Kosher News

The tears that flow cannot be subsided, and children wail in despair. Who knew that such a loss would destroy the very souls of our Generation? The loss, of course, is that Tam Tams, the perennial bite-sized matzo favorite for years upon years, will not be available for this Passover season. The producer of these tasty crackers, Manischewitz, is unable to produce this delectable variety of product.

Although many fans of the zesty munchable snack are grieving, others are giving up on what it means to enjoy this crispy treat. Most are just walking around the house in a somber daze, waiting for a sign that their favorite noshable joy just might wind up on shelves in the next few weeks. The root of this loss of flavor apparently comes down to production issues in the plant that makes them in New Jersey, specifically, a state of the art, mult-million dollar, delicious Tam Tam baking oven just didn’t come online in time to meet the seasonal demands.

People are learning to cope with the loss, but it will not be easy. What legacy will this non-enjoyment leave? It is unclear what enduring hopelessness the lovers of this morsel will endure in the next few months. How some will try to replace their Tam Tams is still yet undetermined, but still dissapointment prevails for those who would give anything for just one, small, yummy bite. The Tri-State will miss you this year, Tam Tams. See you next year. Until then, why not try another one of the many matzo crackers available at Kosher.com!

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.

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?

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.

It could be a delayed reaction to PETA’s exposé about inhumane treatment of animals at a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa a couple of years ago, but there seems to be a movement towards demanding shochtim and abattoirs display ethical and humane treatment of animals.

Of course, Jewish vegetarian groups have been around for years, but there are sparks that even the kosher meat market might be inching towards animal rights concerns. Over the summer, the Washington Post and New York Times both ran long features about the blending of ethical concerns with ritual ones, and the Forward newspaper used the run-up period to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to talk about moves in the Orthodox world to treat chickens used for the pre-Yom Kippur kapparot ceremony humanely.

Technically, kashrut has nothing to do with treating animals properly before slitting their throats: If a knowledgeable shochet kills a kosher animal in accordance with halacha, the meat is kosher. But to many people, the “whys” of keeping kosher are just as important as the “hows,” and explanations about “why keep kosher” often include kashrut’s supposed ethical superiority.

Even non-Orthodox kosher-keepers are getting in the fray. Over the summer, the Conservative movement announced plans to issue a hechsher tzedek, intended to confirm that workers and animals are treated appropriately at kosher slaughterhouses, focusing on creating kosher conditions at all stages of the process. The move is strongly opposed by Orthodox organizations.

Going to the ballpark this summer in the U.S. (and now in Israel) need not mean sweaty salami or soggy tuna fish sandwiches for the kosher community.

Kosher Sports Inc. provides kosher hot dogs at stadiums in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Strikly Kosher has metro New York covered, with stands at Yankee Stadium, Giants Stadium, Continental Arena, Nassau Coliseum and Richmond County Bank Ballpark, home of the minor league Staten Island Yankees. The Staten Island team even has bentchers embossed with the team name for those who don’t want to miss Mincha or Maariv at the ballgame.

The Jewish Press reported last summer that Chabad of New Hampshire was bringing kosher food to select home games of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in Manchester, N.H.

The Los Angeles Dodgers serve kosher hot dogs at several games each year, as do the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But we think the best option for kosher baseball fans is the Israel Baseball League, set to begin its inaugural season in Israel on June 24 with teams like the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, Raanana Lightning and Petah Tikva Pioneers, managed by the likes of former NY. Met Art Shamsky, former N.Y. Yankee Ron Blomberg and former Chicago Cub Ken Holtzman. There are no games on Shabbat, and all concessions will be kosher.