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A Brooklyn Jewish foodie wants to make haroset a year-round treat
(New York Jewish Week) — For many, the highlight of the Passover seder is haroset — the nutty, fruity, sweet and crunchy paste spread on matzah and meant to symbolize the mortar slung by enslaved Israelites.
Such was the case for Michael Rubel. His mother’s haroset — made with “chopped apples, Manischewitz, raisins and lots of cinnamon,” as he describes it — was something he looked forward to all year. It was delicious, rare and one of the few distinctly uncommon Jewish foods he remembered from growing up in Kansas City, Kansas.
In fact, Rubel, 26, wondered why such a treat would be confined to Passover. “I can’t tell you how many Jews have said to me, ‘Yes, I’ve always asked why we only eat this once a year,’” Rubel told the New York Jewish Week. “It feels almost universal.”
So the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn resident, decided to do something about this sad state of affairs: Last week he launched the food brand Schmutz, which makes a haroset that is meant to be eaten all year round.
Rubel launched his brand online and at a party at East Williamburg’s Tchotchke Gallery on April 1. Within 48 hours, that first drop — which consisted of a traditional Ashkenazi apple and walnut haroset, as well as a fig and pistachio haroset inspired by a 15th-century Italian recipe — sold out. According to Schmutz’s Instagram, they sold 249 pounds of the stuff, or around 500 jars.
Schmutz haroset is not kosher for Passover; as for the brand’s name, which means “dirt or unpleasant substance” in Yiddish, Rubel says it is meant to be ironic — haroset may be delicious but it “is not a pretty food,” he concedes.
Michael Rubel, 26, mingles with guests who came to the “Schmutz” launch event at Tchotchke Gallery on April 1, 2023. (Jeffrey Rubel)
The nine-ounce jars retail for $18, which Rubel acknowledges is expensive. “It’s small-batch crafted and definitely a specialty product,” he said, “but I’m excited to make this product even more accessible going forward.”
Rubel believes that haroset can evolve into something like a jam or a condiment, a shelf-stable food that’s readily available in restaurants, synagogue gift shops and specialty food stores. The opportunities are endless — as the brand’s website says, “schwirl it in oatmeal and schpread it on cheese and schmear it on toast and schlep it to a picnic and schling it on leftovers and schpoon it from a jar.”
Though Rubel works a day job in product development at a software startup, he had previously worked in restaurant kitchens and in product development for a snack company. This, he said, gave him insight into both the production side and the business side of developing a new snack food.
Then again, haroset is more than a delicious snack or topping, according to Rubel: It also epitomizes the Jewish food experience, providing a unique opportunity to highlight the diversity of Jewish cultures. Each unique haroset recipe, he said, serves as a window into different Jewish experiences all around the world.
“One Passover during Covid, I fell down a rabbit hole of global haroset recipes, and fell so deeply in love with this food as a prism into the diaspora. It’s emblematic of a central Jewish tradition; we carry some shared instructions around the world and do different things with it,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “You’ve got a history of French folks making haroset with chestnuts, Italian communities using pine nuts. There’s tropical cherries in Suriname; dates in places like Iraq and India; peanuts, bananas, rose petals, pear and more elsewhere. Even within those communities, you see it done very differently, with different tastes, textures and beyond.”
So far, Rubel has created two flavors of the jarred haroset — fig and pistachio and apple and walnut. He hopes to include more in the future. (Landon Cooper)
Rubel wants Schmutz haroset to be part of the movement exposing Jews and non-Jews to the diversity of Jewish food. Though the first drop consisted of just two varieties, he promises more are around the corner for later this spring. “I love Ashkenazi foods so deeply, and yet, Jewish food is more than that,” Rubel said. “It feels especially important in this moment, when Jews are getting a lot of public attention, to share the depth of global Jewish cuisine, and to show that there’s no one type of Jew.”
Liz Alpern, a co-owner of Gefilteria — a brand, launched in 2012, that took another Passover staple, gefilte fish, mainstream — told the New York Jewish Week via email that she is “excited about Schmutz because it’s offering the wider world the opportunity to enjoy one of the most beloved foods from the Jewish canon.”
“Michael is thoughtful and knowledgeable about the countless global variations on charoset and he’s introduced me to many flavors I hadn’t heard of before,” Alpern added. (Gefilteria helped sponsor and cater Schmutz’s launch party last weekend.)
Having lived in New York for four years now, Rubel said he is realizing just how much Jewish food is available here — and how little is available elsewhere. That’s something he aspires to change. “I’m excited to bring a new Jewish energy not just to the kosher aisle but beyond it,” he said.
