Ben Murane
Ben Murane is formerly the Communications Coordinator at Hazon. He is new to the intersection of Jews, food and contemporary life and in particular he is new to vegetables which are not microwaved and relishes this learning experience. Ben Murane was also the Executive Director of Jewish Student Press Service/New Voices Magazine in 2005-2006. He serves on the organizing committees for Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the New Israel Fund, the National Havurah Committee's Summer Institute and Matzat; and is a proud resident of Crown Heights. He is also a contributing editor to Jewschool, and has written for New Voices, PresenTense, Jewish Currents, Ameinu.net, and The Forward.
Mishegaas Leftovers
Briefly:
- Streit’s factory in Manhattan closes to relocate in a cheaper locale after 80 years. (Forward)
- The Forward also features a profile of food maven Arthur Schwartz.
- Over 160,000 2-liter bottles of kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola is made in Texas. The Texas mashgiach reports. (Jewish Herald-Voice)
- Israeli punk band YIDcore has finally given up rolling in hummus as its signature stage gig. (Australian Jewish News)
- As if fundamentalist kashrut could go no further, the waters of the Kinneret were disconnected from Jerusalem so that ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t have to risk eating crumbs that washed downriver, despite several levels of filtering. Give me a frickin’ break. (London’s Jewish Chronicle)
3 Comments »Matzah Verges on Destroying Israeli Government
After months of the largest religious party’s membership waffling on participation in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coaltion - on issues as divisive as partitioning Jerusalem and a ceasefire with Hamas - Olmert might find his coalition collapsing over an unexpected blindside: matzah.
As the Forward reports, a landmark ruling by the Israeli court system abrogated a law illegalizing the sale of leavened bread during Pesach (NY Times article from 2001 on the chametz police here). The ruling cited that restuarants and stores are private property and thus not violating any “public display” of bread.
But further, the judge ruled that “Hametz prohibitions as they are outlined in the Halacha,” are not relevant. The secular law only prevents the display of goods that look like bread, such as “bread, rolls and pitas.”
Needless to say, the ultra-Orthodox are pissed. Read more »
Feed Me Bubbe Podcasts
This month is New Voices magazine’s Radio Issue. (Check below for free subscription info.) In the “Best Jewish Podcasts” article is an amazing little bubbe who’s grandson podcasts her cooking to the world…just adorable…
Bubbe, of Feed Me Bubbe
In a shining example of nerddom gone right, sweet grandson Avram hosts a brilliant and wholesome series on his bubbe’s cooking. An irregularly published video podcast, the show features the charming and hilarious Bubbe making classic Ashkenazi comfort food: kasha varnishkes, borsht, tzimmes, kugel, and the rest. The recipes are simple to follow. There is also a Yiddish word of the day, spoken in Bubbe’s Boston accent.
“If I can be everybody’s bubbe, that’s wonderful,” says Bubbe.
Whether you grew up eating handmade matzoh balls at your own bubbe’s table or you’ve only heard tales from your Ashkenazi friends, Feed Me Bubbe is a funny, charming, and surprisingly well-made video podcast that might just inspire you to cook your own shabbes meal. Or to at least call your grandma.
Subscribe to Feed Me Bubbe at www.FeedMeBubbe.com or on iTunes.
New Voices magazine is the only independent Jewish student magazine written by and for Jewish college students. Subscribe yourself or your college-aged kinderlach for free by emailing here with as many full names and addresses as you want. And like I said, it’s free.
Last minute notice: Eating Liberally with Manhattan Boro President
Sorry for the last minute notice, RSVP at the Facebook page.
We’re proud to announce this week’s super special event: on Wednesday, 4/9 EATING LIBERALLY welcomes SCOTT STRINGER, the Manhattan Borough President, to discuss “Go Green East Harlem,” a grassroots guide to wholesome home cooking.
To improve public health in East Harlem, Stringer’s office has created a cookbook with recipes contributed by community groups & local restaurants that offer ideas for affordable, accessible, healthy eats.
This FREE event hosted by Eating Liberally will feature snacks, Q&A, guest speakers & a live–and lively–cooking demonstration featuring the Borough President himself.
