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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.
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In the depths of Tel Aviv’s bus station, a fragile refuge for those with nowhere else to go during war
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Two floors underground, past dumpsters and oil-laden puddles, through a reinforced Cold War-era door, a bomb shelter is buried underneath Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.
Built in 1993 to accommodate more than 16,000 Israelis, the shelter found a new life during the Israel-Iran war as a public refuge for residents of Neve Shaanan, among Tel Aviv’s most diverse neighborhoods and one of its poorest, home mainly to asylum seekers and foreign workers.
With few other options for public shelters in south Tel Aviv, residents pitched tents in the squalor of a space that had fallen into disrepair — with pipes dripping and rats scurrying — for more than 38 days as Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire until a ceasefire that began on April 8 halted the fighting.
“It’s very difficult. Not just because of the war, but because of the conditions we’re living in,” Gloria Arca, who took refuge inside the shelter with her son, Noam, said in Spanish during an interview in April. “We’re protected from the missiles, but inside we’re not safe.”
For many Israelis, the bus station occupies a space that balances between nostalgia and revulsion. Until 2018, the station was a main node for travel into and out of Tel Aviv. Since then, ridership has dropped, and now the hulking structure is seen as little more than an eyesore. During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last year, a short video by Israeli comedians went viral for sharing the station’s GPS coordinates in a video that jokingly urged Iran, “Please don’t bomb this bus station.”
Yet the station also offers a concrete window into Israel’s widening reliance on foreign workers, which has surged in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
When there is no war on, the shelter functions as a community center, complete with a Filipino church, a refugee health clinic, and retailers catering to customers in more than a dozen languages.
During wartime, the station takes on a new and vitally important role as a shelter for those who have none in their homes or neighborhoods, no family in the country whose homes they can flee to and little ability to pay for temporary accommodations somewhere safer.
Arca, who came to Israel more than two decades ago from Colombia and is in the country legally, knew that it would take her and Noam more than 10 minutes to get to a shelter from their home — longer than Israel’s advanced missile warning system allows. So they decided to move into the bus station, pitching a tent alongside some of their neighbors.
Depending on the day, more than 200 residents spent their nights in the shelter during the war, according to Sigal Rozen, public policy coordinator at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.
“It’s not easy, especially with young children and families with special needs,” she said. “You can’t get up in the middle of the night and just run.”
The Hotline, with funding from the Tel Aviv Municipality, worked to improve conditions in the shelter, but the starting point was dire. During a visit in April, rats could be seen scurrying across newly installed artificial turf meant to brighten the space, and mosquitoes landed on visitors’ ankles before being chased off.
More than anything, Arca worries about safety in the shelter — but not from the war. “We’re protected from the missiles, but inside, we’re not safe,” she said. “Security is there, but they don’t do their job. Drug users come in and use the bathrooms. There are many children here, and we’re afraid.”
The challenging conditions were nothing new to many of the people who moved in, who represent an often unseen but growing sector of workers in Israel.
The category of “foreign worker,” a term used in Israel to describe non-citizen laborers, most of them from countries such as the Philippines, India, and Thailand, who enter the country on temporary work visas tied to a specific employer, has long been a fraught designation.
Dominant in some industries, such as home health care, where there are so many foreign workers that the role is known as “filipina” in Hebrew, foreign workers have taken on greater shares of other sectors in recent years, particularly after Israel banned Palestinian workers from Gaza and the West Bank after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack. With Israelis increasingly reluctant to take low-paying manual labor jobs, the Israeli government has moved to fill the gap by permitting employers to hire more foreign workers.
Israel’s foreign worker population rose by 41% in 2024 alone to more than 156,000. By 2025, the total had reached 227,044. It is expected to grow even more in the coming years, as the government has set a ceiling of 300,000 workers.
For many Israelis, footage that circulated after the ceasefire showing long lines of foreign workers arriving at newly reopened government offices to renew their visas offered a stark illustration of the growing sector.
It is not uncommon around the world for people from impoverished countries to migrate to countries with more work and higher pay. For the workers, occupying a tenuous legal status can be worth it to be able to support their families, send their children to stronger schools and earn wages on a different scale than in their home countries.
Evelyn, a Filipina caregiver sheltering with her three children beneath the Central Bus Station, declined to give her last name out of fear of deportation. “In Israel, I can earn 10 times what I do in the Philippines. So I have money to send back to my family — not just taking care of my kids here, but my parents in Manila.”
But advocates for the workers say foreign worker status, and Israel’s increasing reliance on foreign workers, creates conditions that are ripe for abuse. Ohad Amar, executive director of Kav LaOved, a nonprofit that works to uphold equal labor rights for all workers in Israel, said the workers are “enduring conditions akin to modern slavery.”
Many foreign worker visas in Israel are tied to a specific employer and are non-transferable. Kav LaOved has documented numerous cases of delayed or unpaid wages, as well as workers who feel pressured to remain silent about abuse from their employers lest they lose their immigration status.
“Israel had not relied on migrant workers in the same way before. This is the first time at this scale,” Amar said. “Every day we are getting reports of workers’ rights violations, and we are completely overwhelmed.”
