TruthBook Religious News Blog

Kosher and halal foods submit to nostalgia and reinvention

By: A Qasimi 02/25/2009

"Milk and Honey: Part I" is also available at this site - please click on "external source" to access this, and the first of the series.

“O, for a morsel of food free from wrongdoing [in the eyes of God] and from the favor of any creature!”—Sufi Imam Sari Al-Saqati (circa AD 850)

“Naturally the girls do not get any pork or shellfish,” begins Santa Fe Chef John Connell. Connell is on the board of directors for Creativity for Peace, a local program that brings young women from Palestine and Israel together at a summer camp in New Mexico to promote awareness, acceptance and reconciliation. Connell first became involved as the camp cook in 2003. “The first year I was involved, they requested lasagna often. They are not big on creamy dressings and Western cheese or milk products, but labne (kefir cheese) is a staple in the fridge.”

Childhood memories of visits to the US revolve around a trusty backbone of kosher products we were never without in our Muslim household: kosher hot dogs and Hydrox cookies instead of ballpark franks and Oreos (in the ’80s, the white fillings of the latter were still made with lard). My first Shabbat, observed in college, was a vegan meal cooked in earnest by an assortment of young hopefuls, all part of a burgeoning on-campus group called Jews in the Woods. I was charmed by their idealism and their folk music, but the gluten-free piroshkies? Not so much. I stopped for a cheeseburger and an ice-cream float on the way home.

Local chef, caterer and radio personality Stacy Pearl ...shares tales of a dynamic upbringing with resolute glee, saying, “My dad was raised strict Orthodox in a Hungarian Jewish family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He remained kosher until his days in the Air Force during WWII; although the Army supplied kosher rations for all the Brooklyn Jewish boys, he discovered bacon, and the rest is history.”

Is there a Muslim cuisine? No, but unlike Jews, Muslims do not share the perception of a common culture forged by religion, and thus there has never been a distinct Islamic cuisine, per se. What Muslims do share is a common theme of etiquette and regard toward handling and consumption: always eating with the right hand, taking only from the circumference of the bowl and never blowing on hot food, for starters.

Santa Fe chef Joel Coleman, who claims he cannot live without pork, shares that his best memories are simple ones, and that they really started happening after he became a chef. “My favorite may have been a fresh loaf of challah made by my friend Matt. Another would be the best latkes ever, made by a chef in Vermont and served with beautiful lox and maple syrup crème fraîche.”

...the laws of Dhabiha halal and kashruth share a number of similarities. Though the methods and protocols for slaughter are similar, and both religions prohibit eating meat killed any other way, kosher laws are exhaustively specific beyond the scope of halal. And though halal-certified products are not considered kosher, the question of whether or not Muslims can use kashruth standards as a replacement for halal’s remains, like nearly everything when it comes to spirituality: entirely discretionary.

Labels: A Qasimi, cuisine, food, Jews, Muslims

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Monday, July 23, 2007

America Goes Kosher

Madonna drinks Canaan wine, Paris Hilton orders kosher steaks, Bono eats sushi under the supervision of the Beth Din, Donald Trump holds his meetings at one of Manhattan’s kosher restaurants – and everyone burns calories to the tunes of Sarit Haddad and Eyal Golan. Kosher is trendy in the USA

Yaniv Halili Published:
07.06.07

This latest American trend has celebrities enquiring about the coveted kashrut seal before letting a morsel of food touch their mouths. Apart from Madonna (who has a private room at the Prime Grill), many others are rushing around in search of steaks from cows that were slaughtered under the supervision of a rabbi.

A not very trendy 3300 years late, Americans are discovering that kosher food is both healthy and spiritual. The subject is complex, but it is encouraging to realize that we were right all these years and that it was worth insisting on manna in the desert. New kosher restaurants are opening all the time in big cities throughout the United States, offering dishes that have not been boiled to death. Kosher products are finding themselves on supermarket shelves and major producers in the dairy industry are strict about having the kosher stamp on their product labels, knowing that the “gentiles” want kosher products too. Even Hollywood is slowly turning kosher: the current most popular restaurant is a kosher meat and sushi bar where paparazzi photographers have a permanent place at the entrance.

Kosher Buddhism

Until recently, the words “kosher food” would have the average person running away rather than meet the dubious culinary experience. These days the two words mean prosperity. In Manhattan, kosher Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian and Iranian restaurants have opened. There is even a kosher Buddhist restaurant - indeed, Buddha spent his youth in a yeshiva.

