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What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste
It has become exceedingly difficult to get a bowl of kosher matzo ball soup in my L.A. neighborhood. I’m reminded of this every few months, when a cold or a craving reminds me what we lost when Pico Kosher Deli, established in 1968 about a mile from my apartment, closed for good early in the pandemic. It’s not just the soup, of course. It’s the whole kosher deli experience — bulging pastrami sandwiches, a waitress with a notepad, frilly toothpicks.
The traditional kosher deli is dying, if not dead, and not just in L.A. Kosher Ashkenazi fare is officially passé, a cuisine category today’s balabustas — at least my millennial Modern Orthodox cohort — have abandoned. At the kosher markets, Manischewitz products are relegated to a dusty corner, the “kosher aisle” of the kosher grocer. And at surviving delis like Katz’s and Canter’s, kosher is not a religious certification. It is, simply, a nostalgia cue immediately preceding the word “style.”
Fortunately, a wave of new, smartly packaged foodstuffs capitalizing on that nostalgia has arrived to restore my Ashkenazi birthright, or at least my former sodium levels. In the years since my neighborhood deli closed, direct-to-consumer brands have launched to hawk kosher potato latke crisps, kosher matzo chips and kosher jarred charoset (lovingly named Schmutz). The newcomer that I sprung for was a kosher instant matzo ball soup called Nooish. A box of four stout, colorful soup cups arrived about a week after I ordered them online.
To find out why these shelf-stable products have taken off while delis languish, I called Nate Rosen, whose official title — creator of the consumer brands newsletter Express Checkout — obscures the coolness of his job, which largely consists of reviewing new snacks on TikTok. According to Rosen, the kosher renaissance was part of a broader surge of food startups during the pandemic, when free time and disposable income were suddenly in abundance. It was inevitable someone would find the Jewish angle on the trend.
“There’s a market for it,” Rosen said. “There’s dedicated spots for it [on shelves]. And I think especially now, people are proud to be Jewish and proud to show that off a little bit.”
Nooish’s instant soup, ready in just a couple minutes, doesn’t come with booth seating. But taste-wise, comfort-wise and deli-wise, it’s a worthy adaptation of the experience. The kneidlach — three to a cup, each a bit larger than a Ping-Pong ball and floating in a salty brown broth, hold their form but obey your spoon. (There’s no chicken, and the soup is certified pareve.) At four-for-$36, the instant soup is probably too pricey for your kid’s lunchbox, and not substantial enough for an adult meal. But in a pinch — say, a cold or a craving — it can be transporting.
If the kosher deli is out, what’s in? The answer awaited me at Hatch Kitchen, a new kosher meat restaurant, where earlier this week I watched a barista prepare a fancy smoothie. Elaborate, astonishingly expensive and often named after celebrities, fancy smoothies are an L.A. institution, the lifeblood of the influencer class. The most notorious of these drinks, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie, contains strawberries and dates but also vanilla collagen powder and something called sea moss gel. It costs $20.
Hatch, I was told, makes something similar, the strawberry-based “Or-gan-ic” (the middle syllable also the Hebrew word for garden), which the restaurant calls its “most viral smoothie.” No sea moss gel, but the menu touts “anti-inflammatory” ingredients that include flax seeds and hibiscus. It’s $12, which sounds like a lot if you’ve never spent $20 on a smoothie before, and like a bargain if you just did, and for that one you’d had to look a cashier in the eye and utter the name of Justin Bieber’s wife. (At Hatch, you order from an iPad.)
Hatch’s fancy smoothie — which is also a photogenic one — models the dominant trend in contemporary kosher dining: pop-culture mimicry. Across from where the Pico Kosher Deli once stood, you can order a kosher crunchwrap supreme — a Taco Bell menu item — from a Mexican street food place called Lenny’s Casita. Kosher cafes still serve bagels, but people go for the avocado toast. It’s kosher dining’s hypebeast era, if you can afford it; Lenny’s crunchwrap with beef runs $30. I’m not sure how close the knockoff is to the real thing, or whether proximity really matters. Most customers will never taste the alternative.
There’s a tension inherent in these appropriated menu items — affirming both the desirability of secular culture and the Jewish laws forbidding it. Cultural diffusion and communal retreat. Assimilation and resistance. Meanwhile, the ancestral cuisine, which emerged out of kosher dietary laws, has been simultaneously rejected and idealized. You can’t find too many kosher delis, but TikTok has popularized pickle fountains. (Wait until they find out about hamantaschen.)
