2 Sumptuous Cheesy Kosher Recipes for Your Good Vibes

 What’s your favorite dish? There’s bound to be a dish that you’ve taken a shine to after all those lunches and dinners. With people staying indoors, it’s a good time to start practicing your culinary skills. After all, what’s a better way to spend your free time than to hone skills that make you productive and happy? 

There are plenty of culinary traditions all over the globe, and a good chunk of them are quite kosher. Some are even adapted and served aboard Jewish heritage tours. 

Cheese is a tasty ingredient in many such dishes, and can be chewy, savory, creamy, or anything in between. Here are a few tasty cheese-based recipes for you to try out for yourself at home. 

Kosher Cowboy’s Cassola Cheese Pancake

Cassola is a kind of Roman era cake, not to be confused with the pork-based cassoeula of Northern Italy. Cassola is a ricotta-based food that was regularly enjoyed during the Shavuot. Pancakes seem to be one of those universal foods that you can find anywhere around the world, and where there’s livestock, there’s dairy, meaning that there’s cheese of one kind or the other. Whether it’s for a holiday or not, these cheese pancakes are sure to brighten up your mealtimes. 

Check this recipe out here: https://koshercowboy.com/2017/12/05/cassola-cheese-pancake/ 

Cheese Lokshen Kugel (from the Book of Jewish Food via My Jewish Learning)

Do you have any physical cookbooks at home? While online recipes are easily accessible and quite engaging on their own (we’re compiling some right now), the act of physically reading a book is quite relaxing. This recipe is from one such book, the Book of Jewish Food, and was kindly reprinted with permission on My Jewish Learning’s website. We’re quite sure that it and other great kosher cuisine can be experienced fully while on Jewish tours, but until it’s safe to travel again, let’s enjoy some great food indoors. 

Get the recipe here: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/recipe/cheese-lokshen-kugel/ 

A Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts on Emilia-Romagna

 A Glatt Kosher tour in Northern Italy, especially in the administrative region of Emiglia-Romagna, might be just the adventure that you’re looking for.  It is rich in historical Jewish sites and the government is investing a lot in reviving the Jewish heritage of the region, turning the almost forgotten population into a well-known historical landmark. Among the unearthed relics of the region are three Hebrew manuscripts. 

De Rossi Collection from Parma

The De Rossi Collection is one of the greatest and largest collections of Hebrew manuscripts and incunabula. It consisted of over 1,612 manuscripts that are shown and illuminated in the Palatine Library in Parma. 

Hebrew Manuscripts from Book Binds in Modena

During the 1970’s, scholars found out that fragments used as book-binding material in the 16th and 17th century are actually Hebrew manuscripts and parchments. Over 8,000 fragments are found in Italy, with 4,800 fragments found on the Emilia-Romagna alone. 

One of the biggest collections was found in Nonantola, a town near Modena, and consisted of biblical manuscripts, halachic texts, and sections of Mishnah, Talmud, kabbalah, and other scientific materials.

Modena’s Estense Library holds an archive of 60 illuminated Hebrew manuscripts while the Archivio Storico Comunale has 126 books that contain 273 fragments. Further discoveries found that over 350 sheets of Babylonian Talmud and fragments of Talmudic and biblical commentaries were located in the region.

The Oldest Complete Torah Scroll in Bologna

The oldest complete Torah scroll was discovered sitting at the University of Bologna last 2013.  Just like other Torah scrolls, it contains the full texts of the five books of Moses in Hebrew. It was only recently discovered because in 1889, the cataloguer, Leonelle Modona, had dated the scroll to the 17th century. 

Professor Mauro Perani, the one who discovered the 800-year old scroll, said that even without the carbon-dating, the clues found on the scroll says that it is made before the end of the 12th century. This is because Maimonides, one of the most famous rabbinical authorities in the medieval era, set a standard for copying Torah scrolls at the end of the 12th century, and the scroll showed that the copyist is not aware of the rules. This only meant two things; either the scroll was made before the death of Maimonides, or the copyist had not learned or known the rules.

Our history and culture still have a lot to offer, and still has a lot to discover. Who would even think of finding manuscript fragments in book bindings? 

Well, if you are interested in our heritage, why not go on a Kosher river cruise in the future? Travel worry-free while immersing yourself in the beauty of our culture.

Theodor Herzl and the Birth of Zionism

 When embarking on a Jewish travel through Budapest, you might see a huge black sign with gold lettering saying “Here was the house where Theodore Herzl was born”. Dubbed as the “Modern Moses”, Herzl’s gave birth to the modern Zionism movement, putting into motion a grand scheme that would later create the Jewish state. 

Budapest, Hungary

Let’s know him better by exploring his life.

From a Playwright and a Journalist to a Zionist Leader

Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1980 at Budapest, Hungary. Coming from a well-off family, he first studied at a scientific secondary school but later transferred to escape from the antisemitic atmosphere of the area. He then took up law at University of Vienna and received his license to practice law in 1884. However, he devoted his career to literature and journalism and became the literary editor for a newspaper in Viennese, Neue Freie Presse. 

Being able to experience antisemitic violence first hand, Herzl’s first solution was to make Jews mass convert to Christianity. He later found out that this is not effective for two reasons; one is that Jews are not down to convert, and secondly, he found that the problem involved more than religion, that the problem focuses on Jewish people as a whole. 

The last straw that made Hertzl think that antisemitism couldn’t be defeated by conventional means was the Dreyfus affair, where an innocent Jewish man was falsely accused of stealing French military documents and giving it to the Germans. This gave birth to Zionism.

The Zionist Congress

Believing that antisemitism could only be eradicated by establishing a state for all Jewish people, Hertzl worked hard to make the first Zionist congress happen and wrote his book “DerJudenstaat” (The Jewish State). Despite the negative feedback and backlash he experienced from critics and even rabbis denouncing his ideals, the first congress eventually happened in August of 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. 

After gaining the support of the Jewish masses and several higher-ups, internationally, he requested an audience and created diplomatic ties with the Turkish sultan. He disseminated his plans to receive a charter, which is the right for Jews to settle in Israel, and was later granted by the sultan. 

During the first Zionist congress, Hertzl wrote on his journal,  “at Basel, I established the Jewish estate. “If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in 50, everyone will realize it”. Half a century after his death, working greatly for his Zionist dream to come true, the independent state of Israel was founded.

Retracing the steps made by our ancestors and seeing the impact they’ve left may impose some difficulties. That is why a perfect plan for a future Kosher Vacation is cruising through the Danube river, where we travel from Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, up to the Wachau Valley.