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The post A Brooklyn Jewish foodie wants to make haroset a year-round treat appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Majority of House Democrats vote to defeat Lebanon war powers measure
(JTA) — A House resolution aimed at preventing U.S. involvement in hostilities in Lebanon failed Thursday.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and fierce critic of Israel, forced a vote on the House floor Thursday. It was defeated 324 to 92, with 91 Democrats voting in favor. The sole Republican vote came from Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who will be departing Congress next year after losing his primary.
The resolution, which would have ordered President Donald Trump to remove U.S. troops from Lebanon within seven days, was defeated after Democratic Party leaders noted in a joint statement that there are “no U.S. servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon.”
The statement issued by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar continued: “We stand with the Lebanese people, the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces in their efforts to live peacefully and defeat Hezbollah, a violent terrorist organization that is a sworn enemy of the United States.”
Jewish Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman of New York also voted “no” on the resolution, writing in a joint press release that their opposition “should not be taken as an approval of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s prosecution of Israel’s military action in Lebanon.”
“To the extent that American armed forces are present in Lebanon, it is to support the current Lebanese government, which deserves our assistance,” the statement continued.
But Tlaib defended her resolution in a post on X Thursday ahead of the vote. “The people of Lebanon can’t wait another month for Congress to act,” Tlaib wrote. “Every day that we do nothing, 11 more Lebanese children are killed or injured by the Israeli military in this U.S.-supported invasion. Congress must pass today’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution.”
Tlaib was citing a UNICEF report of data from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health last month that found 77 children in Lebanon had been killed over the course of a week as Israeli strikes continued to pummel the country.
Some of those who opposed Tlaib’s resolution, including Nadler and Goldman, said they would vote for an alternative version of the resolution that would preserve cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces in their fight against Hezbollah.
The defeat of the resolution came the same day that Hezbollah rejected the latest ceasefire agreement brokered between Israel and Lebanon, as fighting between the Iranian proxy and Israel has intensified in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, the House narrowly passed a resolution for the first time that would limit President Donald Trump’s power to continue the war in Iran. While the development was largely symbolic, it marked a rebuke of the president’s increasingly unpopular strategy in Iran.
On Friday, 85 members of Congress also signed onto a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on the Trump administration to “use every available diplomatic tool to halt imminent settlement construction in the E-1 area of the West Bank,” a corridor east of Jerusalem.
Citing Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s orders to demolish a Palestinian Bedouin village in the West Bank last month, the letter, which was led by Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan and Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish, argued that the issue of settlements in the area had reached a “critical and final inflection point.”
“The window for meaningful diplomatic intervention is closing rapidly, and we believe it is not too late for the United States to act,” read the letter, which was also signed by Nadler and Jewish Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Majority of House Democrats vote to defeat Lebanon war powers measure appeared first on The Forward.
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After years of hostile relations with Israel, Slovenia’s new prime minister signals diplomatic reset
(JTA) — Less than an hour after Slovenia’s newly elected prime minister, Janez Janša, was sworn into office by the country’s parliament, he had the Palestinian flag lowered from a government building.
The move marked the first step in a sharp reorientation of Slovenia’s posture towards Israel under Janša. The right-leaning prime minister, who previously held office in 2022, replaced a prime minister for the liberal Freedom Movement party.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced on Thursday that Israel would open its first-ever embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, writing in a post on X that the move was a statement of “friendship, dialogue, and a shared belief in freedom, democracy, and security.”
“The election of Prime Minister @JJansaSDS marks a new chapter in relations between Israel and Slovenia,” Saar wrote. “After years of the hostility of the previous government- we now have an opportunity to rebuild, strengthen, and deepen a real partnership.”
Saar wrote in another post on X that he had spoken with Tone Kajzer, who was appointed as Slovenia’s minister of foreign affairs under the new administration, and that he had “pledged all the assistance necessary” to ensure the “swift establishment” of the embassy.
Janša replied to Saar’s post Thursday, writing, “Welcome to Ljubljana. 🇸🇮🇮🇱Looking forward to a new era in Slovenia-Israel relations.”
Under Slovenia’s outgoing prime minister, Robert Golob, the country voted to recognize a Palestinian state in June 2024 and became one of the few European Union countries to label Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” a charge Israel firmly rejects. It was one of five nations to boycott the Eurovision song contest this year over Israel’s participation.