In the last decade, kosher food sales in American supermarkets have reached a growth rate of 15 percent as opposed to a four percent growth rate for food that is not kosher. Eleven million Americans buy kosher food, and they are responsible for a yearly turnover of $9 billion. What’s interesting in all this data is that there are only just over six million Jews in America and even fewer keep kosher. Slowly but surely the kosher food market is being taken over by non-Jewish Americans who are on the lookout for kosher food that is not just gefilte fish and matza.

So, have the gentiles finally realized that Judaism is cool? Not necessarily so. In a recent survey carried out by Mintel International, 55 percent of kosher food consumers do so because they believe that kosher food is healthier, not due to religious reasons. The health merits attached to the kashrut seal are welcomed by mouths wide open: this last year Americans have had to swallow avian flu, mass poisoning and E.Coli bacteria.

The American Health Department’s statistics are scary: 76 million people - one in four Americans - suffer each year from diseases caused by spoiled food. As the numbers of diseases rise, so does people’s awareness and conscious consumers are on the look out for alternatives.

Kosher food is popular mostly amongst health food fans and strict vegetarians who can eat at a dairy restaurant and be sure that no suspicious pieces of meat will find their way into their plates and that they won't meet chunks of smoked bacon in their salads.

Americans like the fact that kosher food is prepared under the watchful eyes of supervisors, often more than one, and kosher restaurants in Manhattan are proud to announce that “all the food here is prepared under strict supervision”. This impresses the customers, even if the watchful eyes are those of a kashrut supervisor who is only making sure that the dairy and meat utensils stay separate from each other.

A survey published just before Independence Day shows that Hebrew National sausages made of 100 percent beef is the highest selling brand in America. Muslims and Christians too are among Americans who eat kosher food. Certain Christian groups follow a diet that is prepared “in the spirit of the Bible.”

And for dessert Eyal Golan

The kosher trend in New York got a big push last year when Madonna arrived in the city for her Confessions tour. After each show, she packed up her dancers and musicians and took them all to the Prime Grill for a steak. These intimate gatherings got a lot of coverage by the local press and the fashion police raised an eyebrow at the relatively unknown establishment that Madonna chose to eat and party at. Madonna doesn’t come to this restaurant only for its food; the owners play Israeli music and are sure that the songs of Sarit Haddad will make the desserts taste even sweeter. Madonna finds it hard to contain her excitement.

Madonna is a sure bet for kosher food, but a rather more unexpected personality who has found her happiness in kosher land is Paris Hilton. The idea that the young heiress finds solace in something that is not studded with diamonds has young Hollywood girls rushing to the Prime Grill in Beverly Hills. The tabloids and entertainment TV shows were amazed when Hilton chose to celebrate her birthday at the kosher sushi and meat bar. She invited 40 of her closest friends, but 200 guests showed up. “She loves our sushi”, admits the owner. “Before her birthday she asked us to prepare a lot of sushi, but she was most concerned about us baking a cake for her.”

Even now, from the heights of the garbage dumps she’s in, Hilton doesn’t forget where she came from and who fed her. Although her plea to bring kosher catering to her jail cell didn’t come through, two weeks ago during the embarrassing fiasco when she was under house arrest, she celebrated her temporary freedom feasting on kosher catering.

But even the huge amounts of kosher food that are going into Hilton’s mouth still don’t qualify it as trendy. So Sasha Baron-Cohen (“Borat”) steps in to help. The English star probably leaves half his monthly salary at the Prime Grill. Baron-Cohen is seen so often at the Hollywood branch of the Prime Grill that the sight of a fork is rarer.

“Sasha eats only kosher food, so he has no choice”, says the owner. “He loves steaks and eats a lot, often complementing his meals with expensive, kosher Israeli wine. He celebrated his Oscar nomination here with his fiancée and a few friends. But for Sasha, a meal is not a meal if it doesn’t have Eyal Golan, Kobi Peretz or Shlomi Shabbat singing in the background. He says these songs remind him of Tel Aviv.”

Signing deals over steaks

The celebrity-watch website TMZ.com reported that Donald Trump has connected to his lost roots, and not the roots of his hair: Trump has turned the Manhattan kosher restaurant Solo into his boardroom. Bono also pops in from time to time, and when he’s not snacking on flies in Africa, he keeps to his ideals and eats only kosher or organic. When he dines at Solo he insists on ordering the salmon in miso and at the Prime Rib he eats kosher sushi.

