GLENDALE – Rabbi Avremi Schapiro bellowed, “Guys, the hummus is going to rock!”
A bellow was necessary, over the hubbub of multiple teenagers in conversation, as they sliced, trimmed and mixed. The Kosher Cooking Club at Nicolet High School made shawarma, hummus and Israeli salad on Jan. 11. This was only the club’s third meeting, having been founded this academic year by the Cteen Milwaukee board. The session was attended by dozens of students, who chopped and prepped, then ate.
Ethan, 16, cut cucumbers for the Israeli salad, in a classroom-turned-clubhouse that exuded a mirthful teenage mood.
“I just know I’m cutting stuff!” said Joseph, 17.
Alex, 17, said he’s a “huge fan” of this kind of food. He’s made Israeli salad many times: “You’ve got to have the cucumber! You’ve got to have the tomato! If you want to go crazy you can even add pepper … which we are today.”
The conversation turned to other food and one student remarked that chocolate rugalach “will always be in my heart as one my favorite things that I have consumed in my entire life.”
Shin shin Orri Eidels chopped cucumbers beside students. When asked about Israeli salad in her home country, Israel, as she was making it at Nicolet High School, she noted that “at home I wouldn’t call it Israeli salad.”
What would you call it? “Salad.”
So what would you call American-style salad? That’s also “salad.”
Next, a student at the cutting table asked Eidels, a shin shin in town for a year with a program operated by Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Jewish Agency for Israel, what then differentiates American and Israeli salad? Nothing, apparently.
Eidels said: “I will just ask my mom what’s in the salad.”
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