During wartime, foreign workers are frequently exposed to Israel’s unique dangers in extreme ways. On Oct. 7, as sirens blared, foreign workers were slaughtered in the fields of kibbutzes near Gaza. During the most recent war, videos circulated online of construction workers from China who filmed themselves stranded high in the air during missile barrages, afraid and without protection.
The first death in the latest round of fighting with Iran was Mary Anne Velasquez de Vera, a foreign worker in Israel from the Philippines. At the end of March, two other foreign workers were killed by a Hezbollah rocket while working in a field in northern Israel after they were unable to reach shelter.
Feeling physically vulnerable is an experience many foreign workers in Israel know well. Evelyn, a migrant from the Philippines who slept in the bus station with her children during the war, described how, in an industry as intimate as caregiving, working with elderly people who struggle to make it to a shelter, workers can feel pressured to stay in the building during an attack.
“They can’t exactly tell their employer they left grandma in the building during a missile attack, because they’ll get fired and lose their visa,” Amar said.
Some of the risks are much less visible. Evelyn was out of work as a housekeeper for the duration of the war, when her employer, an elderly woman, left the country. She lived on donations from community members and civil society organizations.
“Here is still better than back home,” she said. “But we are all struggling, and not just because of the shelter. If I can’t start working soon, I really don’t know what I will do.”
Workers like Evelyn who lack work visas must rely on informal employment, making them ineligible for compensation from Bituach Leumi, Israel’s national workers’ insurance, when they go unpaid. But having a visa did not solve the challenges of war, Rozen said.
The threat of losing their visa if they lose their employment hangs over the heads of the workers, forcing them into difficult decisions, like whether to leave their children with volunteers at the shelter or alone at home.
“Even those who still have work face a problem. If a single mother has children and there’s no school, where does she leave them? She can’t bring them along when there’s an alarm,” Rozen said. “So even when work exists, many can’t do it.”
She said the war had offered a glimpse into the as-yet-unaddressed challenges that come along with Israel’s increasing reliance on importing labor from abroad. The country’s labor market didn’t come to a standstill, as was the case in other countries in the region such as the United Arab Emirates where the vast majority of workers are migrants who tried to leave, but for Rozen, something new and troubling was laid bare.
“If you don’t want foreigners here, then don’t recruit them,” Rozen said. “But you can’t recruit them, triple their numbers, and then expect them to disappear when there’s a war.”
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Nearly half of young Americans view US relationship with Israel as a burden, survey finds
(JTA) — Nearly half of young Americans, 46%, believe that the United States’ relationship with Israel is mostly a burden to the United States, according to a new survey from the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The Harvard Youth Poll, which polled 2,018 Americans aged 18 to 29, found that just 16% of those surveyed described the U.S. relationship with Israel as mostly a benefit.
Respondents were asked about their view of other U.S. alliances, including Canada, which 53% saw as beneficial, and Ukraine, which 21% saw as beneficial. Israel received the lowest perceived benefit of any country tested.
The survey also found that 55% of young Americans believe the U.S. military action in Iran is not in the best interest of the American people.
It comes as attitudes about Israel among young Americans in recent years have grown sharply negative. Earlier this month, a Pew Research Center survey found that 70% of Americans aged 18 to 49 held a somewhat or very negative opinion of Israel. That view was split among partisan lines, with 84% of Democrats in that demographic holding a negative view of Israel, compared to 57% of Republicans.
The Harvard survey was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs between March 26 and April 3 and had a margin of error of 2.74 percentage points.
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Long Island father and teen son arrested after investigation into swastika drawn in school bathroom
(JTA) — A father and his teenage son were arrested Wednesday after an investigation into swastika graffiti at the teen’s school led police to search their home, where authorities said they found chemicals used to make explosives.
The arrests stemmed from an investigation into swastika graffiti found in a boys’ bathroom at Syosset High School on Long Island. After police determined that a 15-year-old student had drawn the swastika, the Nassau County Police Department sent officers to his home.
There, the teen told the officers about the explosive materials, according to prosecutors. He said his father had purchased the chemicals for him to build rockets.
During the subsequent search of the home, police found “highly unstable” materials that had been combined to make explosives, including nitroglycerin, multiple acids, oxidizers and fuels. They began to evacuate people in adjacent homes, fearing an explosion.
The teen was not identified by police due to his age. Francisco Sanles, 48, who was arrested at the scene, has pleaded not guilty to seven criminal counts, including criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. His son was charged with five counts, including criminal possession of a weapon, criminal mischief, aggravated harassment and making graffiti.
Swastika graffiti is relatively commonplace in schools, with the Anti-Defamation League reporting over 400 incidents in 2024: Syosset High School itself was hit by a spate of antisemitic graffiti, including swastikas, in 2017. But it is relatively rare that incidents result in arrests.
In an email to the school district Wednesday night, the Syosset School District — which enrolls a large number of Jewish students — said its investigation had identified the student for the police, and he would face “serious consequences pursuant to the District’s Code of Conduct.”
“Antisemitism and hate speech have no place in our communities or in our schools,” the district said. “Syosset has long been proud of being a welcoming, empathetic, and inclusive community and those values remain firm. We protect those values and this community by confronting and holding accountable those who traffic in any form of hate.”
In January, New York City Police arrested and charged two 15-year-old boys suspected of spraying dozens of swastikas on a playground in a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime.
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