I love it! Cheskel’s Shwarma King served treif hot dogs!
I ate there a few times and the food was damn good. No fucking wonder.
from vosizneias: Brooklyn, NY - Thousands of Orthodox Jews Might Been Stricken With Another Treif Meat Scandal
…It appears that Cheskel's Shwarma King operating on 3715 13th Avenue in Brooklyn allegedly sold treif (not non-glatt, but treif) meat as kosher to his customers.
This kosher place was caught on camera by a customer of stocking his freezer shelves of his kosher restaurant store with nonkosher franks and selling it to thousands of Orthodox Jewish families as strictly Glatt kosher…
Judaism.com
March 18th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Unfortunately it turns out to be a mistake. There was one slip up and that was all.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
“There was definitely a breach. The only question is how many people ate” the non-kosher franks.
“The second person not, the first, maybe. There might have been one person in the middle, we’re looking into it,” said Rabbi Babad.
In other words, the only question is whether any non-kosher franks are unaccounted for.
—
Noo, so does anyone know if there are takeh any non-kosher hotdogs unaccounted for?
And this commenter on VIN apparently loves it too…
“If you look you will see that two very famous late night hangouts have been tarnished or destroyed, Deli 52 burned down a few weeks ago and now the treif food scandal at Shwamra King. Is there a message in this? Should frum jews be hanging out late at night engaged in nothing but pure gashmiyos, stuffing your face for no reason whatsoever, rather than being home with your wife and children. Just an interesting observation on my part.”
March 19th, 2009 at 8:52 am
See follow up in Hamodia — the closest thing to a chareidi paper with journalistic standards.
And the VIN commenter is absolutely right. I suspect arson on deli 52 and a frame in shwarma king. The longtime-worker knew where to send out for fresh hot dogs. It had to have happened before. I smell payoffs.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:28 am
this story is very very weird. vosizneias is up to 363 comments.
March 19th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
whatever has befallen cheskel i think it’s because of his arrogance in calling himself the schwarma KING, the prince of scwarmas, OK, but eyn lonu elo melekh echod, the melekh malkhei hamlochim, hakodosh boruch hu.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:10 pm
(I read this story years ago and now i see it is online)
The King of the King of Falafel
By Jon Papernick
Mordechai HaLevi was still very young–only seventeen years old–when his
father Boaz, the King of Falafel tried to run over his chief competitor with his rusty
Toyota truck and was sentenced to three years in prison in the outskirts of Jerusalem.
The King of the King of Falafel had opened business across the busy thoroughfare
of King George Street only six months earlier, undercutting the King of Falafel, selling
two falafels for the price of one. Boaz told his son that, Benny Ovadiah, the newly
crowned king must have been scraping vegetables off the floor of the Mahane Yehuda
market and selling them in his sandwiches for such a price.
“He’s using rat meat to make his shwarmas. I know it,” his father said. “How else
can a man sell falafels so cheap and still keep the rain off his head?”
“Maybe the angels,” Mordechai said.
“The only angel I know is the Angel of Death,” his father answered, turning his
wedding ring on his thick finger.
The week before his father went berserk, Mordechai was sent across the street to
plead with Benny Ovadiah who was a war hero, saved by golden-winged angels at the
Allenby Bridge. He was a religious man and would listen to reason. Manufactured air blew into Mordechai’s face as he entered the gleaming oasis of polished marble and glass, where twisting rams horns, bronze water pipes and wide-eyed hamsas hung decorously from the walls. Hungry patrons sat in plush chairs covered with richly embroidered swirling Yemenite stitch work beneath a sky-blue domed ceiling. They ate from round marble tables that were smoother than ice and whiter than snow.
Mordechai wiped his brow, leaving the heat of King George Street behind. Pictures of the
great mystics, the Baba Sali, Ovadiah Yosef, and others were taped on the glass beside
the Mandate-era cash register that ka-chinged with annoying regularity.
Benny Ovadiah stood behind the counter wearing a large black kippa pulled low
onto his forehead.
“My father wants you to move away,” Mordechai said. “He is the King of
Falafel,”
“But, I am the King of the King of Falafel,” Benny Ovadia said, throwing a falafel
ball in the air and catching it in an open pita.
