Kosher Foods

With Sabbath candles burning and 14 guests seated around her dinner table, Joanna Arch held up a cup of kosher red wine and chanted the kiddish prayer in Hebrew: "God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all his creative work."

It isn't easy being a kosher food inspector in the land of moo shu pork. No matter how hard you try. "Once, they got me into a restaurant and they ordered a whole plate of food and put it in front of me," recalls Rabbi Martin Grunberg, who has the unusual task of ensuring that Chinese factories that make food for export comply with ancient Jewish dietary laws. "They were putting me to the test because they really don't understand why I can't eat Chinese cuisine."

Glatt. NOW that's a word a lot of people don't see every day, let alone on almost every storefront for 15 blocks or so on Pico Boulevard, west of La Cienega. Unless you practice strict kosher rules ("glatt kosher" informally refers to a sanctioned preparation of certain meats that can be eaten, according to Jewish dietary laws), the Glatt Gulch -- an affectionate nickname for this Westside neighborhood's vast glatt kosher offerings -- is a proper L.A.

More than 1,500 years ago, Jewish scholars wrote of the shibuta, an unusual fish found in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of ancient Babylon, modern-day Iraq. In the Talmud, that encyclopedic compendium of Jewish law and tradition, the shibuta is described as a tasty and popular fish with a distinctive trait -- it apparently tastes like pork. According to kashrut, Jewish dietary laws, it is forbidden to eat pig. A kosher animal must have split hooves and chew its cud.

Muslims and Jews might not agree about much that goes on in the Middle East, but when it comes to food, they're warming up. Food processing companies of both faiths came together Thursday at the World Ethnic Market show in the Anaheim Convention Center to pitch such delicacies as halal chicken samosas and kosher Italian sausage to retailers from Albertsons to Wild Oats.

AT a recent "warmup" Seder held at Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard, the leader Jay Buchsbaum invoked several Talmudic passages that emphasized the relationship between the faithful and wine. "Wine gladdens the heart of man," he began, and none of us needed a scholar to tell us that. "When the wine goes in," he continued, "the truth comes out," interpreting truth here to mean a person's essence, revealed as inhibitions ease. This too seemed beyond dispute.

Four months before the holiday, the Passover season has already begun at Manischewitz, the 118-year-old brand known around the world for matzo, gefilte fish, chicken soup and sweet wine. But as its matzo factory annually churns out 75.6 million sheets of unleavened bread in 14 flavors for its core Jewish customers, company leaders are creating a new strategy: turning a staid brand into a more contemporary, perhaps even trendy, one.

How about a margarita with that matzo ball? Until recently, syrupy sweet wine was a staple of the Passover Seder, the ritual meal that celebrates the liberation of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Naomi Silbermintz always kept kosher, and that meant never eating Campbell's soup. Until last month, when the Sherman Oaks woman learned that the venerable American company had finally produced a soup that satisfied Judaism's strict dietary laws. At the first Kosher World Convention & Expo on Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Silbermintz treated herself to a bowl of vegetarian vegetable, Campbell's only kosher offering so far.