It’s that duration of year again–when the The New York Times publishes a smorgasbord of Passover features. Two interesting ones that caught my eye.

One in yesterday’s Dining section on the kosher celebrity cook Susie Fishbein. (”It’s about moment,” said my wife, a Fishbein fan.)
The other is a very positive portrayal of Rabbi Yaakov Y. Horowitz, “who heads the 17 rabbinical inspectors who oversee production” at Manischewitz.

Interestingly, the latter focuses too much on non-Jews trying out and eating kosher as a reason for the escalating market share of kosher food. The Susie Fishbein composition, I think, gets it right:

“According to Lubicom, a marketing firm for the kosher food industry, about 350,000 households in the United States keep kosher kitchens year-round, a number that has gone up by 3 percent to 5 percent every year since 2005 as some American Jews have become more observant.”

Another interesting point in that exposition is the notion that upper-middle class Orthodox Jews are increasingly looking for ways to enjoy contemporary American life while remaining very observant.

Key quote: “Susie is part of that whole trend in the Orthodox community to a more luxurious lifestyle that is still very religious,” [Matthew Shollar, chief executive of Chosen Voyage] said, referring to the drift toward American-style consumption from the traditional scholarly, synagogue-based model of family life. “And she knows precisely what her audience wants.”

Original post by Shlomo Greenwald

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