He was right. His prep-men juggled their falafel balls in the air, tapped their tongs
on the counter and sang Heenay Ma’ Tov as they made their sandwiches. The King of the
King of Falafel offered 32 different toppings including, thick hummus, zesty tahina,
tomatoes, cucumbers, pickled turnips, radishes, olives, eggplant, red peppers, onions and
chips.
“Give this to your father,” Benny Ovadia said, handing Mordechai the fully
dressed falafel.
“But, when will you leave?” Mordechai asked.
“When the Messiah comes.”
When Mordechai returned to the falafel stand to tell his father, he had to shout
above the noise of the ancient ceiling fan that clattered like battling swords. His father
slammed the falafel against the wall and said, “The fucking Messiah! I’ll kill him!”
Mordechai did not love falafels, but he did love his father, so he agreed to run the
business while his father was away. With the help of his friend Shuki he secretly planned
to drive the King of the King of Falafel out of business to honor his departed father.
Shuki was a juvenile delinquent who did not want to serve in the army and did his
best to convince society that he was unfit to die in Lebanon. He wore a T-shirt that said
“Rage,” smoked filterless cigarettes and spat on the street as he walked. He whispered
ideas in Mordechai’s ear and laughed like a sick braying beast.
They paid a Russian farmer from the north to deliver pork to Benny Ovadiah’s
back door, but the King of the King of Falafel could smell treif a mile away and threw it
in the street in front of Mordechai’s falafel stand. The flies buzzed above the meat all
afternoon until Benny Ovadiah approached Mordechai at the end of the day as he was
sweeping the floor. Only an autographed team photograph of the Betar Yerushalayim
football club hung on the wall next to a yellowing dog-eared kashrut certificate.
“Not many customers today,” Benny Ovadiah said. “The smell is difficult, the
flies are worse.”
“It is not so bad,” Mordechai said, wondering if Benny Ovadiah smelled of body
odor or cumin powder.
“You are losing money. Come and work for me. You can buy cigarettes to send
your father in prison.”
“I want you to leave,” Mordechai said. “Go to Katamonim. We don’t want you
here.”
“You are a punk, but there is hope for you. You honor your father even though he
is a maniac. It’s a Commandment of God.”
“But I don’t love my neighbor,” Mordechai said, sure now that no cumin powder
in the world could smell so rank as Benny Ovadiah.
“Leave!” Mordechai shouted
“When the Messiah comes,” Benny Ovadiah said, laughing.
“There cannot be two kings of falafel.”
“Why don’t you call yourself the King of Shwarma, or the King of Fuul, or”
Benny Ovadiah said in English, “the King of Fools.” He grabbed his rounded belly and
laughed again. “Or maybe, the son of the King of Fools,” he said opening the door to
King George Street.
To gain leverage over his enemy, Mordechai stayed open on Shabbat to take
advantage of hungry tourists wandering the empty streets of Jerusalem. For a while, he
made brisk business until the black-hatted Ultra-Orthodox from Mea Shearim caught
wind and pelted stones and bags of dung at his falafel stand.
“Go back to Germany and destroy the Sabbath,” they shouted.
Cars packed with families arrived from as far away as Nahariya, Afula and
Yeroham to savor the delights of Benny Ovadiah’s King of the King of Falafel.
“What spell has he put on them?” Mordechai wondered. “What angel watches
over him?”
Even his most loyal customer, Reuven the Watcher walked away from the King of
Falafel saying, “Your falafel tastes like sand. I wouldn’t feed it to the dead.”
Mordechai gave away free samples, concocted the fruit falafel, painted a new
bright red sign, shouted down his adversary through a megaphone and continued to lose
business to Benny Ovadiah. He even considered calling himself the King of the King of
the King of Falafel, but did not have enough space on his tiny storefront.
Shuki suggested they steal Benny Ovadiah’s pita bread that was delivered to his
front door hours before the King of the King of Falafel opened for business.
“Falafel without pita is like the Dead Sea without salt,” Shuki said.
They were amazed to discover that without his pitas, the King of the King of
Falafel did not fold up and blow away. He thrived, in fact. People lined up all along the
street, jockeyed for position and shouted across to Mordechai and his empty stand.
Finally a policeman on horseback arrived to calm the crowd, but he too dismounted and
joined the hungry line.
