August 10, 2018

With its family-style smooth wood tables, sleek bar, industrial beams, exposed-brick walls and 13 large television screens, Osher Bar & Grill looks like it could be a regular sports bar in Anytown USA. It even serves up pub grub including beer-battered onion rings, chips and guacamole, and Buffalo wings.

However, what sets Osher apart from similar establishments is that it’s Los Angeles’ first fully glatt kosher bar and grill, situated smack dab in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, on a corner of Pico Boulevard and South Bedford Street.

Osher opened in May in the space formerly occupied by O’Woks. Owners Yoni Rappaport and Kfir Kamelgard — best friends and former college roommates from Rutgers University in New Jersey — are just 29 years old. 

There are actually four partners in the business (all of whom are modern Orthodox), including Kamelgard’s father, Joe, who is Osher’s main investor and shareholder, and chef Alexander Remer, who has spent 30 years working in both kosher and nonkosher restaurants on the East Coast. 

“We had always planned on doing something in the industry,” Rappaport said. “At Rutgers, we wanted to open up a diner on the campus and then do a bar afterward.”

But after the duo graduated, Kamelgard moved into finance while Rappaport went into the restaurant industry. It took seven years before they fulfilled their dream of having a restaurant together. 

Rappaport was the opening general manager and beverage coordinator for the first kosher sports bar in Teaneck, N.J., called the Teaneck Doghouse, and he and Kamelgard wanted to open something similar in Los Angeles that was a little more up-market.

“Not call it the Doghouse,” Rappaport quipped. 

That feel they were looking for is reflected in Osher’s menu, which includes beer-battered chicken poppers with a maple bourbon aioli, and fresh pappardelle pasta with beef cheeks, red wine sauce and watercress.

Chef Remer said he likes to call his food “New American” cuisine. “Postmodern cooking is how I think of it,” he said. “I try to focus on food items that have sentimental and nostalgic reactions — comfort food. But on the flip side, we’re reimagining those foods.”

Remer cited Osher’s burger as one example. “We grind our meat in house. We use the best meat and local produce. We’re not coming off as pretentious or highbrow, but we serve that burger with a cherry jam, a jalapeño aioli and flash-fry fennel, as opposed to onions.”

Osher is a Hebrew homonym. On the one hand it means happiness, but on the other it means success and wealth.” — Yoni Rappaport

And it’s not just the restaurant and its “postmodern” food that are new in the neighborhood. Osher’s hechsher (kosher certification) is the first in the area to be supervised by North American Kosher. 

While the independent kashrut label was established two years ago, it’s under the auspices of Rabbi Aharon Simkin, who has spent almost 30 years in the business. Over the course of his career, he has worked with the Orthodox Union (OU), Kehilla Kosher (which merged with OK Kosher Certification in 2015) and KOF-K Kosher Certification.

Simkin’s first introduction to Osher was when he met Joe Kamelgard at services at Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, where they both pray. Simkin was friends with the late Rabbi Zushe Blech, the former Midwest regional director of the OU who went on to start his own kashrut supervision business and provided the certification for the Doghouse. 

“Joe had some questions about kashrut supervision for the restaurant, and he asked me to come and meet with him, Kfir and Yoni,” Simkin told the Journal over dinner at Osher. “And we had this common connection with Rabbi Blech.”

“We were looking for someone who had a good knowledge of modern kashrut and the industrial side of the industry,” Rappaport said. Had Osher received certification from OK Kosher, he added, the restaurant would not have been allowed to cater a wedding with mixed dancing, and he and his partners would not have been permitted to also open a nonkosher restaurant, among other things.

“We just wanted someone who was focused on the kashrut — the food, the drink and basics for operating a kosher restaurant,” Rappaport said. 

Simkin said he had no problem delivering on those things. “I am a strict hechsher,” he said. “We have a Jewish chef in the kitchen, which means we can also do Beit Yosef cooking, which is what the Sephardim require.” (Beit Yosef rules on what constitutes kosher meat are stricter than Ashkenazi requirements.)

“The other reason having Rabbi Simkin is so great,” Rappaport said, “is because he has the industrial background, in the same way Rabbi Blech did. He’s more willing to look into things and he has more contacts.”

Osher has taken advantage of Simkin’s knowledge to expand the restaurant’s craft and tap beers, because there’s a limited certified list.

“Some people assume certain beers are kosher, but that’s not the case,” Rappaport said. “Especially in a meat restaurant, because a lot of breweries use dairy products for flavoring and texture.”

