Are those pickles kosher?

July 23, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Food, General, History and Culture, Israeliness 

Chef Moshe Basson prepares a kosher delicacy in the Eucalyptus kitchen. (Photo: Marc Israel Sellem)

One of the great things about living in Israel – if you keep kosher – is that you can find kosher restaurants just about anywhere. Ok, maybe it’s not so easy in Tel Aviv and Eilat, but even there, you won’t go hungry.

Not ready to live with the traditional kosher fare available, two immigrants from the US, Ari Greenspan of Efrat and Ari Zivotofsky of Beit Shemesh, have spent years studying the Biblical origins of kosher food.

Don’t forget, besides forbidding lobster stew and quiche Lorraine, there are plenty of exotic animals, fowl and birds that are considered kosher, but generally not found in your local kosher deli.

That’s why Zivotofsky and Greenspan decided to throw a lavish 18-course-meal this week featuring pheasant and guinea fowl pastry as an appetizer, water buffalo, swordfish and deer as main courses, and fried locusts for dessert.

The “mesorah dinner,” held at Eucalyptus Restaurant, across from Jerusalem’s Old City walls, was designed to pass along the “chain of tradition” of which animals, birds, fish and locusts are kosher and which are not.

Prepared by the restaurant’s chef Moshe Basson, who has made a career on perfecting the traditional ‘land of Israel’ cuisine, the meal started off with Ethiopian Injera bread and “Shiluach Haken soup.” According to a report on the meal in The Jerusalem Post, the soup commemorated the mitzva of sending away the mother bird, because it featured a fleishig egg (an egg extracted from a live chicken) inside a noodle nest in sparrow, dove and pigeon broth.

The soup was followed by quail in caramel sauce; figs stuffed with wild chicken and wild rice; duck, goose, muscovy and mullard in honey-ginger sauce; the pheasants/guinea fowl pastry, and turkey that the chef unveiled with great fanfare.

The heart of the meal featured cow udder in saffron; a combination swordfish, kingklip and blue marlin; and the shibuta, a fish from the Euphrates River that is famed for tasting like bacon. The shibuta was brought from southeastern Turkey, and the swordfish was caught by a tuna fisherman in the Mediterranean.

The next courses were sheep and goat in endives; water buffalo; and spotted deer and red deer.

Not your typical fare in any restaurant, let alone a kosher bistro in Jerusalem. According to the report, most of the participants were too full, or grossed out, to partake of the fried locust dessert. I guess they can wait and have that on Pessah.

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The war against croutons

July 22, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, Politics, Social Justice 

In the war against croutons, Bamba, and cleaning products, the “Badatz Free” protest group is claiming its first victory: Massive food manufacturer Nestle has launched its new Joya line of gourmet ice creams without the controversial kosher certification of the Eda Haredit.

Several months ago, Badatz Free launched a campaign calling on the public to boycott products with the “Badatz Yerushalayim” sponsored by the Eda Haredit, a group that has been at the forefront of many of the more extreme conflicts between halacha (Jewish law) and the running of a modern state.

The Eda Haredit, a small but vocal ultra-Orthodox sect numbering just a few thousand in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh and comprising such Hassidic courts as Satmar, Toldot Aharon, Dushinsky and Breslav, was behind the recent rioting against the construction of the rocket-resistant emergency room at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.

The Eda Haredit also rioted to protest the opening on Shabbat of a parking lot near the Old City of Jerusalem, which was intended to relieve severe illegal parking on sidewalks, and the Shabbat operation of an Intel’s fabrication plant in the Har Hotzvim Industrial Area, even though it would have been operated entirely by non-Jews. Collectively, these riots have resulted in millions of shekels of damage as traffic lights were destroyed and trash bins set on fire.

The Eda Haredit is also one of the most public anti-Zionist groups. A YouTube video shows numerous signs in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim reading “Jews are not Zionists” and “No passage to Zionists,” along with pictures of Eda Haredit members burning the Israeli flag.

Badatz Free is urging consumers who don’t agree with the policies and actions of the Eda Haredit to hit the group in its collective pocketbook by not purchasing products for which the Eda Haredit provides kosher supervision (and receives payment in return).