“What’s going on?” Mordechai shouted to one of the patrons.
“It’s amazing,” a young girl called back. “He is serving falafel on manna from Heaven.”
When his father wrote him asking how business was, Mordechai lied; when he
asked after the nudnik who called himself king, Mordechai said the filthy dog was on the
run: “He’s in the mikvah now, preparing for the Messiah.”
“He should drown,” his father said.
One day Shuki drank a jar of olive oil and bit into a shwarma at Benny Ovadiah’s
restaurant. He threw up on the floor right in front of the King of the King of Falafel and
screamed, “Bad lamb! Bad lamb!”
But Benny Ovadiah had seen Shuki hanging out with Mordechai and beat him
with a broom.
“Don’t break your teeth. I’m not leaving,” Benny Ovadiah shouted as he brought
the broom down onto Shuki’s head.
“What about the Messiah?” Shuki said.
“Show me the Messiah.”
Frustrated and tired of falafel, they ate hamburgers at the new McDonalds, where
Shuki tried to lighten the mood, moving the buns of his burger like the mouth of a hand-
puppet. “I am the red heifer. I taste better with cheese.” And he bit into the burger
laughing.
“I am the pink heifer,” Mordechai said, holding his burger. “Cook me some more,
please.”
“Stupid!” Shuki said, hitting Mordechai on the forehead with the palm of his
hand. “Don’t you remember from religion class in school where God told the Children of
Israel to purify themselves.”
“Take a shower,” Mordechai said, laughing. “With soap!”
“He told them to sacrifice a red heifer, a pure red heifer without blemish or spot,
because only the ashes of a red heifer can purify Jews so the can rebuild the Temple,”
Shuki paused and beat a drum roll on the table. “And-bring-the-Messiah-the-King-of-
Israel.”
“But there hasn’t been a red heifer in Israel in over 2,000 years,” Mordechai said,
remembering the mysterious passage calling for the sacrifice of a pure red heifer.
“Yes,” Shuki said, “that is true. But now. . .” And he began to hum, and then
Mordechai joined in and they were singing, “Moshiach, Moshiach, Moshiach!”
They drove out of the city under a starless sky towards the west and the coastal
plain. The air became warmer as they descended. Shuki rolled down his window and lit a
cigarette. Mordechai fiddled with the radio dial as they drove, finding Jordan Radio in
English, then Arutz Sheva, the Jewish settlers pirate station, and finally Galei Zahal,
Army wave radio, where they sang out together in English.
“Remember when we were young?” Mordechai asked Shuki as they turned off the
highway.
Shuki knew the kibbutz guard by name, because he used to hitch down every
week to make out in the banana fields with a girl he’d met on a school trip to the
Holocaust museum. They waved and drove by him, but they didn’t stop at the girl’s room,
they kept going along the dirt road past the bulls kicking up dust, and on to the dairy. The
air smelled of fresh cow manure and trees.
“Cows are so dumb,” Mordechai said. “All they do is shit. They live in shit, they
sleep in shit. . .”
“Quiet,” Shuki said. “Operation Secret Messiah.”
The frightened cows moved away from them as one, their hooves rumbling
against the earth. Mordechai and Shuki followed them twice around the pen under the
moonless sky. The cows were brown and black and some were just brown.
“Okay,” Shuki said, “Let’s get this one, she’s stopped moving.”
“She’s too big,” Mordechai said, laughing. “Even bigger than Tamar.”
“My sister’s having twins, idiot. Just grab one.” Shuki answered. “Grab it by the
tail.”
But they couldn’t catch the other cows who kept circling around and around the
pen in the darkness.
“Let’s get this one before she wakes up,” Mordechai said, slapping the fat sleepy
cow on the rump. “Yala!”
It wasn’t easy to get the giant brown cow into the truck, who wouldn’t move after
being prodded out of the pen. When she did move she stepped on Mordechai’s foot, and
then didn’t move again.
“Ouch,” Mordechai called. “She’s on my foot.”
“Punch her,” Shuki said.
“What?”
“In the nose.”
“No. You punch her.”
“Tickle her then,” Shuki said, spitting onto the ground. “Like she’s your
girlfriend.”
When they finally got her into the truck they covered her with a tarp and gunned
the engine past the guard when his back was turned.
