More in ‘kosher’

Ever been to a restaurant, and you see something imaginary on the menu—roasted Jabberwock, say, or braised Ent with balsamic vinaigrette—and you don’t know if you can order it or not because you don’t know if it’s kosher? Now, there’s a new book that will tell you: The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals.
Basically, Ann and ...

• A Jewish papal knight has become a loud voice within the Catholic Church opposing Holocaust-era pontiff Pius XII’s sainthood. [NYT]
• A small group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis declared lox to be unkosher due to a certain parasite that salmon can host. Most rabbis disagree, though, so stick that on your bagel and eat it. [Grub ...

• Iran has enriched uranium further but may lack the political will actually to develop weapons, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified. [Reuters/Haaretz]
• Kosher food is hip, on the grounds that it’s better for the environment and safer. But is it, actually? [Slate]
• How Israel made friends with the (very) small island ...

Amid a food Zeitgeist that stresses health and quality, is concerned with the morality of eating meat, and values the local and the organic, a perhaps unsurprising trend has materialized: more and more non-Jewish folks want to buy food, and especially meat, marked with that U inside the circle. Only 15 percent of those deliberately ...

Tucked away above a bustling swap-meet of jewelry purveyors in midtown Manhattan’s diamond district, blintzes and gefilte fish have attracted kosher-keeping visitors from around the country since at least 1955. But no more: at the beginning of this month, Diamond Dairy closed down after failing to renegotiate a lease with the building’s new owners, ABS ...

Sholom Rubashkin, former manager of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, was convicted yesterday in federal court of 86 financial fraud charges. Rubashkin’s sentencing date has not yet been scheduled, but he will likely be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, the AP is reporting. In addition, he still faces a second trial ...

The federal fraud trial of Sholem Rubashkin, the former CEO of the Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse, isn’t painting a very flattering portrait of the kosher butcher, who faces a maximum 1,280-year prison sentence on fraud charges—plus another potential 715 years for hiring hundreds of undocumented workers, in a second trial that will begin after this one ...

Ilan Hall, the Long Island-born Jewish chef who won season two of Bravo’s Top Chef, a serving bacon-wrapped matzo balls at his just-opened Los Angeles restaurant, The Gorbals. That’s really about all there is to say on the matter, though the Los Angeles Jewish Journal has another 1,000 words on it—plus a video!—if you’re desperate ...

The New York Times reports today on several major trends going on that you may have missed. One is that non-Jews are buying kosher food due to “the increasing popularity of ethnic foods and the desire to know more about food ingredients, quality, labeling and nutrition.” (The latter reason seems dubious, considering that we’re talking ...

When I ordered the blackened redfish at a North Carolina restaurant in August, I hadn’t eaten any meat or fish in more than 13 years. Being a vegetarian had been easy, and I’d rarely been tempted to stray. Sure, certain cooking aromas—a roasting turkey, chicken soup simmering on the stove top—could still make me ...