Finding Kosher Food in Adelaide, South Australia

The kosher section in Coles at Burnside Village is full of junk food and nothing really useful, but it's the only store in town with a kosher section!

When traveling, finding kosher food is the number one concern most people express to us. No matter where in the world we are traveling, people ask us how we can manage to keep kosher.  Even in Australia this is true, but especially in a place like Adelaide, where the Jewish population is only 1,000 and the kosher population has lots of room to grow.

There is only one supermarket that boasts a whole kosher section, the Coles at Burnside Village, which is just a short distance away from the only Orthodox synagogue in town, the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation.  Unfortunately, I found that most of the products on the shelf were junk food.  (Akiva was excited to see that Bamba is indeed available in Adelaide!)

Imported kosher cakes and snacks from the US and Canada for sale in The Reject Shop

When I spoke to the store manager about it, he said that the store stocks every kosher item available through their Sydney supplier.  It seems that there just isn’t even much available for the supermarket to purchase!

So you would expect it to be difficult to find kosher food in Adelaide, especially processed or packaged foods, or foods imported from America.  But that’s not necessarily so! And this is true of any town or city in Australia.  There are kosher products available if only you can find them.

Imported kosher chocolate sauce OU(D) from the USA for sale in The Reject Shop

Last week, Rabbi Ben and I went to The Reject Shop in Adelaide.  I’m sure there are many, and we went to one in a small suburb just about 20 minutes outside of Adelaide city center.  So it is not the kind of place that would stock kosher products for its kosher customers.  Yet, we found many, many kosher products imported from the US and Canada for sale! They were mostly under OU or Montreal Kosher (MK) supervision, with the heckshers clearly marked.  We found everything from cake mix to pizza flavored Pringles and everything in between.  In the past, we have found this to be the case in the most unlikely sounding places across Australia, and even across the world.

Imported Tabasco Sauce from the USA

So stop into your local supermarket (or even your local Reject Shop) and you just don’t know what kosher treasures you might find!

Keeping Kosher when Visiting a Tribal Home (Mong New Year)

One of the most difficult things to do when you are a kosher traveler is to visit a local, tribal home.  That is because in most cultures, the offering of food to guests is very important.  Yet, as a kosher traveler, we have to turn down these offers. In most cultures, turning down an offer of food is very rude.  So what to do?

Inside a native Hmong (Mong) home, our hostess prepares an elaborate breakfast to celebrate the New Year. To refuse to eat anything at all would be incredibly rude, but what could we eat and still keep kosher?

Imagine you meet a visitor traveling from a faraway country and culture you have never even heard of before.  You are excited to get to know them and invite them to your home for a Friday night Shabbat dinner, to show them your home and culture.  When they get there, they refuse to eat, but happily sit through the whole meal not touching a thing.  Awkward at best, this could be downright insulting.

Fortunately, most of us Westerners have come into contact with people with other religious and cultural beliefs that affect food consumption.  We understand (because we keep kosher) that perhaps a Muslim will only eat what is halal. We can understand the strict Buddhist tenant not to eat after noon.  We can even grasp the Jain concept of not eating, breathing, or even walking on bugs.

But people from small native villages don’t have this exposure.  The concept of refusing to eat a meal with your hosts can be deeply insulting. So what do you do?

Firstly, it depends on the level of kashrut you are keeping.  If for you eating vegetarian food is kosher, then you can probably get by with only minor challenges.  But if you keep strictly kosher, you will have a harder time.

In some cultures, such as the Hmong (Mong) and Thai cultures, rice is a staple food.  These cultures will have a special pot set aside for cooking rice and nothing but rice will be cooked in it.  You can probably help them check the rice (they usually check it for stones, but you can always help them look and look for bugs instead!) and then offer to help stoke the fire or add the rice to the pot, so that you are participating in the cooking process.  If you pose it as wanting to be involved in, learn about, and participate in their culture, they will usually be enthusiastic about you helping with the cooking process.

At least then you can manage to eat some plain rice.

Making chapatis requires a special kind of plate, which is used only for this purpose.

The same kind of process usually applies to whatever the staple food of the culture is, whether it is rotis, bread, or chapatis. Most of these foods require a special dish to cook in and you can help with the cooking process in some way without offending your hosts.

