Oy! to the world

Posted in Kashrut, Restaurants

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America’s cultural and ethnic confusion is continuing – and it behooves the kosher consumer to be careful.

A popular restaurant and musical night spot in Virginia Beach, more than 30 years old, is called The Jewish Mother. Performers over the years have included Richie Havens, Dave Mason, Leon Russell, Dave Mathews, Hootie & The Blow Fish, and Bruce Hornsby.  It serves a Jewish-style (but decidedly unkosher) menu. A local southern Virgina jazz combo, Big Wide Grin, has just held a CD release performance at The Jewish Mother for its new Christmas album, Big Wide Holiday Grin.

Balducci’s, the gourmet delicatessen and grocery store in Greenwich Village, New York, was recently caught red-faced by a blogger who photographed a sign in the store advertising “Delicious for Chanukah” Boneless Spiral Ham. The tempest in a trafe pan spread through the mainstream media, and Balducci’s was caught quite unprepared to explain its hamhanded treatment of the holidays.

For truly kosher meat, better stick with Kosher.com.

Zabar’s maven Klein helped push Jewish food to gourmet heights

Posted in Kashrut, Restaurants

It may not offer only kosher fare, but Zabar’s delicatessen in New York City’s Upper West Side played a significant role in recent decades in lifting the image of traditional Jewish food from the ordinary to the gourmet.

The reason we’re thinking about this now is because of the recent death of Murray Klein (z”l), a part-owner of Zabar’s, and the man most visible to the public in that store, now a New York institution.

In the days following his December 6 death at 84, the praise for Klein came pouring in from foodies worldwide.

Zabar’s was in part responsible for creating the notion that Jewish foods can also be gourmet, the trade newsletter Kosher Today said.

“That one little Yiddishe store had an effect on the way people ate all over America, and it was really because of him,” Steven Fass, an importer, told the New York Times.

Klein was born in a Jewish town in the Soviet Union near the Romanian border. His parents and five siblings all died in Nazi concentration camps, and he ended up in a Soviet labor camp. Klein spent time in a displaced persons camp in Italy before making it to the United States. He even worked in Europe for the Irgun, a Jewish guerrilla movement that helped smuggle arms to pre-state Palestine.

He joined Zabar’s as a stockman and worked with – and occasionally against – the Zabar family for the next 40 years, winding up as a co-owner of the store when he retired in 1994.

So, now, when you see upper-scale gourmet kosher restaurants such as Levana in New York or A Cow Jumped Over The Moon in Beverly Hills, as well as the gourmet kosher items here on Kosher.com, you can thank Murray Klein and the mavens at Zabar’s.

Kosher in Annapolis? We hope so

Posted in Israel, Kashrut

Annapolis may be known, at some future date, as the City of Peace – if the international conference currently under way there results in any significant progress in the Israeli-Palestinian problem. But it is never going to be known as the City of Kosher. In fact, a recent article by the Associated Press makes the point that Annapolis is better known as the City of Crab Cakes and Oysters than any kind of a source of kosher food.

“I have no idea what they’re going to eat,” Rabbi Ari J. Goldstein of Temple Beth Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Arnold, Md., told the AP. “They can either buy their stuff at Trader Joe’s and borrow someone’s kitchen … or they can just go vegetarian, which is what they’re probably going to do.” The proprietors of Chick and Ruth’s Delly (they can’t even seem to spell it correctly) concede they are “kosher-style” only (We note, of course, that “kosher style” is not a term generally permitted in advertising or promotional material, as it can be misleading.).

The story, surprisingly, offers no answer as to how the various delegations – both Israeli and Arab – are going to satisfy culinary and dietary needs. It quotes a White House chef talking about kashrut at the White House, but that famous residence is more than an hour from Annapolis.

The US Naval Academy has a lovely Jewish chapel for its small cadre of Jewish midshipmen (about 120 out of more than 4,000), faculty members, and community members who attend services at the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel. The Academy’s Jewish chaplain, Cmdr. Irv Elson, once told me that the Jewish middies who want to keep kosher at the Academy’s dining rooms, usually eat vegetarian food .

So, other than calling Kosher.com, what will the delegates do?

Battery recycling yields kosher product

Posted in Green Living, Kashrut

The box that your kosher noodles or favorite breakfast cereals come in may contain an ingredient that once was in a lead-acid battery, but now is a kosher product.

It may not sound appetizing, but one company’s recycling of lead-acid batteries – an environmentally helpful process that primarily yields lead,  also yields sodium sulfate - a salt commonly used in the manufacturing of starch. Doe Run Company’s Buick Resource Recycling Division also takes the extra step of getting that salt product certified kosher.

Lou Magdits, Doe Run’s director of raw materials, says none of the sodium sulfate the company produces is contained in food, but it is used in making an industrial, corn-based starch that goes into papermaking or cardboard production. Doe Run sought the kosher certification because the paper packaging may come into contact with food at a later time. Chicago Rabbinical Council certifies the salt-creation process and raw materials.

Doe Run’s sodium sulfate is also used in the manufacturing of other products such as glass, powdered laundry detergent and carpet freshening products. The company processes more than 13.5 million lead-acid batteries annually. Battery recycling yields approximately 1,200 tons of sodium sulfate a month.

Taste ‘The Honey’ – Enjoy Israel

Posted in Israel, Jewish Web, Kosher Wine, Restaurants

The Honey is a new Jerusalem-based email newsletter and website focusing on the best of things available in Israel (and sometimes in the U.S.). For The Honey, that means hotels, restaurants, sights, sounds, clothes and, of course, food and wine. In just a few months the site – modeled on the U.S. website and email network Daily Candy – has begun drawing thousands of readers. Kosher.com caught up with one of the Honey’s founders, Jessica Steinberg, between cooking and sampling some of the new gourmet goodies available in Israel.

Kosher.com – What is the idea behind The Honey?

JS – To talk about what’s fun to see, do and consume in Israel.

Kosher.com – Who is The Honey aimed at?

JS – English speakers in Israel, tourists and Israelis, from a wide range of ages, from somewhere around 25 to 85, although we would happily accept any older readers as well.

Kosher.com – How do you select the items, locations and tips you write up?
JS – It’s a fairly organic process, partially because all four of us are people who keep a regular lookout for what’s new and different in Israel. We find our finds mostly from our own treks around the cities in which we live and travel. In fact, we started The Honey because friends and family were always asking each of us where to find certain products, where to go to eat, drink and be merry. We love being in the know, and sharing what we know with others, in a sharp, hip and pithy format.

Kosher.com – Do you think a site like The Honey can improve Israel’s image by showing that “gourmet” products are being produced in Israel?

JS – We certainly see ourselves as a kind of hasbara for Israel, partially because we write about fun, lighthearted subjects that have nothing to do with politics, but also because Israel is such a destination for all things creative. There are many talented people here creating all kinds of things, whether they’re designing clothing, developing wines or inventing skins for the cell phone whose parts were designed in Israel. And if the worldwide search for everything that is gourmet and off-the-beaten path brings tourists to Israel, or, even better, reminds those of us who live here what there is to discover about this place, then we’ll be satisfied.

Kosher.com – Do you want to say anything else about The Honey?

JS – We’re always happy to hear from our readers, whether they have tips to share or comments to make about something we’ve featured or missed. Please keep in contact at thehoney.israel@gmail.com