Army Radio on Sunday. "I believe that in a Jewish state," he declared, "in which there is a large Muslim minority, selling pork is a provocation."

You see, whereas this is being decried as if it were coercion, this is one of the "downsides" to living in a capitalistic "democratic" society. Every corporate entity is free to do what it wants, and Gaydamak's holdings company is no exception. With his own free choice, and without coercion, he decided to bring one of the largest supermarket chains in Israel in line with Judaism. It is only fitting for one of the largest supermarkets in the only country called "the Jewish State" to serve kosher food, and in fact it's axiomatic.

Pork will still be legal, no one has criminalized shellfish, and indeed, anyone is free to open their own ham- and sausage-laden deli counter. The, as Time Magazine reported, "Jerusalem delicatessen counters brimming with bacon, pork chops and pate of wild boar" (chalila) will still be there, just not under the name "Tiv Taam". No one has made any serious run to criminalize pork in Israel since the 90s.

Columnist Uri Orbach calls those who oppose the move fundamentalist secularists. I am inclined to agree with this -- no one is forcing anyone to buy anything. One can order pork online, have it imported, buy it from "mom-and-pop" stores, or raise one's own pigs. This is not religious coercion, this is an attempt to make Tiv Taam more inline with "Jewish tradition" as Gaydamak says, and as Uri Orbach says:

The fact that an ideological group of Jews makes a living by producing and marketing pork, is horrifying. The children’s studies, the dining hall, the extra-curricular activities, the cultural events, the assembly hall and the lawns – were all obtained through the same thing - pork.

The people of Aristobulus, while sieging the Temple Mount, sent in a pig as a sacrifice instead of the kosher beasts they used to send till then. Following the shock aroused by the act, it was said, “Damned be the man who raises pigs in the Land of Israel.”...

Even if it’s unpractical to use state laws to ban the production of pig meat, surely the national heritage and Jewish instincts should arouse the necessary repulsion.

Former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg raised eyebrows and sparked controversy when he said that Israel should not define itself as a Jewish state. But his detractors -- as well as those who oppose the Gaydamak venture -- should realize: the word "Jewish" has a meaning, a tradition, a history. To not recognize this fact renders the "Jewishness" of Israel to no more than a blue star on a piece of white cloth.

If you don't want Israel to be Jewish, stop calling it such.

Tiv Taam. Kosher l'mehadrin. Ken yirbu.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Arkady Gaydamak is not going to buy the chain. But it would have been a huge kiddush Hashem (literally, sanctification of the Divine Name) if he would have.