Any other kind of food cooked in the place you are visiting is likely to be too difficult to make kosher, unless you managed to find a tribe of vegetarians (they do exist, but I haven’t found them yet). Otherwise, it’s likely that food will get mixed up and even a purely vegetarian dish will not meet kosher standards.  For example, at the Hmong home we visited during the Mong New Year this week, they prepared a vegetarian dish of pumpkin – after chopping it directly on the same chopping block as the pork, without washing it in between.  So that dish was clearly not kosher.

Stick with the plain rice or chapatis and you’ll be fine, or at least less awkward.  And if you can’t manage to do that, at least in a Buddhist country you can always explain that you only have fresh fruit and water after noon!

Happy eating and happy travels!

Last week, I posted some informed and intelligent responses to a lot of the arguments kosher meat-eaters give to kosher vegetarians.  I hope those resources and answers will prove useful and enlightening.  Even if you do eat meat (as Rabbi Ben does), it does not mean that you should remain uninformed about what the Torah says on the subject.  In fact, you should make sure you read it so that when you meet someone who is a kosher vegetarian, you’ll understand better where they’re coming from. Trust me, they’ll appreciate it!  After all, they are probably really used to hearing lots of comments like these:

And of course, please check out my previous posts about being a kosher vegetarian here:

Why would a Jewish and kosher world traveler become vegetarian?

Why do Jews become vegetarians?

What does the Bible say about vegetarianism?

Being a Jewish vegetarian doesn’t have to be boring! (Part 1)

Being a Jewish vegetarian doesn’t have to be boring! (Part 2)

Jewish criticism of vegetarianism and how to answer it

In my previous post on an overview of Jewish vegetarianism, I noted that there were 5 main reasons given by most vegetarians for why they stop eating meat.  In Judaism, too, there are 5 main reasons for becoming vegetarian. Similarly, there are 5 main arguments Jewish religious critics of vegetarianism give.  I have encountered these common criticisms many times during my travels, in Jewish communities all over the world.  Even if you want to continue to eat meat, you should be aware of the issues posed by your actions.  The existentialist in me is fond of maintaining awareness when making decisions!

1.  There is no animal cruelty because kosher laws dictate animals must be treated well during their lifetimes. Also, animals die instantly when slaughtered kosher, before they can even feel pain, so it’s not animal cruelty to eat kosher meat. 

This is a great ideal to which to aspire, but in practice it is rarely observed with the amount of reverence it deserves.  Most animals in the US today are factory farmed.  I don’t want to go into the details of what that means, but basically the animals are restrained, kept in overcrowded conditions, and fed unnatural foods.  By no stretch of the imagination can this be considered “good treatment” so as to satisfy the Biblical mandate of tsa’ar ba’alei chayim and I have never heard anyone claim it does.  Yet, the meat that gets to your kosher table comes from factory farms just like all the burgers in McDonald’s do.  So how is it possibly considered kosher?  Producers of this meat purchase the animals as they enter the slaughterhouse.  Because the livestock were previously owned by non-Jews, the Jews aren’t responsible for their treatment.  Although this loophole does follow the letter of the law, it blatantly violates the spirit of the law.  Several rabbis, including Rabbi Natan Slifkin (the “Zoo Rabbi”) have declared that even if this loophole is used, this meat still isn’t really kosher.  Furthermore, it is not certain that animals slaughtered kosher feel no pain, as time from cutting to death depends on a variety of factors, including the exact sharpness of the knife, the skill of the shochet, the species, and the manner in which the animal is restrained.  Sometimes animals may retain consciousness for 30 seconds before they finally die.

2.  G-d gave us animals and told us we can eat them, so it’s ok.

G-d initially gave us the animals so we could care for them, not eat them.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam was charged with naming the animals, giving him responsibility for them even on a spiritual level.  He definitely wasn’t eating them – G-d told him to eat from “every herb yielding seed” and every “fruit of a tree yielding seed.”  This was the ideal G-d wanted for man.  Meat-eating was only permitted after the Flood.  According to Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner, this was an accession to human weakness – if G-d hadn’t let humans eat animals, they would have sunk again to pre-Flood levels of degradation and eventually ended up cannibalizing each other.  So, yes, it’s permitted, but it’s not permitted for the nicest reason and I don’t know if I’d be too proud about “needing” to eat meat…

3.  Kosher meat is healthier, so you don’t have to worry eating too much might make you sick.

In some respects, kosher meat is healthier, but in some respects it’s not.  Because certain parts of the animal aren’t used and all blood is removed, less disease is spread.  On the other hand, by salting the meat a lot more, the higher sodium content can be harmful to people with heart problems.  In all other respects, kosher meat is processed in the same way as non-kosher meat.  Most processing is even done in the same factories.  That means that any dangers to health regular, non-kosher meat has also apply to your kosher meat.  Finally, most health hazards come from eating too much meat, not from the meat itself.  In the long run, over-consumption of meat has been linked to arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, several kinds of cancer, osteoporosis, and arthritis, to name a few.  Eating kosher won’t prevent these diseases or even reduce their risk – only reducing your meat intake will do that.