Lynn Fredericks from Family Cook Productions.
& Author of Cooking Time Is Family Time
will join the conversation.
EATING LIBERALLY with SCOTT STRINGER
& “Go Green East Harlem”
Wed, April 9th - 6-8pm
The Tank @ C:U - 279 Church St
www.eatingliberally.org
A Bread Blogger Debuts
One of my Jewish friends has recently submitted for public embarassment her life journey with food. Specifically, bread. Complete with great bread porn photos, her opening statement on her new blog, Second Dinner, eloquently opens:
I bake. A lot. This means that I inundate my roommates, friends, family, and co-workers with carb-heavy goods on a regular basis. Most are delighted, but several people have very valid misgivings, or wish that so much bounty was a little less available to them.
Like many Americans, I have a complicated relationship with food…However, the majority of my complicated relationship with food comes from negotiating other people’s complicated relationships with food. I have many friends who struggle with their weight, with cravings, with implanted complexes or insatiable desires. One brave and hilarious soul is merrily blogging about her weight-loss adventures, and spontaneously volunteered to link to this blog despite its food focus. My friends are big and small, actors and non-actors, generally hung up about their looks or not, and the food issues cross those lines in surprising ways, and don’t always crop up where I would expect.
Read the rest of her opening post here.
1, 2, 3 Strikes You’re Out…at the kosher hot dog machine?
The Boston Herald announced that Fenway Park is installing a kosher hot dog vending machine:
The home of the Fenway Frank, which claims to sell more hot dogs than any other ballpark in the country, is adding a new option for Jewish fans who adhere to strict kosher dietary laws. A new automated “Hot Nosh” vending machine, to be located in the big concourse under the bleachers, will cook and dispense all-beef, glatt kosher hot dogs in under a minute.
That’s cool at the ballpark, but how about in a Jewish day school?
Feder first eyed Kosher Vending Industries because his children’s Jewish day school, the Maimonides School in Brookline, lacked a hot lunch program. After Passover, the school will roll out another Hot Nosh machine that cooks and dispenses kosher pizza, mozzarella sticks, vegetable cutlets, onion rings and potato knishes.
Um, are there any Jewish foods - vendable! - which aren’t fried and unhealthy? And since when did mozzarella sticks and onion rings make it into the “Jewish” cultural food category?
Plus, there’s more Jewish weiners (and thus a few more Weiners) in the ballpark pews these days.
Rosie the Riveter, Meet Shira the Farmer
Hat tip to ZT at Jewschool for this story, a friend of the family Shira Kamm starts her own farm, joining the ranks of so many other women starting farms. Check this article in the Philly Inquirer about Kamm’s endeavor below the fold, and check the photo essay. Somebody invite this woman to the Food Conference!
If you don’t enjoy your kashrut then shuck it; an older thread revisited
I never replied to the comments on an older thread from Bravo for liberated day school teacher: “Bacon’s delish” in January, but I intended to and it’s never too late to blog.
Isaac congratulated me but brought up that “Judaism is my religious field for reasons that transcend choice.” I disagree. Perhaps the odds are not in your favor that you’ll leave Jewish identity behind completely. It will surely leave an impression on your life permanently. But you can renegotiate its particulars anytime you want. Kashrut or no kashrut, the right is yours.
RivkaK was shocked that un-kosher friends pretend to be kosher for their parents, but perhaps this is food for thought for Isaac. Kashrut is often familial turf which, outside it’s religious value, endears or estranges some of us from home. I’ll get that in a moment.
It seems anarchist lawyer didn’t like what I said, challenging me by asking “Don’t you think we have an obligation to our forbears to respect the traditions of the past?”
Ben & Jerry’s now in Israel!
I got this in an email forward which I am quite sure is an e-hoax, but someone corroborate! My eloborations follow.
Ben & Jerry’s has announced that their Ice Cream is now available in Israel. In honor of this historic event they are producing a number of new flavors aimed specifically at the Israeli market:
Wailing Walnut - Mens & womens buckets sold separately.
Moishmellow - Let’s embrace those decidedly unmasculine, male Jewish stereotypes over a chick flik with ice cream, boys!
