August 18, 2014 – Savory matzo ball soup, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches on rye, blintzes, New York egg creams and the perennial favorite, potato latkes, are just some of the dishes that draw crowds to Carmel’s annual Jewish Food Festival.
On Sunday, August 24, upwards of 3,000 Jewish and non-Jewish residents will descend Congregation Beth Israel to devour the some of the culture’s tastiest traditions.
A fundraiser for the host synagogue powered by hundreds of volunteers, the festival, now in its 27th year, is admission free and boasts a myriad of other attractions, from crafts and music to a reenactment of a traditional Jewish wedding.
For all that Carmel does have in the way of noteworthy culinary offerings, traditional Jewish fare is not really among the options.
“There’s no good Jewish deli food here,” says volunteer Donna Shore. “Not like in Los Angeles or Miami or New York, where there is incredible food.”
It’s no wonder, then, she says, that the annual event has such a following. It is a chance for the congregation to come together, the broader local Jewish community to gather, and also for other residents to get a taste of Jewish culture—literally.
“It’s an opportunity for the community to celebrate our culture and to share our culture,” says Shore. “The original intent was not as a fundraiser, it was to let the community know we were there and who we were. And to open the doors and welcome people of all faiths.”
Through its self-described focus on “Jewish soul food,” the hope is to create cultural awareness via happy taste buds and satisfied tummies.
“It’s a very universal way to break down barriers,” Shore says. “It’s a universal way to communicate with people to share food. To break bread.”
For Shore, who says her own cooking is limited to the likes of toast and eggs, the promise of kugel excites her most of the festival’s edible offerings. Served up at the event’s dairy booth, kugel is a sweet, time-honored dish made of noodles, cheese and raisins that lands somewhere between a pudding and a casserole.
Kugel is the definition of Jewish comfort food for Shore, who has fond memories of her grandmother’s rendition. Most of the food served represent “recipes passed down from grandmothers and great grandmothers, from family tradition,” she adds.
While celebrating the old, the event also embraces the new—chiefly with its five-year-old green initiative, led by Shore and her co-captain, educator Laura Arnow.
“Each year we go deeper with it,” Shore says, explaining that they began with ardent recycling and progressed into sustainable purchasing (of compostable plates and silverware, for instance) and a full-fledged food waste diversion effort.
“We’re trying to be mindful of all the waste that goes into making food and how to make sure less of it goes to the landfill,” she says.
Scraps from the food vendors are collected, the oil used to fry latkes is taken for use as biofuel, and attendees are asked to separate their waste into three bins: recycling, landfill-bound trash, and compostable waste (which is then sent to the Monterey Regional Waste Management District’s Food Scrap Compost Program). Shore and Arnow worked with The Offset Project, a Monterey-based nonprofit that handles waste diversion at many of the region’s largest events, to develop the Jewish Food Festival’s setup.
Shore says the crowd seems more comfortable with the waste diversion concept with each passing year. And she would know—in addition to noshing on Jewish treats, she spends the day by the bins, helping attendees guide their waste into the appropriate bin. After the event comes to a close, she and Arnow sift through the end result to make sure the compost stream is uncontaminated.
“It makes people feel better,” she says of the food waste measures, “and why shouldn’t we have fun and feel good about what we’re doing, and not just go through the motions and be ignorant of our impact?”
The 27th Annual Jewish Food Festival takes place Sunday, Aug. 24 from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. Visit carmelbethisrael.org/calendar/events/jewish_food_festival for more information.
About the author
Elizabeth Limbach is an award-winning journalist living in Santa Cruz, California. In this fruitful region and beyond, she finds the intersections of food, ag, health and the environment to be the most intriguing realms to write about. A bookworm and vegan foodie, the San Diego native has lived in Santa Cruz for a decade, relishing its redwood forests, fresh produce, delicious wines, and sparkling sea.