4.  We have to eat meat to raise the “sparks” of the animals’ souls up to a higher level by using their energy to do mitzvot. 

This comes from the kabbalistic concept that during the creation of the universe, “sparks” of holiness fell down to the lower levels and, as Jews, it’s our job to go out and find them and raise them up.  This is considered to be one of our main jobs while we’re in exile.  Alternately, it is related to the kabbalistic concept that a human soul may have been reincarnated into an animal to atone for a specific sin – if the meat is then eaten and a certain mitzvah performed, the human soul is freed from its sin to be reincarnated as a human again.  Rabbi Yonassan Gershom points out that this collection of “sparks” is cumulative and as we near the days of moshiach, there are fewer sparks to collect.  Each person has their allotted sparks and it does happen that sometimes a person has just managed to elevate all the “meat sparks” they’re supposed to.  Rabbi Gershom also notes that, unlike in the past when people had individual relationships with their animals and the shochet (slaughterer) made a new blessing over each animal, in today’s factory farms and slaughterhouses, the proper kavanah (religious intention) is no longer present and this results in there being no sparks in the meat. “The Breslover Rebbe stated that only a person who has reached a high spiritual level can be elevated by eating animal foods, and the opposite is also true: a person who lacks this high spiritual level may be further debased by eating animal foods.”  Similarly, the Gemara states that only a true Torah scholar may eat meat. In spite of the sparks that need to be elevated, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, a major 16th century Kabbalist, encouraged people to eat as little meat as possible

5.  It is a “mitzvah” to eat meat and drink wine on Shabbat and Yom Tov.

Rabbi Moshe Goldman notes that the source for this “mitzvah” comes from the prophet Isaiah, who tells us to “call the Shabbat a day of delight,” just as a yom tov, which is a “good day,” a holiday.  This means different things to different people.  At one point in Jewish history, having a big fish on Shabbat and Yom Tov was considered a “delight.”  Today, meat is considered to be more of a “delight” than fish, so it’s viewed as part of the mitzvah to enjoy and be joyous on Shabbat and Yom Tov. Even the Lubavitcher Rebbe has said that if eating meat doesn’t give you any pleasure, you shouldn’t eat it, even on Shabbat or Yom Tov. 

Bearing all that in mind, I’m a pretty “live-and-let-live” kind of person, particularly when it comes to vegetarianism.  It doesn’t bother me when other people eat meat around me (although I’m not fond of handling it, since I can’t help thinking of it as the internal organ of a dead animal).  I don’t run around trying to convince other people to become vegetarian.  In fact, Rabbi Ben isn’t vegetarian, although he isn’t a big fan of meat and is often vegetarian because he travels so much.  So I don’t recommend you take these arguments and run off to convince all your friends to give up eating meat, but rather, I hope you will use this information to make informed decisions and to raise interesting discussions with your friends and family.

Why would a Jewish and kosher world traveler become vegetarian?

Why do Jews become vegetarians?

What does the Bible say about vegetarianism?

Being a Jewish vegetarian doesn’t have to be boring! (Part 1)

Being a Jewish vegetarian doesn’t have to be boring! (Part 2)

Sunset behind Phewa Lake in Pokhara, Nepal, taken from our guesthouse

I loved Pokhara.  It was a special place to me – peaceful, serene, beautiful.  We had a cute but spartan room with the most stunning view overlooking Phewa Lake.  Nothing but a green field of grazing water buffalo was there to obstruct our view.  Surrounding the lake we could see Himalayan peaks rising up, the tallest among them tipped in white.

It was a perfect place to spend Shabbos.  And indeed, we ended up spending several Shabbosim there.  However, the first couple we spent there, the local Chabad House had not yet opened up.  We had been counting on it for our Shabbos meals and companionship.  That meant that, as with numerous other Shabbosim during our journeys, we were on our own.