I was sort of sad about this state of affairs until I spoke to David Sax, who was dismayed enough about the decline of delis to write a book about it. He explained that Jewish deli food developed as a way of transforming European deli methods and flavors, which were more often made with pork, into kosher adaptations. The corned beef sandwich was the original fancy smoothie, which means our kosher crunchwrap might become tomorrow’s matzo ball soup. The comfort food changes, but the people endure.
The post What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia Invites Israeli President for Official Visit, Set to Pass New Gun, Hate Speech Laws After Boni Attack
People attend the ‘Light Over Darkness’ vigil honoring victims and survivors of a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday he called Israeli President Isaac Herzog and invited him to visit Australia, expressing his shock and dismay over the attack at the Jewish community Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach last week.
Herzog said he would accept the invitation, conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims, and mentioned that the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia also sent him an official invitation expressing their wish for him to visit, and he intends to do so, Albanese said in a post on X.
Herzog conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims and said he would accept the invitation, the president‘s office said in a statement.
“President Herzog underscored the importance of taking all legal measures to combat the unprecedented rise in antisemitism, extremism, and jihadist terror,” the statement said.
News of the planned visit comes as Australia‘s most populous state is set to pass tougher gun laws, ban the display of terrorist symbols, and curb protests in an emergency sitting following the Bondi mass shooting, as authorities stepped up their response to the antisemitic attack.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on Dec. 14, a shock attack that prompted calls for tougher gun laws and stronger action against antisemitism.
Albanese said earlier on Tuesday his government would address hate speech and gun control, working with the states on new laws.
The terrorism and other legislation amendment bill is expected to clear the upper house of the New South Wales parliament on Tuesday.
The state’s center-left Labor government has proposed capping most individual gun licenses at four firearms with farmers allowed as many as 10.
Police said one of the alleged Bondi gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by officers at the scene, owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed, who was transferred from hospital to prison on Monday, faces 59 charges, including murder and terrorism.
Although Australia tightened gun laws after a 1996 shooting that killed 35 people, a police firearms registry showed more than 70 people in New South Wales, which includes Sydney, each own more than 100 guns. One license holder has 298 weapons.
A Sydney Morning Herald poll on Tuesday found three-quarters of Australians want tougher gun laws. The rural-focused Nationals Party opposed the gun reforms in New South Wales, saying the amendments would disadvantage farmers.
A Muslim prayer hall previously linked by a court to a cleric who made statements intimidating Jewish Australians was shut on Monday by local authorities, a move described by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns as an “important step” for the community.
Minns said authorities “need to make decisive steps, whether it’s through planning law or hate speech [law], to send the message to those who are intent on putting hate in people’s heart or spreading racism in our community that they will be met with the full force of the law.”
The Canterbury Bankstown Council said on Tuesday it had issued a “cease use” directive to shut down an “illegal prayer hall” run by cleric Wissam Haddad after surveillance of the Al Madina Dawah Centre showed the premises was being used in violation of planning laws.
An official at the center told Reuters by telephone that Haddad was no longer involved in managing the center.
The Al Madina Dawah center said in a statement on social media on Dec. 15 that Haddad’s involvement was “limited to occasional invitations as a guest speaker, including delivering lectures, and at times Friday sermons.”
A source close to Haddad, who declined to be named, also told Reuters the preacher was no longer involved in the management of the center.
Haddad denies any involvement or knowledge of what happened in Bondi, the source added.
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Two Men Found Guilty of UK Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews as ISIS Fears Grow
Surveillance image showing Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, pictured near Dover, as they have been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout surveillance image dated May 8, 2025. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community in England, a planned attack investigators say demonstrates the resurgent risk posed by the terrorist group.
Police and prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who went on trial a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the nearby northwest city of Manchester in October, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could.
Had their plans come to fruition, it would have resulted in “one of, if not the, deadliest terrorist attack in UK history,” said Assistant Chief Constable Robert Potts, in charge of Counter-Terrorism Policing in northwest England.
Their convictions come little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Islamic State said the Australian attacks were a “source of pride.” Although the jihadist group did not claim responsibility, its response has heightened fears of an increase in violent Islamist extremism.
While not posing the same threat of a decade ago when Islamic State controlled vast areas of Iraq and Syria, European security officials caution that IS and affiliated al Qaeda groups are once again looking to export violence abroad, radicalizing would-be attackers online.
