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Jewish Chef Competes on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ With Star of David Necklace

Chef Uri Elbaum competing on season 23 of “Hell’s Kitchen.” Photo: Screenshot

Season 23 of “Hell’s Kitchen” premiered on Fox on Thursday night, and one of the contestants is a Jewish chef from Long Branch, New Jersey, who appeared in the premiere episode wearing a Star of David necklace.

Chef Uri Elbaum — who had a Chabad upbringing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before moving to the US — also has Star of David tattoos on both arms and a tattoo on his left forearm that says in Hebrew “Ahava,” which means love. The 28-year-old is the executive chef of the kosher restaurants The Butcher’s Steakhouse and Primavera in the Deal, New Jersey, area, and has also cooked on Passover programs.

“It’s a beautiful thing for me that I can make food for my people in kosher restaurants,” Elbaum previously said, as reported by the blog YeahThatsKosher. “What’s the first thing a Jew does before he eats? Makes a bracha [blessing]. What’s the last thing he does before he leaves? Makes a bracha. Having people say a bracha on my food is a great feeling.”

He also said that before participating in season 23 of “Hell’s Kitchen,” “My rabbi told me to both make the Jews watching at home proud of me and to remember that I should be proud to be Jewish.”

For the first time in the history of the show, the new season of “Hell’s Kitchen” was filmed on the east coast and the competitors are all head chefs of their respective restaurants. The competition took place at Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen restaurant inside the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. The winner of season 23 will become head chef of Ramsay’s restaurant in Foxwoods and will also take home a prize of $250,000.

In the premiere episode of “Hell’s Kitchen” on Thursday, Ramsey asked the 18 contestants to create a signature dish in 40 minutes that represented who they are as chefs. Ramsey would then score the dishes on a scale of 1-5. The contestants were divided into two teams — nine female chefs are in the Red Team, with season 17 winner Michelle Tribble as their the sous chef, and nine male chefs are in the Blue Team, with James Avery as their sous chef.

For the first challenge, Elbaum cooked a handmade pappardelle pasta dish with an umami cream sauce that had mushrooms, ricotta cheese, lime zest, and scallions. Ramsey complimented Elbaum on the perfectly cooked pasta and the flavors in the dish, which he gave four points. However, Elbaum’s Blue Team lost the challenge overall. The Red Team was awarded the opportunity to dine at the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant in Foxwoods Resort Casino, along with Ramsey himself, while the Blue Team was forced to work in the kitchen cleaning dishes, and unloading and stocking deliveries.

Elbaum previously said he had dreamed of being a contestant on “Hell’s Kitchen.”

“When I was a little kid, I used to watch Gordon Ramsey on ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’ I really wanted to be there. I saw myself doing it,” he shared with the blog YeahThatsKosher. “I felt honored to be selected, but it’s all because of Hashem. I used to say that one day I’d be on TV cooking with Gordon Ramsey. People looked at me like I was joking. It was like a kid who says they are going to be an astronaut and go to space.”

He also revealed that he visited the gravesite of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the day before filming “Hell’s Kitchen” and the day after the show finished because “it was my way of showing how thankful I was for the opportunity.”

“Hell’s Kitchen” airs on Fox on Thursday nights at 8 pm ET, and episodes will stream on Hulu the next day.

The post Jewish Chef Competes on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ With Star of David Necklace first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies

The poppies that we wear at this time of year are our visual pledge to remember the brave Canadian soldiers who served and sacrificed to preserve and defend our democracy.  […]

The post Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days

Illustrative: New York City Police Department (NYPD) vehicles are seen in Brooklyn, New York, United States, on Oct. 13, 2024. Photo: Kyle Mazza via Reuters Connect

An antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York struck its latest victim on Wednesday, wreaking an “excruciating” beating on a middle-aged Hasidic man.

According to Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — the victim was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery.

“The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the emergency room,” Behrman tweeted. “The police are investigating the incident.”

The perpetrators were two Black teenagers, according to COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet.

Tuesday’s attack was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.

On Monday morning, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish Crown Heights neighborhood

Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.

Numerous antisemitic hate crimes have occurred in Crown Heights in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.

According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.

Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.

Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with US President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, Sept. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called US President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the US presidential election earlier this week.

“Netanyahu spoke to President-elect Donald Trump and was among the first to call to congratulate him for his victory,” the Prime Minister’s office said on Wednesday. “The conversation was warm and cordial, and the two agreed to work together for Israel’s security and discussed the Iranian threat.”

During Trump’s first term, his administration had a “maximum pressure” policy with regard to Iran, aimed at making it more difficult for the country to make a nuclear weapon and fund its terror proxies — such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — across the Middle East.

However, some observers are concerned the incoming US administration will not be as strong on the Iranian threat as it was in its first term. Late last month, US Vice President-elect JD Vance said on a podcast that the US and Israel can at times have conflicting interests and warned that Washington should seek to avoid a war with Iran, the Jewish state’s chief adversary in the Middle East.

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct — like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said.

He then argued that a war with Iran “would be [a] huge distraction of resources; it would be massively expensive to our country.”

In addition to the phone call, Netanyahu’s office will also reportedly announce “the appointment of a new ambassador to Washington who will work with the new Trump administration” within the next 24 hours, according to Axios reporter Barack Ravid.

Netanyahu was the first world leader to congratulate Trump on his victory.

“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he wrote on X/Twitter. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”

He added, “This is a huge victory!”

During Trump’s first term, he and Netanyahu were close allies, working together to sign the Abraham Accords and move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, their relationship reportedly strained when Netanyahu congratulated then-US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory against Trump while Trump was still actively disputing the results of the election.

“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with,” Trump reportedly said at the time. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”

“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” he added. “The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”

Heading into Trump’s second term, there have not been indications that this tension still lingers.

The post ‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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