That won’t be easy – especially for families with young children. In addition to Nestle, on the boycott list are Osem (the makers of perennially popular snack foods Bisli and Bamba along with a popular brand of salad and soup croutons), Angel (the number one bread maker in the country) and, inexplicably, Sano which makes cleaning products, not food.

The boycott campaign was kicked off several months ago by an article from journalist Nahum Barnea, writing in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, who asked why, if one checks the price, the ingredients, the weight and the expiration date of products we buy, why not also its kosher certification? A follow-up piece by Michael Hirsch in the Jerusalem Post agrees, urges that those “who are careful in their adherence to the kashrut laws should question the validity of kashrut supervision provided by an organization (Badatz) which condones and implicitly supports…anti-religious behavior.”

A recent poll found that 23% of respondents said that, given a choice, they would prefer to purchase products with a different group’s supervision and 21% would endorse a full boycott.

The term “boycott” is controversial, to say the least. Israelis bristle when educational institutions overseas put our country on the no contact list. Others say a boycott will never work and suggest a letter writing campaign instead. When I put this out on Facebook, many responded that the most stringent kashrut supervision is the only way to ensure Jewish culinary unity.

Nevertheless, the decision of Nestle to separate its new Joya gourmet ice cream from the company’s overall Eda Haredit heksher was welcomed by Badatz Free as proof that a boycott campaign can work. The organization vows to plow on until all Nestle products are supervised by a different group.

In the meantime, the Badatz Free website provides a list of controversial products and alternatives you can buy instead (substitute Vita croutons for Osem). The group also has a Facebook page with nearly 1,500 members.

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An American-Israeli collaboration: Kaki King and Tamar Eisenman

July 21, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture 


Tamar Eisenman is an Israeli singer/songwriter who performs in English, with a penchant for indie rock. Kaki King is an American guitar virtuoso, who over the last five years, has developed a good-sized cult following for her amazing fingerwork and her own brand of singer/songwriting.

The two met last year on a joint bill in Hamburg, Germany and struck up a friendship. Eisenman invited King to come play with her in Israel, an offer she readily accepted without pinpointing a date. Next thing she knew, her upcoming scheduled tour of Europe included a show in Tel Aviv with Eisenman.

Tamar Eisenman, above, and Kaki King, top, make an international team.

The international summit is scheduled to take place on Friday at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv.

“I didn’t know anything about Tamar, but she was great [in Hamburg]. The show was awesome and after we hung out together,” King said this week while on tour in England.

Eisenman’s 2009 album Gymnasium became a local favorite, propelling her from the obscure into an Israeli radio staple. King said that she was looking forward to learning some of Eisenman’s material and trying it out live.

“We’ll play some songs together,” promised King. “I’m not sure what, but we’ll figure it out when I get there.”

It’s a testament to the grand streak of artists coming from abroad this year to Israel that someone of the stature of King, who’s been called a ‘guitar god’ by Rolling Stone and has won a Golden Globe for the original score the Sean Penn-directed film Into the Wild, can basically sneak into town so unobtrusively. But it’s also a testament to the sophisticated Israel music scene that the King-Eisenman show will probably be packed.

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Tisha B’av with helicopters

July 19, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Religion 

The book of Eicha is traditionally read on Tisha B'av

Every year on Tisha B’av, there are pundits who write in the local newspapers that we should stop fasting and start celebrating.

Tisha B’av – the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av (which always falls somewhere in super-heated July or August) – commemorates various tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people, first and foremost the destructions of the first and second temples in Jerusalem and their subsequent exiles.

In order to properly mourn, traditional Jews refrain from eating from sundown to sundown on Tisha B’av.

But why, if the Jewish people have returned from exile to re-establish a sovereign Jewish state and even have control over Jerusalem itself, should we continue to fast? Anshel Pfeffer, writing in Haaretz, is the latest in an annual stream of columnists calling for an end to all the pseudo-sackcloth and ashes.