Yet, the stunning surroundings in no way made preparing for Shabbat any easier.  To my surprise, I discovered that most of Nepal was on electricity rationing.  According to the schedules, we would only have about 7 hours or so of electricity on any given day, split between two sessions, one of which always seemed to fall in the middle of the night.  Preparing for Shabbat during travel can be challenging under the best of circumstances, but without electricity, we would be unable to boil the eggs and potatoes that were staple foods for us during our travels.

But that’s not all – after sunset on Friday night, there would be no electricity, no light to read by.  The Chabad House would have had a generator available, but not our guesthouse. The guesthouse’s policy on this was just that guests should use a candle or two, or a flashlight (in our case, a headlamp).  But after lighting Shabbos candles, we would be unable to light any further candles.  Once our Shabbos candles finished, we would be plunged into complete darkness and we wouldn’t be able to wear our headlamps either.

I think most people out there would find this a challenging situation to be in, week after week, during the entire month and a half that we spent in Nepal.  And it’s true, these situations did present challenges.  But I don’t think of it as anything particularly extraordinary.  After all, electricity is still a relatively recent invention.  We just take our modern living for granted.

In this week’s parsha, when we receive the 10 commandments, one of the most important is to keep the Sabbath.  The ancient Israelites did not have electricity as they spent 40 years traveling in the desert.  They would not have had to cook their own food, that is true (the manna that fell took on any taste they wanted), but they would still have had to sit around the Shabbos table.  They would have wanted light to see by during and after the meal and they wouldn’t have just been able to run to the store and pick up some extra candles.  They would probably have used clay or stone lamps filled with oil with a wick burning in them, rather than candles.  When the oil ran out, so did the light.

So Rabbi Ben and I took our small Shabbos meal (I did manage to boil some eggs and potatoes, and even steam some peas, during the few short hours of electricity – careful planning!) and we went to sit outside.  We watched as the springtime sun descended behind the lake, colors painting layers of rainbow behind the Himalayan peaks.  The guesthouse owner came by and gratuitously placed a single candle in front of us without us needing to ever say a word to him. (Asking a non-Jew to do this type of work on Shabbat could be very problematic, so we couldn’t ask him for it.)  We enjoyed our meal and the incredible scenery.  It was not hard to connect to Hashem in such surroundings.

When we returned to our room, my Shabbos candles were still burning.  We sat and read by their flickering light, enjoying them fully.  In our modern lives, we often fail to really appreciate and use the light cast by our Shabbos candles, as we truly are meant to.  But in this small town in Nepal, we were able to use our Shabbos candles for the purpose they were originally intended – to bring shalom bayis (“peace in the home”).

Boiling potatoes for dinner requires a lot of patience, especially when there is not often electricity

These Shabbosim we spent together in Pokhara are some of my most cherished moments.  I remember the feeling of warmth the Shabbos candles brought in our relationship. I remember the sight of those glorious mountains and the beautiful lake that Hashem Himself made for us to appreciate.  I remember how a simple salad of potatoes, or eggs, or fresh vegetables, seasoned with nothing more than oil and a pinch of salt, could taste so wonderful, could have the flavor of Shabbos.

This is what it truly means to keep Shabbos.  It means to put our worries and cares aside.  Not simply that we “shall not do any work” – but that we should not even think any work – even if we are in a place where it is challenging to keep Shabbos.  It is a time to reconnect, both with Hashem and with one another.

This week as we head into Shabbos, let us concentrate on this most important of commandments, on keeping it fully, on keeping it well, and – most of all – on really appreciating its beauty as a gift that Hashem has given especially to us.

Fruit at a market in Columbia (South America)

Many who know me would say that Tu B’shevat is my favorite holiday. Why? Because I like fruit, and Tu B’shevat celebrates the new year for the trees.

The main custom and way to observe Tu B’shevat is to eat lots of fruit. Many have different customs as to how much variety. It is good to have at least one new fruit that you’ve not had yet in the past year. This will enable you to make the ‘Shehechianu’ blessing. The next step is to have the five fruit from the seven species that the land of Israel is blessed with: grapes, pomegranate, olives, figs, and dates.

After this the sky is the limit. Some people try to have ten types of fruit; others try to have eighteen, twenty six…and so on.

A good thing to do is to sit down with the family and friends for a Tu B’shevat feast where everyone makes a blessing over the fruit and gives thanks to G-d for bringing forth from the ground the fruit of the trees.

As I travel fruit makes up almost 80% of my diet. Fruit is available everywhere and it’s kosher. I especially like to discover new fruits around the world.

Happy Tu B’shevat and enjoy your fruit!