“You can see signs of some of those terrorism threats starting to grow again and starting to escalate,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said last week.
TWO MEN PREPARED TO BECOME MARTYRS
British prosecutors told jurors that Saadaoui and Hussein had “embraced the views” of Islamic State and were prepared to risk their own lives in order to become “martyrs.”
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol, and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles, another pistol and collect at least 900 rounds. Unbeknown to him, a man known as “Farouk” he was trying to get the weapons from was an undercover operative, which police said meant his plan never came close to being put into operation.
Sandhu said the assault rifles Saadaoui wanted were similar to those used in a 2015 Islamist terror attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris that killed 130 people. He added that Saadaoui “hero-worshipped” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated that attack.
Saadaoui said in a message to “Farouk,” whom he thought was a fellow militant, that the Paris attack was “the biggest operation after that of Osama [bin Laden]”, an apparent reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States.
“Based on Walid’s communications and interactions with the undercover operative, and some of the things he said, that made it very clear that he regarded a less sophisticated attack with less lethal weaponry as not being good enough,” Potts said.
“Because, in effect, it was his role and his duty to kill as many Jewish people as he could, and that wasn’t going to be achieved via the use of a knife or, for example, potentially a vehicle as a weapon.”
Both Saadaoui and Hussein had pleaded not guilty and Saadaoui said that he had played along with the plot out of fear for his life.
Hussein did not give evidence and barely attended his trial after he angrily shouted from the dock on the first day “how many babies?” in an apparent reference to Israel’s war in Gaza.
They were convicted in Preston Crown Court on a single charge of preparing terrorist acts.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism but prosectors said he had been reluctant to join the attack.
ISLAMIC STATE THREAT GROWING
The foiled plot is the latest in Britain and elsewhere inspired by Islamic State, which emerged in Iraq and Syria a decade ago and quickly created a “caliphate,” declaring its rule over all Muslims and largely displacing al Qaeda.
At the height of its power from 2014-17, Islamic State held swathes of the two countries, ruling over millions of people and imposing a strict, brutal interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
Its fighters also carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world, which were often claimed by Islamic State even without any actual connection.
The SITE Intelligence Group said in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia that IS had encouraged Muslims to take action elsewhere, particularly singling out Belgium.
A European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said IS was flooding social media with propaganda and while this impacted only a handful of people, it meant there were more terrorism investigations than last year.
Ken McCallum, head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, said in October that his service and the police had thwarted 19 late-stage attack plots since the start of 2020, and intervened to counter many hundreds of other terrorism threats.
“Terrorism breeds in squalid corners of the internet where poisonous ideologies, of whatever sort, meet volatile, often chaotic individual lives,” McCallum said.
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Syria Detains Prominent American Islamist Journalist, Sources Say
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a Ministerial formation of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, in Damascus, Syria, March 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A prominent American Islamist journalist who has been critical of Syria‘s new government and its nascent partnership with the United States has been detained by Syrian security forces, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Bilal Abdul Kareem, a former stand-up comedian in the US turned war journalist who has lived in Syria since 2012 and worked with many foreign media outlets, was detained in Al-Bab in northern Aleppo province on Monday, they said.
Syria‘s information ministry, an interior ministry spokesperson, and a spokesperson for the US special envoy to Syria did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Abdul Kareem has been a prominent voice among foreign Islamists in Syria, giving air to hardliners who view President Ahmed al-Sharaa – who once commanded Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria – as compromising too much on Islamic values since taking power.
In August, Abdul Kareem petitioned the Syrian state to give citizenship to foreign jihadists among the rebels who swept to power with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that ousted autocratic President Bashar al-Assad a year ago.
The fate of foreign fighters has loomed large since then, with few countries willing to take back people they often view as extremists and some Syrians wary of their presence.
Al-Sharaa’s government has progressively limited their space for expression, detaining several, including some with a significant online presence.
In Abdul Kareem’s latest video, he criticized Syria‘s decision to join the US-led global coalition fighting Islamic State. The video was published a day after a gunman said by the US and Syria to have been a member of Islamic State killed two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter in eastern Syria. IS has not directly claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the video posted on X, Abdul Kareem begins: “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, and it probably is going to get me in trouble, but here is the reality. The Americans have no legitimate reasons to be here.”
He adds: “We simply cannot legitimize the presence of the enemy, and I said America is the enemy of the Syrian people.”