Despite the relatively new name of North American Kosher, Rappaport said Osher’s owners have received little pushback from the community. “We are stricter than most places, actually, even when it comes to what we require of our mashgiach (supervisor in the kitchen),” he said. “If we open on a Saturday night, we make sure that we don’t ask him to be here less than 30 minutes after Shabbat goes out.”

Simkin said his North American Kosher supervises about 100 companies worldwide, including the Unique Pastry dairy café in Tarzana, and he hopes to expand on the West Coast.

“I think it’s really important to have an independent kosher certification agency here,” Simkin said. “And I’m competitive. I don’t have to pay rent for several floors of office space in Manhattan, so I don’t have to charge as much.”

Most importantly, he said, he can enforce Jewish law while still creating “a system of supervision that is tailor-made for a particular company, which is what we’ve done [with Osher].”

Rappaport concurred, saying he enjoys working with a smaller company. “You get much more personal attention, which really works for us and it ensures our practices are transparent,” he said.

The whole thing makes him happy — which brings us to the name of the restaurant. Osher, in Hebrew, means happiness. 

“We didn’t want something generic,” Rappaport said. “Kfir was born in Israel and his mother had these four blocks when he was a kid with these letters that spelled out Osher. It’s a Hebrew homonym — on the one hand it means happiness, but on the other it means success and wealth. And we see that as the transactional nature of a restaurant.

“We provide happiness and, hopefully, in return we get a modicum of success and wealth.”

In June, a group of Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy stood in lines and joined hands in an act of civil disobedience outside the Los Angeles downtown courthouse. Several were arrested. The purpose: to show moral outrage for immigration policies that detained children who entered the U.S. illegally. But does a rabbi getting arrested make an impact on the issue?

Civil disobedience has been a tool of nonviolent protest for centuries, practiced by figures such as Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1970s and ’80s, according to the Center for Jewish History, activists from the American Soviet Jewry movement frequently picketed Soviet consulates to raise public awareness, “often deliberately getting themselves arrested by the police to amplify their message.” And since the November 2016 U.S. election, protests on issues such as immigration, health care reform, gun reform and more have proliferated. 

Rabbi Jonathan Klein, executive director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), which organized the June protest, said that civil disobedience is about “building movements and creating a more significant voice for conscience, and on some level demystifying political processes. People are afraid of activism, but we need our activists right now.”

“It’s an important statement to be willing to say, ‘I’m putting myself on the line for something,’” said Rabbi Sarah Bassin, associate rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, who was also arrested at the action.  

Klein said, “The policy of separating children, ripping them from families and making them foster children, needs people of conscience to say, ‘This is detestable.’ Having those who are impacted by deplorable policies know that they have allies out there in the faith communities re-energizes and reinvigorates their own commitment to their struggle,” he said.

“It’s an important statement to be willing to say, ‘I’m putting myself on the line for something.” – Rabbi Sarah Bassin 

“It sparks a discussion in the community, and that gets them focused on the issue and really considering the moral questions behind it,” Bassin said.

Protest fatigue is a consideration, however. “From the beginning of this administration, we knew we’d be in this fight for a long time,” Klein said. “Civil disobedience is one instrument in a toolkit that is meant to have longevity. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Some of the protesting rabbis are accountable to congregations, as well. Bassin notified her board president and the temple’s public relations and communications staff of her intent to protest, and of the possibility that she might be arrested. 

“I know I’m going to touch a nerve for people and that’s intentional,” said Bassin, who meets with congregants who are troubled by her protests to discuss their concerns. “Sometimes we disagree, but we’re able to have a civil discussion and maintain a relationship on the other side of it.”

“A lot of people are looking at clergy to know if they are really ‘in this’ with the community or not,” Klein said. “Sometimes religious leaders have to lose their comforts in order to lift everyone up out of the trenches and the mire. We model that by taking action.” 

However, he added that they always make sure the demonstration is as safe as possible for everyone. Sometimes law enforcement is consulted in advance. 

“The actions are done with a lot of kavod (honor) toward law enforcement,” Bassin said. “We understand the position we’re putting them in. The best we can do is be as respectful and kind as possible and remember their humanity.” 

“I heard that inside the LAPD jail some officers were saying positive things, such as, ‘glad you’re doing this,’ and ‘it’s so un-Christian [to deport children],’” Klein said.

As Bassin was taken to the police van on that June day, she said, one officer whispered, “Thank you for what you’re doing. This is very important. I’m with you.” 

In the end, she said, “This breaks down the dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ This is a moral issue that we’re trying to raise awareness of in the larger community, to get people to be a little bit more brave, to speak up and take action themselves.”