Rabbi Carries a Big Torch for Kosher Meals

If there’s one thing you don’t expect to see on a quiet Friday in Malibu, it’s a well-dressed rabbi with a 5-foot flamethrower.

But this was no ordinary Friday. It was two days before the biggest Western-style kosher wingding in the history of the world, quite possibly, and Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz was at the Calamigos Ranch, propane torch in hand, to make sure all was kosher indeed.

“Whatever they want torched, we’ll torch,” he said with a quiet chuckle.

The Emek Hebrew Academy of North Hollywood plans to “combine Orthodox Judaism . . . with California” in a barbecue and hoedown benefit to build a second school in Sherman Oaks, Eidlitz said. The group has cleaned Detroit, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles of beef ribs--1,000 pounds worth--for the event. There will also be 900 pounds of chicken and several hundred hot dogs to enjoy. All of it is kosher, and every surface those items touch before touching the lips of the Jewish guests must be kosher, too.

Hence, the propane torch.

Torching is a common way to make stoves, pots, pans and other kitchen utensils kosher, Eidlitz said. The idea is to superheat the metal, burning away residue from non-kosher items that may have been cooked in them.

“Torching it opens up the pores of the metal,” he said. “Anything that sank in will come out.”

Yarmulke on his head, tie neatly tied even in the warm weather, the soft-spoken rabbi with the traditional long beard squeezed a trigger on the torch and the small, wriggling flame leaped out with a whoooosh. The heavy iron grill twisted and sagged in the 1,000-degree heat, and the remnants of 1,000 wienies sizzled, popped and turned to smoke.

Eidlitz, a rabbi at the academy and the head of the its Kashrus Information Bureau, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on kashrut , the law of Jewish dietary practice. He has compiled a computerized list of 100,000 kosher food items, puts out pamphlets on finding kosher food in non-kosher restaurants and has written a book called “Is It Kosher?”

In the modern world, he said, it can be difficult to adhere to the ancient traditions that were originally spelled out in the biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and expanded around the year AD 200 in a collection of rabbinical teachings called the Mishnah.

It’s especially tough when you’re cooking for 1,500 people who are used to attending Jewish fund-raisers in restaurant conference rooms, he said.

Not only must Eidlitz torch every inch of the eight 10-foot-long barbecues, but “he has to kosher our cotton candy machine,” said Susan Soja, sales director at the ranch, with a raise of her eyebrow.

“We’ll do it with water,” Eidlitz reassured her, explaining that the contraption can be cleansed by washing and rinsing with scalding water.

Organizers decided to cook the food at the academy’s already-kosher kitchen--a big relief for ranch chef Alfredo Saldivar.

Eidlitz will finish torching four of the giant grills today, then do another four Sunday morning before the hungry crowd arrives.

And if a gentle rabbi toting a flamethrower seems an odd sight, don’t tell Eidlitz. He has a great time making things kosher.

“That’s how I get my tan,” he said.

The kosher barbecue will be held at the Calamigos Ranch, 327 S. Latigo Canyon Road in Malibu, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.