Vegan Kosher-Certifying Rabbi Rides To Felafelier’s Rescue

It’s a miracle how many toppings Eddie Eckhaus can stuff into a felafel sandwich. But he needed more than a miracle to make his felafel storefront succeed: He needed a maschgiach.

I.e. a rabbi who certifies that a restaurant serves kosher food.

Like Elijah the Prophet on the first night of Passover, that rabbi appeared at Eckhaus’s Lea’s Felafelhaus to-go storefront Monday for a ribbon-cutting bringing hopes for a business resurrection.

Eckhaus first opened Lea’s in March at 370 Whalley next to Mama Mary’s Soul Food and across from Edge of the Woods. (Read about that — and watch him make his trademark stuffed-to-four-dimensions felafel — here.)

Business has been slow going. At one point Eckhaus appealed on social media for supporters to come order felafels so he wouldn’t have to close.

Among the cited reasons for the problem: Eckhaus, who was born in Israel and raised in New Haven, uses all kosher ingredients, and avoids dairy and meat products that makes keeping kosher more complicated. But no area rabbi would certify Eckhaus’s food as kosher. That’s a big deal in Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills, especially Beaver Hills, where hundreds of families associated with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Chabad sect have settled and have limited kosher options.

The Independent could not reach local authorities to explain their reasoning for denying Eckhaus kosher certification. Eckhaus said he was told he needed to have a full-time supervisor on site in order to gain supervision; he said he couldn’t afford that, and as a fully-vegetarian shop with no meat or dairy, he didn’t need one. Lea’s is pareve, meaning it serves neither meat nor dairy. Observant Jews don’t mix meat and dairy at the same meal. Restaurants tend to be either fleischig (serving meat), dairy, or pareve.

Earlier in the process, questions were raised about whether Eckhaus would compete with Ladle & Loaf, another Jewish-owned kosher business across the street that also serves felafel, though eventually that issue was ironed out.

So Eckhaus was wandering in the unsupervised desert. Until Monday, when Rabbi Andre Malek of New York, who checked him out and found the establishment fully compliant with kosher laws, appeared on Whalley Avenue to cut a ceremonial business-“opening” ribbon for Lea’s along with Mayor Justin Elicker, city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Carlos Eyzaguirre, and Whalley Avenue Special Services District Executive Director Allen McCollum.

After the ceremonial cut, Eckhaus treated the visitors to fresh felafels wrapped in soft, spongy Israeli-style pita.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Malek — who has a specialty in New York supervising vegan restaurants and is registered by that state’s Department of Agriculture — spoke about the virtue in having a multitude of kosher businesses in one city. The tradition of protecting one Jewish business from a Jewish competitor is outdated, he argued.

“When we lived in the shtetls in Europe, there was one butcher. There was one baker. The baker had to use the oven of a goy” or non-Jew, Malek said.

“This town has more than 5,000 people. It has more than 50,000. There’s probably a million people in the 30-mile radius,” he observed.

“People don’t eat the same foods every day. We’re human beings. We have variety.”