Mazel Toffee - Congratulations!! I always knew you’d marry someone sweet who would make you feel great.
Eilon Schwartz speaks in NYC
Just a little event notice:
Jewish Values and Environmental Responsibility: Israel’s Environmental Movement
With Dr. Eilon Schwartz, Executive Director of the
Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel.
Wednesday, January 23, 7:30pm at a private residence on the Upper West Side (RSVP for address).
The Heschel Center is one of Israel’s institutions helping create “agriculture which grows healthy food for all citizens while enhancing land and water quality.” Full info below the fold or RSVP here.
Bravo for liberated day school teacher: “Bacon’s delish”
Throw it all off. Flee the restrictions. Leave it all behind — bacon is tasty. Or so says the pseudonym “Sarah” in Time Out New York’s article No religion, who purports to be an Orthodox-raised day school teacher in Manhattan.
So one Saturday morning, I went to the Botanical Gardens with my sister who doesn’t keep Shabbes. It was a beautiful day in May. And I remember thinking, Wow, Saturday is another whole day! You don’t only have to go to shul or sleep late and stay at home—you can do other stuff! And that was a huge epiphany. I went to California that summer. And that summer, I had a nonkosher steak taco on the side of the highway.
That was different—I was very nervous, and I ordered very nervously. And I sat at this picnic table on the side of the highway, and the guy to my right was eating a steak taco, and the guy to my left was eating the same thing, and I thought, I am a person. I am a regular human being. I am no longer a “Jew.” And it was so liberating.
God’s Word, Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, and the Power of Two Percent – Part II
My previous post laid out the reasons why – while the tzedek hekhsher and ethical kashrut are wonderful intentions – the business practicalities beg answering. Indeed, it’s an open question if our little 2% of the meat market will make an impact on the greater meat industry.
But this post is hopefully “the other hand,” and at the very least inspiration as to how working with kashrut authorities might indeed yield a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community — one which leads to a healthier and more sustainable world for everyone.
Our shochet was amazing. Rabbi Yehuda Benchimhoun, an Algerian-descended French Jew of Lubavitch conviction, is a reluctant but intense shochet whose story and words impressed us all here, but above all his kavannah, his incredible intentionality with the animals he shechts. More than just being a six day a week vegetarian, he impressed us all with the seriousness with which he approached his duty to honor the life of animals. He was deliberate, he was careful, he was precise. And his respect for the letter of the law alongside its intent was phenomenal.
The Grinch Who Stole the Latkes
A cute poem by Rabbi Ed Feinstein, hat tip to Danya at Jewschool for this:
Oh the Jews of old Jewville, just loved holidays,
And kept them religiously, in all of their ways.On Rosh Hashana, they ate apples and honey
Then came to the Temple, all dressed in Armani.On holy Yom Kippur, they prayed and they fasted
Through rabbis’ long sermons, they kvetched but they lasted;
Till Neila was over, and proclaimed Cantor Fox:
“Go home and break fast, on bagels and lox!”
God’s Word, Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, and the Power of Two Percent – Part I
It’s Saturday night and for those who haven’t read so, the goat shechting has come and gone which as Leah said was a truly amazing experience. I had the questionable honor of video taping the entire process — from braying to dinner plate — the initial details of which I’ll save for my fellow brave compatriots on this blog team.
But of all the parts of the goat shechting, this Friday at Hazon’s Food Conference, I was less moved by the shechting itself and much, much more so by the moshgiach and shochet, Rabbi Mendel and Rabbi Yehuda respectively.
The overseeing moshgiach was none other than the head of the Orthodox Union’s (OU) kosher products division, the honorable Rabbi Seth Mendel. Rabbi Mandel answered tough questions about kashrut and humane treatment for over three hours straight.
Listening to Rabbi Mandel, I realized I was hearing words and concepts I’d not heard since business school. Rabbi Mendel spoke less frequently about Hashem, Torah, and tradition and more about competitive advantage, market share and consumer price pressure. It suddenly made sense that there are two primary forces at play in modern kashrut: not just God’s word but Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.
