Kosher in Vienna: The IKG and a City of Many Hechsherim

Early each morning, a rabbi calls at a vegan ice-cream maker in Vienna to switch on the oven, so that the cookies it bakes can be kosher. It is a small scene from a city where kosher food is overseen by several rabbis at once, among them the rabbinate of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, the IKG. This article looks at the IKG’s history, its standard and the tools it offers shoppers.

Who is behind the IKG?

The IKG is the Jewish Community of Vienna. Its Rabbinate runs a Hashgacha service, which supervises kosher businesses, and its offices are at the Stadttempel on Seitenstettengasse. The community is usually dated to 1852, the year of its provisional statute, although the name was first used in 1849. For most shoppers, the Hashgacha service is the part of the Rabbinate they meet, through the certificates of the businesses it supervises.

Chief Rabbi Jaron Engelmayer, in post since 2020, was reported to be stepping down in autumn 2026.

A community rebuilt

In 1938 the IKG had about 185,000 members, and that year the Nazis closed it. Today it has about 10,000. In 1981 the Stadttempel was the target of a terror attack. In 2012 the community restored the pre-war eruv, which runs about 25 kilometres and took nine years to plan.

The fall from 185,000 members to about 10,000 is a measure of what was lost. The restored eruv and a working kashrut service are part of what has been rebuilt.

Kosher food has also met political pressure. In 2018 an official in Lower Austria proposed registering buyers of kosher meat by name. The idea drew international criticism and was dropped. It was a reminder that kosher food can quickly become a political question.

A city of many hechsherim

Vienna has no single kashrut authority. Besides the IKG, several rabbis certify, including Khal Chassidim under Rabbi A. Y. Schwartz, and a Sephardic Kashrut Committee. In 2018 the city had ten or more kosher restaurants, three large kosher supermarkets and five bakeries, most of them in Leopoldstadt. We could not find a count of the businesses certified by the IKG itself. For shoppers, that variety means more choice, but it also means a “kosher” sign in Vienna tells you less on its own than the name of the rabbi or committee behind it.

What the IKG standard means

Businesses under IKG supervision state that they meet these standards:

• Pat Yisrael: for bread and baked goods.
• Chalav Yisrael: for milk and dairy.
• Bedikat tola’im: checking produce for insects.

Between them, those three standards cover bakeries, dairy and fresh produce.

How to check a product

Many products on Austrian shelves are kosher without carrying any symbol, so the IKG offers two tools:

• A product list of branded goods sold in Austria that are kosher without an on-pack symbol, updated every two to three years.
• An online kosher map of Vienna. The IKG notes that a listing on the map is not an endorsement.
• The certifying rabbi: with several authorities in the city, it is worth asking which one supervises a shop or restaurant.

Three things you might not know

1. The IKG archive is described as the only Jewish community archive kept complete from its founding through the post-war period, with documents going back to the 16th century.
2. Vienna’s restored eruv runs about 25 kilometres and took nine years to plan.
3. A Viennese vegan ice-cream maker has a rabbi switch on its oven early each morning so its cookies are kosher.

On The Kosher Shop, every food seller tells us which kashrut authority supervises their products, and we check the certificate before their shop opens. Next in this series: OK Kosher Certification, which began at a chemist’s bench in 1935.

Sources: IKG Wien: Rabbinate; Wikipedia: Jewish Community of Vienna; Vol.at; Jüdische Allgemeine, 24 July 2018; The Jewish Link, 1 February 2018; Der Standard. Figures are as reported at the time by each source.