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(Last chance to eat challah for a while )
With the Passover season rapidly approaching, the kosher world is thinking about food and preparation. Have a look at some of our favorite kosher videos online!

His first visit to a kosher McDonald’s

This kid just wants you to eat your kosher!

MATZA FACTORY!

Crank that Kosher Boy!

Feed Me Bubbe!

This guy insists that his food be kosher, no exceptions!

And one more just for fun: Whasssup? SHALOM!

Click here for a bonus cartoon straight from kosher.com!

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.

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.

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

Eldad Vezehu, the Jerusalem restaurant famous for French dishes including non-kosher seafood like clams and mussels and meat-and-cheese specialties has decided to change direction and open its doors to the kosher crowd.

Owners say they simply got tired of working on Shabbat, after 14 years of operating seven days a week. Once they decided to close for the Israeli weekend, the logical next step was to change the menu and apply for a kashrut certificate in order to appeal to kosher-keeping Jerusalemites.

The restaurant is located in Jerusalem`s Feingold Courtyard, just off Jaffa Road near Ben Yehuda Street walking mall and Zion Square. The courtyard is home to several of the city’s non-kosher restaurants and trendy bars.

New menu items include thigh and leg of goose hip in rosemary and garlic sauce, lamb with Jerusalem artichoke, Swiss chard salad with sweet potato, and much much more. The desserts will also remain, including homemade souffles and tarts prepared on order by the restaurant’s pastry chef.

Tel: (02) 625-4007

Hours: Sun-Thurs noon- late

Friday noon – One hour before Shabbat

Saturday – One hour after Shabbat - late

In some American cities, kosher food could be considered almost run-of-the-mill to Jews and non-Jews alike. There are more kosher restaurants in the metro-New York area than anyplace outside Israel, and large Jewish communities such as Miami, Florida, London, England and Melbourne, Australia boast impressive lists of kosher establishments.

In recent years, however, kosher food has become something of a fad, even outside “traditional” Jewish quarters. Unlikely locales such as Newport, Rhode Island and Oahu, Hawaii recently celebrated openings for kosher restaurants, and the Orthodox Union recently called on U.S. airlines to offer kosher food for sale on domestic flights. Heck, some people are even getting their pets into the act.

And speaking of out-of-the-way kashrut stories, here is a decent review of Sophie Judah’s “Dropped from Heaven” (Schocken, 243 pages, $23), which deals with culture and kashrut issues for Bene Israel community in India.

Like most American-born Jews born before 1980, I grew up associating kosher wine with sweet, Manischewitzkiddush wine. To me, Friday night still isn’t the same without it, but the kosher wine industry has taken huge leaps forward over the last two decades, and top quality table wines are available from just about every continent.

In Israel, most tourists are familiar with the Golan Heights Winery in Katzrin and Mizrachi Carmel Winery in Zichron Ya’akov, but dozens of boutique wineries have cropped up in Israel’s highland areas over the past decade, including more than a few kosher ones. Drive Israel features a self-guided driving tour of some of the finest ones in the northern region, and six out of the nine wineries are kosher. One place that didn’t make it onto the list, Dalton Winery just north of Tzfat, produces some of the finest kosher wine currently on the market.

In the Jerusalem area, the Gush Etzion Winery is located 15 minutes south of the capital, and features a classy dairy menu to boot (local tip: they also make one of the best cappuccinos in the area!). To the east, Hamasrek is located just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, on Moshav Beit Meir in the lush
Jerusalem forest. Domaine du Castel (Ramat Raziel) Tzora Wines (Kibbutz Tzora) also provide high-quality wines in limited numbers. In both Jerusalem and the north, larger operations offer regularly-scheduled tours and wine tasting, but those wishing to visit smaller operations are advised to call first.

On the internet, several portals have made international kosher wines accessible and affordable. The Kosher Wine Review is exactly what the URL says it is: a comprehensive review of virtually every kosher wine in the world. In addition, Finest Wine has a magnificent selection of kosher Italian and French table wines, and Australia-based Kosher Wine features information about Beckett’s Flat and Teal
Lake, the country’s two kosher labels. Another useful portal is Israel Wines (site loads in Hebrew, but there is a link to the English-language content on the right side of the page).

For newcomers to the intricacies of kosher wines, the high holiday period brought on a flurry of “introduction to kosher wine” articles, including several from unlikely sources. Oddly enough, the Twin Cities (Minnesota) Daily Planet featured an informative, well-written overview of kosher wine, and of kashrut in general for the uninitiated. The Jerusalem Post did the same a week earlier, as did a nifty-looking Atlanta-based e-zine called Creative Loafing.

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.