Origins
As recounted by Jonathan Abbett, creator of the Kosher Blog
In the summer of 2003, I went cold-turkey, whole-hog kosher, which meant no more eating vegetarian at treyfe restaurants, as I had been doing for about seven years, in my pre-Orthodox days. The particular milestone was my marriage to a lovely and talented woman who had been progressing, like me, toward a more observant lifestyle, so I immediately found myself with a wedding-gift-equipped kosher kitchen (and a wife who couldn’t cook, save her excellent apple pies). Suffice it to say, I was cooking a lot more.
Luckily, I had a penchant for the culinary passed to me from my mother, live-in grandmother, and a healthy dose of PBS cooking shows. (It probably also helped that my father made occasional appearances in the kitchen — potato latkes were always his department — and would often cook for his assorted fraternal organizations.) As I sought to recapture the not-so-kosher tastes of my past, I experimented with new recipes and products, and began encountering more and more obscure hekshers the further I looked for exotic goods. Keeping it all straight grew challenging, so, in December 2003, I started the Kosher Blog, a website where I could catalog my experiences and occasional frustrations, and reach out to other kosher foodies who were also “trying to find the finer side of everyday kosher living.”
Purpose
That spirit continues through the present day. The Kosher Blog has become a major compendium of recipes, product and restaurant reviews, incisive institutional critique, and miscellaneous information about real kosher-living issues that simply can’t be found elsewhere on the Internet. Through our readers’ comments, every post grows into a living, oral history of the topic at hand, creating an incredibly valuable, grass-roots resource for the kosher community.
The Kosher Blog also inadvertantly serves as a testament that kosher cuisine goes far beyond stereotypically “Jewish” foods: oversalted beef, pickled fish, delicatessen, and sweet wines. We care about top-quality meats, wines, and restaurants just like everybody else — and if kosher manufacturers don’t want to make gutsy, strong-bodied cheeses, well, we’ll do it ourselves!
Jonathan Abbett · Brookline, Massachusetts
A lifelong Bay Stater, Jonathan works as a user experience engineer by day, and blogs by night. While he shuns friends’ suggestions to open Boston’s first high-end kosher restaurant, he dreams of someday owning a gourmet shop, spending months out of the year traveling the globe in search of distinctive kosher products.
Steven Weinberger · Brooklyn, New York
Marc Melzer · Manhattan, New York
Marc Melzer is a practicing litigation attorney in New York City. He has made a hobby of learning about kosher wines and spirits since a few years before the legislature would like, but it was a helpful head-start. Though not properly climate-controlled, Marc currently has rack-space for five cases of wine — no small feat in a NYC one-bedroom apartment. Marc also enjoys cooking and is pretty handy in the kitchen, which is good because he also likes to eat.