Last year, Slovenia also became the first EU country to impose a travel ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
For the country’s Jewish population, which numbers just 100, the spate of anti-Israel measures adopted by the former government contributed to a growing sense of isolation in the country.
But now, Janša, an admirer of President Donald Trump and an ally of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, appears eager to reset relations with Israel.
On Friday, days after an Israeli passenger plane was denied entry to the country by Slovenian authorities in a protest against the Israeli government, Slovenian politician Jernej Vrtovec announced that the airline Israir had “once again been granted authorization to operate flights between Tel Aviv and Ljubljana.”
“The time has come for a responsible Slovenian 🇸🇮foreign policy based on facts, Slovenian national interests and international law,” Janša wrote in a post on X. He added that the “politically and economically harmful period of government support for activist anti-Semitism” had ended.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post After years of hostile relations with Israel, Slovenia’s new prime minister signals diplomatic reset appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel gives in to the politics of debasement
A small episode this week crystallized the broader pathology of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu more clearly than any grand speech or ideological argument ever could: the Knesset vote for state comptroller, one of the most sensitive institutional positions in Israeli public life.
In Israel, the 120 members of the Knesset elect the comptroller by secret ballot. The office audits government ministries, investigates failures of governance, oversees public integrity, and possesses enormous influence over public accountability. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the Gaza war, the role carries even greater significance. The comptroller may shape future investigations into catastrophic national failures and wartime decision-making.
This week — in a move straight out of United States President Donald Trump’s playbook — Netanyahu nominated his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Rabello, for the role.
Historically, the comptroller’s office has been occupied by senior judges, jurists, or respected public servants with reputations for independence. Figures such as Miriam Ben-Porat, Eliezer Goldberg, and Micha Lindenstrauss embodied a certain ethos: they were stern institutional guardians standing somewhat above partisan warfare.
The idea of placing the prime minister’s own attorney into the country’s central oversight institution struck many Israelis as grotesquely inappropriate.
Yet the truly astonishing part came during the voting itself, in which the opposition candidate was a former justice on the Supreme Court — an institution Netanyahu’s coalition has long vilified. The first round reportedly revealed substantial defections among Netanyahu’s coalition. His preferred candidate fell short. Panic spread.
Suddenly, allegations and reports emerged that coalition lawmakers were being encouraged to photograph or film their ballots in order to prove their loyalty. There was a pause in the proceedings as the Knesset speaker, Likud’s Amir Ohana, received legal advice to not allow phones in the voting area. He restarted the vote anyway. Israeli media filled with coalition lawmakers posting images of themselves voting the right way. The images and reports were the excruciating stuff of banana republics.
I cannot recall ever seeing a similar scene in a functioning democracy. Rabello was elected.
Secret ballots exist precisely because democracies understand that free voting collapses when superiors can verify obedience. The entire purpose of ballot secrecy is to protect individuals from coercion, intimidation, retaliation and patronage systems.
Modern democracies adopted secret ballots in the nineteenth century to break the power of bosses, landlords, oligarchs, and political machines that demanded proof of loyalty.
The blatant violation of these norms by Netanyahu’s coalition helps explain why so many Israelis react to him not merely with opposition, but with exhaustion, fury, and moral revulsion.
It’s not just the corruption trials, the permanent manipulation, the serial falsehoods, the failed strategic assumptions about Hamas, the relentless cultivation of tribal resentment, the attacks on state institutions, the politics of personal loyalty and the transformation of every disagreement into an existential struggle between patriots and traitors. It’s the cumulative exhaustion of watching every institutional norm eventually be subordinated to the most vulgar politics imaginable.
The episode revealed something larger than one parliamentary scandal: the culture Netanyahu has spent years cultivating. It is a system organized increasingly around personal allegiance rather than institutional responsibility. A political environment in which independent judgment becomes suspicious, dissent becomes betrayal, and every institution gradually bends toward one man’s political ambition.
So we have here a prime minister under criminal indictment pushing his own lawyer into a top civil service oversight role.
Opposition leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid plan to appeal Rabello’s election to the Supreme Court, calling the vote “tainted.” Even that might not work. Several government ministers, including the justice minister, have suggested in recent months that they no longer consider court decisions binding.
And that is what outsiders often miss about Netanyahu fatigue in Israel. The anger does not emerge from one scandal, one trial, one war, or one speech. It comes from the constant sense of humiliation. This week, inside Knesset voting booths that were meant to be hidden from view, Israelis saw the whole story compressed into a single degrading scene.
The post Israel gives in to the politics of debasement appeared first on The Forward.
