How does Singapore’s Jewish community of 200-plus families stay kosher? Neither easily nor consistently, as Daven Wu finds out
I never thought I’d ever have the opportunity to utter the phrase, ‘I’m having lunch with the rabbi’s wife’, much less actually be doing it. And yet, here I am atAwalfi, Singapore’s only kosher restaurant (pictured right), with Simcha Abergel, as she leads me on a surreal tour of the myriad arcana that attend any discussion of the Jewish faith and kosher food.
‘Food is very important for us. Especially during the Jewish holidays,’ Simcha notes. ‘You just cannot have a proper gathering without food.’
Not so different from the Chinese, I observe, who I sometimes think love food more than money and life; but where the two cultures differ is that, while the Chinese will happily eat just about anything that moves, Jews are required to keep kosher. Well, the orthodox ones are, anyway. ‘Very few Jews in the Singapore community actually keep kosher,’ Simcha admits. ‘They won’t eat pork, but some will go and eat at McDonald’s.’ I ask her what the Torah (the Jewish bible) says about Jews who don’t stick to the rules of kosher. ‘The punishment is not in this life,’ she replies enigmatically.
At this point, it helps to note that there is really no such thing as Jewish food – just kosher. As Frank Benjamin, patriarch of the F J Benjamin fashion empire, points out, Singapore’s ‘Jewish community is blessed with people from diverse countries. We have among us Iraqis, Lebanese, Afghans, Iranians, Moroccans, Israelis, not forgetting Ashkenazi expatriates. Each has its own ethnic menu.’ The majority of Singapore’s local Jews are descended from the Iraqi diaspora that arrived in Singapore via Calcutta in the mid-19th century. ‘They tend to eat Iraqi food, which resembles Indian cuisine but without the curry,’ Simcha explains.
At its simplest, keeping kosher is a process that involves eating only food that has been prepared according to hukim, a set of mandatory Jewish laws similar to the Ten Commandments, and which are accepted without question.
For starters, only animals that chew their cud (ie, have a double digestive system) and have split hooves are kosher. That means cows and sheep are fair game, but pigs and rabbits are off limits. And how the animals are killed is also prescribed by kosher laws. Seafood must have scales and fins: salmon is kosher, but lobster and shark aren’t because one has scales but no fins, while the other has fins but no scales. Dairy products and meat cannot be mixed in the same meal, and different cooking utensils (including ovens) must be used to prepare each. So don’t go baking a cake in the oven that’s just roasted lamb. Wine is kosher only if it’s been prepared by Jews. Meanwhile, though your maid can be recruited to roll the matzo balls or poach the gefilte fish (a Jewish quenelle), a Jew must be the one who lights the fire in the stove. Every single time.
So, as the chef in Awalfi’s kitchen isn’t Jewish, a corps of overseers, called the Mashgiach, is on hand to turn on the stove and oven (they also inspect eggs to make sure there’s not a spot of blood, and clean vegetables of bugs and worms).
While the ‘what of’ kosher is relatively easy to understand, it’s the ‘why’ that no one has any definitive answer for; hence the need to accept without question, and perhaps this accounts for the large number of Jews that don’t keep strict kosher. With its huge number of kitchen rules, nobody pretends that adhering to them constantly is a walk in the park. Practically, it’s next to impossible to eat out and, what’s more, kosher ingredients are generally more expensive because they must go through the certification process. Yet for Orthodox Jews, the practice is one that goes beyond mere dietary preferences or even expense, and becomes something much more personal.
Take Sara Khafi , for instance. When she went to college, she decided to be more observant in keeping kosher. ‘That was the only way I knew to keep my roots,’ Khafi says. And now that she has a family, keeping kosher is one of the most important ways to ‘keep the religion [of Judaism] from generation to generation.’ Still, she acknowledges the difficulties her children face at school. ‘Everyone else gets warm meals, so sometimes, they get upset,’ she says.
And then there are some like Danilo Levy, an émigré Serbian Jew, for whom being Jewish is a matter of blood and not a set of rules. ‘I like a variety of food. I like to eat lobster,’ he says. You can almost hear the shrug in his voice. ‘There’s nothing unreligious about that. And look, less than 20 per cent of American Jews keep kosher.’
That so many of Singapore’s Jews don’t keep kosher is obviously unsatisfactory for Simcha’s husband, the Rabbi Mordechai Abergel, the spiritual leader of Singapore’s 1,000-strong Jewish community. For him, keeping kosher is a holistic concept, not something that’s restrictive or dogmatic. ‘The Jews have always looked at the world as one charged with strong spiritual potential,’ he says. ‘And in every food, there is a certain spirituality and essence that can have either a positive or negative impact, as determined by the laws contained in the Torah and Jewish tradition.’ It’s this holism, this essence, that lies at the core of kosher. Sentiments like Levy’s seem to pain Rabbi Mordechai. ‘What we eat is part of how we serve God,’ he says simply. ‘Keeping kosher is how our community keeps kinship and awareness of one another.’
In a community as small as the Singaporean Jews’, keeping this kinship becomes particularly urgent. It’s a state of affairs that’s not lost on anyone, least of all the Rabbi Mordechai and his brand of seasoned spirituality. And if one of the glues that holds this ancient community together is kosher food, then perhaps it’s time to pass around that bowl of matzos already.
Local kosher outlets
WHERE TO BUY
A few of the leading supermarkets stock a small range of kosher produce. Most packaged kosher products have a mark consisting of the letters O, K or U inside a circle, or a K inside a star. Jason’s – The Gourmet Grocer stocks a selection of biscuits and butter, while Tanglin Market Place has a slightly wider range that includes margarine, cereals, yoghurt, cottage cheese and children’s snacks. FairPrice Finest stocks muesli, muesli bars, corn chips and potato crisps. But for a more comprehensive one-stop shop, Elite Kosher sells everything from lemon juice and pasta sauce to Louis Royer VSOP cognac, Laurent-Perrier champagne and minced beef.
WHAT TO COOK
Now that you have assembled your kosher produce, it’s time to cook. For those looking for inspiration, Nigella Lawson’s Feast ($51.40, Borders) offers her trademark accessible recipes for the Jewish holidays, like Passover and Rosh Hashanah, that could easily be adapted for everyday meals.
WHERE TO EAT
Short of snagging a home invite, there aren’t too many kosher eateries in town. Awalfi is the only kosher restaurant with a rather schizophrenic spread of mezzes, sushi, Chinese stir fried noodles and steak Dianes. Around the corner, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (#01-02B Plaza By The Park, 51 Bras Basah Rd, 6238 0267) is completely kosher, even the cakes.
produced from the olive trees prominent throughout 