“Tisha B’Av was never supposed to be an eternal day of mourning,” Pfeffer writes. “The prophet Zechariah, who according to tradition lived 2,500 years ago, at the time of the first return to Zion and the building of the Second Temple, quoted the Lord of Hosts promising that ‘the fasts of the fourth month, and of the fifth, seventh and tenth months will become festivals of joy and happiness for the House of Judah.’”

Not only is the exile over, but those Jews who remain living outside of Israel are not being prevented from emigrating but rather are doing so out of choice, Pfeffer says. “Praying to God that all these millions of Jews will up themselves and make aliyah is hypocritical,” he adds.

Now, there are those who say we must continue to mourn until a third temple is built. Pfeffer has an answer for that as well. When Israel captured the Old City in 1967, it was Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who assured Muslim Wakf officials they would have full control of the Temple Mount area. “The only reason that the third temple has not been built is that a majority of Israelis simply are not interested,” Pfeffer writes.

When I presented Pfeffer’s point to some friends, though, I was quickly reminded that the temples were destroyed by what the rabbis deemed “baseless hatred.” And we are far from overcoming such feelings today. Indeed, a Ynet-Gesher poll asked Israelis “What, in your opinion, is the worst source of tension in Israeli society?” 42 percent indicated religious vs. secular issues (there’s lots more in the poll – worth checking out).

So, said my friends, we continue to mourn – not for the destruction of the temples but for the continued brokenness of our fragile society.

That’s also what our rabbi said in a preface to reading the book of Eicha (Lamentations) in the garden of the Jerusalem Nature Museum earlier this evening. But as we sat outside, listening to the mournful tunes being chanted under the stars, the silence was repeatedly broken by the sound of a helicopter circling directly above us. I timed it – it came around regularly every 5-6 minutes. The copter must have made at least 10 very noisy flyovers during the reading.

None of us knew what the helicopter was doing. Was it police or army? Had their been a tip-off that a terror attack was immiment? Or was this area – close to the Knesset – always patrolled and we just normally never stop to listen?

In any of those cases, the symbolism seemed clear: exile must truly be over – we have our own security forces with our own helicopters that can protect the Jewish people from future disasters.

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe the reason we need the helicopters is that we still have enemies who are bent on our destruction. Only once we have true peace in the region can we start eating again on Tisha B’av.

Food for thought…well at least for after the fast.

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Israel’s super market show

July 19, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel, tv 

The Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.

If there’s one thing Israelis know, it’s markets. Not the bull and bear kind, but the spice, food, embroidered, handwoven goods kind.

The local cable TV show ‘Market Values’ (Shvakim in Hebrew) recognizes that knowledge and has been taking viewers for in-depth looks not only at the rich, colorful open air markets of Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem, the Carmel Shuk in Tel Aviv and the Acre Shuk, but has travelled around the world to expose viewers to some of the planet’s most bizarre bazaars including Istanbul’s Great Bazaar, Mumbai’s Crawford Market, Bangkok’s Jatujak Weekend Market, and Marakesh’s Bazaar.

The show, hosted by Yishai Golan, uses the markets to present the local culture, cuisine, and musical traditions of the area surrounding the market.

Now, the rest of the world is going to gain from the Israeli experience in shopping in exotic locations. After only 13 episodes of the series have been aired, and the second season being filmed, both the BBC and The National Geographic Channel have bought the series from its creators, Tel Aviv-based Ananey Communications.

National Geographic TV will air ‘Market Values’ beginning in September on its channels in France, Belgium, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. And the BBC will air it on its various channels in Asia.

“The uniqueness of the series is that it brings to the television screen a bridging between cultures and forges a common denominator that transcends continents to reach a broad audience,” said Ananey manager for international business Sigal Shaldag in a press release issued after the BBC acquistion.

“We’re proud that National Geographic Television has bought ‘Market Values’. It is important in these times that the world see Israel through more than just CNN, and also see Israel’s beautiful markets,” she added in another statement released this week announcing the National Geographic purchase.

With Israeli shows and formats being bought right and left in recent years, here’s one show that’s going to really get around. And soon, maybe we’ll be hearing vendors around the world starting to scream out in Hebrew: “Tomatoes five shekels a kilo!”

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