Berlin launches first ever Jewish food week

So far, the festival has attracted the diverse, international crowd that has become Berlin’s hallmark, and Kratochvila is pleased with the turnout; Shabbat dinners are almost sold out.

By ORIT ARFA
NOSH BERLIN is the city’s first Jewish food week, offering dishes and events from Jewish communities worldwide. (photo credit: ORIT ARFA)
NOSH BERLIN is the city’s first Jewish food week, offering dishes and events from Jewish communities worldwide.
(photo credit: ORIT ARFA)
Under the name “Nosh Berlin,” the first ever Berlin Jewish food festival kicked off on Sunday, March 19 at the MarktHalle in the hip neighborhood of Kreuzberg with Jewish-Israeli favorites like cholent, sabich, burekas and bagels, served at this weekly indoor food fair. The program continues throughout the week with cooking workshops, lectures, and meals themed after such topics as Passover cooking, vegetarianism and Judaism, Berlin café culture and Shabbat in international Jewish traditions.
The idea was the brainchild of Laurel Kratochvila, a Massachusetts native who moved to Berlin with her husband six years ago and who recently opened her “Fine Bagels” bakery in the neighborhood of Friedrichshain to bring this Jewish food icon back to the German capital.
“In a nutshell, Nosh Berlin is a week of wonderful Jewish food,” Kratochvila told The Jerusalem Post. “It’s deliberately very generalized, as there tends to be a very narrowed view of Jewish food in Germany.
And really, what is ‘Jewish food’ if not completely global food that has changed, contributed... adapted to and developed in the Diaspora.”
She likes the idea of Jewish cuisine as the “original fusion,” a concept appreciated by cosmopolitans, and the festival brings together Jewish and Israeli restaurateurs and chefs that have already made their mark in the city.
“It occurred to me that so many cities have Jewish food festivals but Berlin doesn’t, despite a massive Tel Aviv-to- Berlin food transplant scene and people like me working on revitalizing Ashkenazi baking, and so on,” she said.
So far, the festival has attracted the diverse, international crowd that has become Berlin’s hallmark, and Kratochvila is pleased with the turnout; Shabbat dinners are almost sold out.
The festival is self-funded, but Kratochvila hopes to draw in sponsors to make this an annual affair.
For more information: www.noshberlin.com