When the Tel Aviv light rail opened in the summer of 2023, it shaved travel time from the city’s southern neighborhoods to the haredi Orthodox city of Bnei Brak to just 20 minutes. For some, the new route increased access to a burgeoning Thursday night tradition — sitting down for steaming bowls of cholent, the slow-cooked Ashkenazi Shabbat stew.

            “For me, having a bowl of cholent on Thursday night adds a little bit of Shabbat’s holiness into the end of the week, and deepens my connection to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and people,” said Eliyahu Freedman, who travels with his friends from his home in Jaffa to Bnei Brak for the stew. So when a ruling from a prominent Haredi rabbi cast doubt on the permissibility of eating cholent outside Shabbat, Freedman said he was “shocked and disappointed.”

The rabbi, Yitzchok Zilberstein, addressed the issue in his weekly bulletin on Jewish law, where he responded to a question from yeshiva students concerned about whether weekday consumption of cholent diminishes the sanctity of Shabbat.

Citing Talmudic, Kabbalistic and later rabbinic sources, Zilberstein wrote that it is “appropriate not to eat cholent on weekdays, so that one can delight in it on Shabbat.” He went on to note that cholent is not only spiritually designated for Shabbat, but that its heavy ingredients may even pose a health risk when eaten without the merit of the holy day.

The simmering public response to Zilberstein’s ruling — on the street, on Facebook, in yeshivas, in the 70-some cholent restaurants throughout Israel — was enough to prompt a partial retraction. The rabbi’s grandson, Rabbi Chaim Malin, said the original response was intended as a recommendation to elevate the uniqueness of Shabbat.

The statement noted that cholent served at mitzvah meals — weddings, bar mitzvahs and other religious celebrations — is fully permitted, as is the Thursday night practice of serving it in yeshivas.

For now, the stew remains safe — not from the cholesterol, but at least from halachic rebuke.