Barbecue a Kosher Rib-Tickler

Meat cases in New York, Chicago, Detroit had been picked clean as bone.

And with a sympathetic shrug, Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz explained that he had cornered the market on kosher ribs.

One thousand pounds of the ribs--about the total amount available domestically on any given day--along with equal amounts of kosher chicken and kosher hot dogs went up in smoke Sunday at what was billed as the world’s largest kosher barbecue.

“If anybody in New York wants kosher ribs today, they will be very upset,” said Eidlitz.

It was no easy feat to amass the nation’s supply of kosher ribs. In fact, near impossible for anyone but Eidlitz, the man who wrote the book on kosher foods--titled “What Is Kosher?”--and advised the Pentagon on supplying kosher meals to observant Muslims, Jews and Hindus serving in Operation Desert Storm.

The barbecue raised funds to expand the Emek Hebrew Academy, the San Fernando Valley’s largest Orthodox Jewish school. Organizers say the event was part of a larger campaign to raise $2.8 million to enlarge the 34-year-old school’s capacity from 600 students to 1,000.

“We’ve always held fund-raisers at hotels, and it was an OK evening but it would involve only the adults and was usually very formal and very stiff,” said Eidlitz, the school’s director of development. “Afterward, people would say, ‘For a banquet, that was OK.’ ”

After Sunday, those days may be long gone.

More than 1,000 people attended the picnic at Calamigos Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains. The afternoon featured pony rides, carnival rides, face-painting, baseball, soccer and live music--and kids everywhere.

Formal? Forget it.

Rabbi Yochanan Stepen, the school’s educational director, stripped to a bathing suit atop a dunk tank and challenged the crowd to pay $10 for a shot at dropping him into the water.

“In this community, that’s practically nude,” said David Silver, a parent of two children at the school.

Members of the Orthodox Jewish community follow stricter Jewish laws. For example, males always keep their heads covered and families keep kosher households.

Boys and girls at the school, which has campuses in Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood, take classes separately and do not mix during lunch or breaks. They wear uniforms and, school officials say, unlike many public schools, the worst trouble they face is from students who chew gum or litter.

Such strict rules, said ninth-grader Asher Perez, “helps keep your mind on your studies.” Other students agreed, saying there was plenty of time for socializing even though their school day is much longer than that of public schools, ending as late as 6 p.m. some days.

So the sight of one of the school’s leading scholars sitting in his shorts atop a dunk tank drew quite a crowd, especially among youngsters.

“You couldn’t hit the side of a barn!” yelled Stepen, as he sat perched atop the tank.

Eli Avihod, an Israeli immigrant and father of two children at Emek Hebrew Academy, was the first pitcher accurate enough to make the steel arm drop the rabbi into a vat of 42-degree water.

“This is a lot better than a banquet,” he said.

It took a week to prepare the kosher foods served at the barbecue. Kosher butchers from across the country provided the meat. Much of the preparations were done at the school beforehand. The ribs, chicken and hot dogs were precooked and put into trays that were covered and sealed by a rabbi.

Eidlitz used a propane torch to kosherize the barbecue grills, as required by Jewish dietary laws. And another rabbi watched as the meat was reheated on the grills and served. Kosher law dictates how the animal is killed as well as how the meat is cleaned and prepared.

Calamigos Ranch sales director Susan Soja at first was nervous about keeping track of the details in hosting a kosher event. But now she’d like to offer the service to others. “I hope it opens up a whole new market for us,” she said.

On Sunday, there were still a few small details to work out. The pitchers of water were for the washing of hands--a dietary rule followed by Orthodox Jews. So the stacks of paper cups had to go.

The event also marked the announcement of the retirement of Dorothy Greenstein, who has taught at the school for 31 years--teaching hundreds of students and the children of students.

She said the teaching of ethics and laws such as the Ten Commandments--topics long expunged from public schools--gives students a strong foundation for how to conduct themselves in the world. It also preserves the 3,400-year Jewish culture and history that forms the basis for much of the daily life of Orthodox Jews, she said.

“When a student misbehaves, you can talk to their conscience,” Greenstein said. “Without ethics and religion, students are empty, a body without a soul.”