But, in spite of the star dust being sprinkled over kosher foods, some claim that making kosher trendy is not a kosher thing to do. Most in the Jewish community are not swayed by star dust and are against turning Judaism into “a modern, trendy cult,” says one of the heads of the rabbinical committee in America, who choose to ignore the phenomenon. “This is just a fashion that will soon disappear”, he says. “Everything Jewish is suddenly popular, but after the noise has quietened down and the storm has passed, only the core will remain, but anyway, the core is what’s important in Judaism.”

There are also some who understand that the phenomenon is typical of the American society, which adopts a new ritual every 15 minutes, heralds it as the new king and discards it when the next trend starts to bloom. “Obviously Madonna has played her part in making kosher trendy, but there is a wider issue of self-searching at hand,” says David Deutsch. “After Scientology and Buddhism, it’s now Judaism’s turn. Judaism has been around for a long time and that makes people ask how it’s managed to last so long and wonder what its secret can be. It’s like a closed family where people want to peep inside and see the beauty.”

But why kosher food now?

“The kosher trend fits in with modern life. Like the Kabbalah, it combines the old with the new. Kosher food meets spirituality and health in one plate, and that’s what people are looking or today: a little spirituality with an everyday practicality. Add to that the celeb quality and the fact that Hollywood has many famous Jews that people want to imitate. It’s very easy being Jewish in America today.”

Labels: America, food, health, Judaism, kashrut seal, kosher, Madonna, Paris Hilton, spirituality, Yaniv Halili

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Cooking For Others Mirrors Christ’s Love For Us

LORRAINE V. MURRAY, Commentary
Published: June 7, 2007

I walk nervously into the kitchen and stare at the package of chicken. I am not much of a cook, but in a moment of sympathy, I signed up to prepare a meal for my neighbor, who has just been diagnosed with a heart ailment.

I study recipes in various cookbooks and say a few prayers, then I wrestle the chicken out of the package and into a marinade. When the chicken is finally baking, I find myself at a total loss about the side dishes.

Truly, I had planned to make the entire meal from scratch, but as the hours slip away, and I am still perusing cookbooks, I make a hasty decision: Head over to Rainbow Grocery and pick up some squash casserole and a few other tempting vegetable dishes.

Back at home, I test the chicken for doneness and am starting to feel quite weary. And then I realize that what I am doing is a daily event for women with children.

Since I have no children, I obviously have more time on my hands than mothers do, but time vanishes when I sit down to the computer each afternoon to write. Some evenings, supper is just a grilled cheese sandwich, with larger, fancier meals prepared by my husband on weekend nights.

In the past, I have prayed for my neighbor and her family, especially in the last few weeks of her most recent pregnancy, when doctors required complete bed rest for her.

But when the meal sign-up sheet came around, I was reluctant to add my name. I assured myself that prayers were enough because I didn’t want to subject the family to my pathetic attempts at domesticity.

Then one Sunday at Mass, I heard the words of St. James, who mentioned how feeble faith without works can be:

"If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?" (2:15-16).

It was time to add my name to the latest sign-up sheet for meals.

And now, as I survey the chicken, which appears miraculously crispy, I am glad I took that leap of faith. Soon, I am wrapping the chicken in layers of foil, tucking in the side dishes and heading over to my neighbor’s house.

I ring the doorbell and out come two of the children, still wearing their school uniforms, along with Olive the basset hound, who greets me with a shout of canine delight.

My neighbor hugs me and thanks me profusely, and then, moments later, as I drive away, I picture the family sitting down to eat the food that came from my own hands.

I whisper a prayer that the meal will be tasty, and they won’t have to feed the entire banquet to Olive.

That was months ago. My neighbor is doing fine and the latest addition to her family, the cherubic Lucy, is scooting around with great enthusiasm.

Jesus came to show us the human face of divinity and to reveal the real-life components of love. That included feeding the crowds loaves and fishes, healing the blind and the deaf, and before His own death, giving us food for our immortal souls.

Cooking for my neighbor was such a small thing, but in tiny moments like these, sometimes we glimpse the larger miracle of Christ’s love for us.

He was the one who told Peter after the Resurrection: "Feed my sheep." He was the one who cooked fish for the apostles on the shore.

These days, as I remember my neighbor and her family in my prayers, I sometimes think ahead to the next meal I might cook for someone in need.

And I’m starting to realize that, by some mysterious logic, as we feed our brothers and sisters, Christ is feeding us.

Lorraine V. Murray is the author of three books on spirituality, available at www.lorrainevmurray.com. Illustration featured in the print edition is by her husband, Jef, who is the artist-in-residence for The St. Austin Review.

Readers may e-mail Lorraine at lorrainevmurray@yahoo.com.

Labels: cooking, food, Jesus, spirituality