Rabbi Charlie Schwartz poses in front of the bar at Lehrhaus in Somerville.Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — It’s hard to narrow down a Yiddish word to describe Lehrhaus in Somerville. But if you had to pick, it would probably be heimish; “homey.”
The self-styled “Jewish tavern and house of learning” opened up this past spring on Washington Street, straddling the Camberville line. And it’s already earning accolades: Lehrhaus was just named to Esquire Magazine’s 50 Best New Restaurants in America list.
It’s a warm, cozy space, filled to the brim with soft lighting, cushy couches — and 3,000 Jewish books. It’s a novel vision pioneered by Rabbi Charlie Schwartz, and his business partner Joshua Foer: part bar, part library, part upscale eatery, and unabashedly, unreservedly Jewish. There’s even a Lactaid dispenser in the stairwell (some 50-80% of Ashkenazi Jews are lactose intolerant).
Schwartz believes this is the very first time a kosher restaurant has made Esquire’s list in the 41 years it has been running.
“This feels like an authentic place, even though there are no Jewish taverns in the world, it feels like this has always been here. It’s pulling on something very deep in terms of a love of food and culture and text and how those things intertwine,” he told WBZ NewsRadio.
The idea comes from German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus of the 1920’s, which was a gathering place for all streams of Judaic thought.
"He really thought that what the Jewish world needed was a re-engagement with Jewish learning. We took that idea and re-imagined it in terms of what kinds of spaces we thought the world needed in the 21st century,” Schwartz said.
Lehrhaus tries to submerge visitors into the depths of Jewish culture and cuisine from all around the Jewish world, right down to the formatting of the menu. It has a distinctive look: offerings are in bold text in the middle of the page, while commentary and explanations are on the margins. It’s meant to look like a page of the Babylonian Talmud, a foundational Jewish text.
The menu is a mix of traditional recipes pulled into the modern era, with influence from around the diaspora. Schwartz brings up the fish and chips as a key example:
“Fish and chips has this great history of Sephardic Jews bringing fried fish to England and popularizing it there. We serve it with an Amba vinegar, which is this fermented mango condiment that Iraqi jews first brought back with them from their travels in India,” he said.
The dish also comes with fries dusted with Old Bay; the spice mix was invented by a German-Jewish refugee who had to rebuild his spice business in America after fleeing the Nazis in 1938. Ironically, though Old Bay is most often associated with crabs, those are not kosher.
There have been some challenges. Lehrhaus is held to the highest standard of kosher supervision, which means labor costs are higher and the supply chain is tighter than a non-kosher restaurant. For instance, employees need to carefully examine every piece of produce for miniscule bugs, which are forbidden. They can only buy approved ingredients like cheese from specific suppliers.
But Schwartz says the bounds of Jewish law are letting Lehrhaus change the restaurant industry in its own little way. He gives the example of Brovo Spirits in Seattle, who got their entire production line certified kosher solely to work with the Somerville bar.
“They started making a delicious alpine liqueur that’s very close to Chartreuse…Chartreuse has never been kosher and will never be kosher because it’s made by monks with a secret recipe. So there’s drinks like a Last Word where someone who kept kosher would never be able to try them. But now there’s a very good kosher substitute, all because we reached out to them and they were excited,” he said.
Overall, the recognition is an earthquake for Greater Boston’s small kosher restaurant scene. You can practically count the kosher restaurants here on two hands and still have fingers to spare.
“It’s a great bellwether for the community,” Schwartz said. “There’s a space where people can come and have a really deep sense of pride in Jewish life and Jewish food…It shows kosher food can be excellent.”
WBZ’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CschaffelWBZ) reports:
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