When they pulled back onto the highway, Mordechai and Shuki sang the song
calling for the Messiah that they thought was so hilarious. “Moshiach, Moshiach,
Moshiach! Ai, ai, ai, ai,. . .”
“We should call her Œone million burgers,’” Mordechai said as they drove back
up towards the holy city.
“She’s the red heifer,” Shuki said. “And I’m a blonde.”
In the alleyway behind the King of Falafel they slathered red paint onto the cow
and worked it into her coat.
“The hairdresser at work,” Mordechai said.
“If that will keep me from the army,” Shuki said, kissing the cow dramatically on
the forehead.
The cow stood still, big-eyed, oblivious.
It was nearly four o’ clock in the morning when they led the red painted cow
across King George Street. Mordechai and Shuki were as red as the cow, their hands and
faces smeared with paint. They were high from the paint fumes.
“Ai, ai ai, ai, wo-o, wo-o, wo-o. . .” Mordechai sang.
“Quiet,” Shuki said.
“Jews are depending on you, big girl,” Mordechai whispered. “In the morning
they will wake to trumpets and flutes and harps. . .”
“Shut up,” Shuki said, leading the cow into the alleyway behind the King of the
King of Falafel.
“At last the Messiah can come,” Mordechai added, patting her on the head. “Isn’t
that right, Red?”
Not even a moo.
Shuki jimmied open the back door of Benny Ovadiah’s King of the King of
Falafel with a pocket knife he carried in his jeans. They had difficulty leading the beefy
cow through the back door, her wet paint rubbing off against the door, but they forced her
through, laughing as they went.
“Through the red door, destiny awaits,” Mordechai said.
They left her standing alone in the dark, in the middle of the restaurant.
From across the street they could hear the red-painted cow rattling around in the
darkness, a breaking of glass, battering against the steel shutter that said: KING OF THE
KING OF FALAFEL, and then the graffito, “Is the king of nothing.” They heard hooves
stamping and long, loud, moos.
Mordechai imagined Benny Ovadiah’s unblemished marble tables shattering on
the floor, his tapestries trod upon, his bronze chotchkes battered and stomped on. He
imagined the Lubuvitcher Rebbe climbing out of the photo from beside the Mandate-era
register to sweep the cluttered floor muttering lamentations, and the frightened cow
nuzzling close, dripping snot on the black-clad rabbi.
From the time they locked the cow inside, there was not a moment of silence.
Afraid that the paint fumes had made her crazy as a bull, they agonized all night under
the moonless sky, without a star to wish on.
“You go see her,” Mordechai said.
“No! You!”
“She’s destroying the place.”
“She’s destroying the place,” Shuki repeated, and they both broke out laughing.
Mordechai’s insides heaved as he laughed and felt a warm glow inside him. He
laughed so hard he could not tell if sweat or tears poured down his face.
For a moment before the sun rose, the sky filled with stars and then morning burst
out of the east to greet them.
Things were not so hilarious by the time Benny Ovadiah arrived to open the King
of the King of Falafel. Both Mordechai and Shuki were exhausted and a little afraid.
“Caught with red hands,” Shuki said, but did not laugh.
The sun was out now, and there was nowhere for the two boys to hide. They stood
by the side of the road and could hear Benny Ovadiah screaming and cursing, calling
them sons of whores, sons of bitches, sons of shit. Mordechai turned to Shuki and offered
a prayer for his soul. He was only half joking.
When Benny Ovadiah emerged from his battered restaurant, he was completely
red, covered in paint or blood or both.
He carried a bloody butcher knife in his shaking hand. “You had better hope the
Messiah comes now,” Benny Ovadiah shouted, stepping into the street. “Then, the dead
can rise again. And you will be the first.”
“You can’t kill us,” Mordechai said.
“Why not? I can share a cell with your father.”
He reached the sidewalk and grabbed Mordechai by the hair.
“It was just a joke,” Mordechai said, almost in tears.
“I’ve slaughtered your joke,” Benny Ovadiah boomed.
“But, we’re neighbors,” Mordechai said, the words almost swallowed. “Look,” he
said, pointing to the pathetic sight of Benny Ovadiah’s ruined falafel restaurant across the
street.
“No! Look!” Shuki cried, wide-eyed.
And, from behind an overturned table Mordechai saw a little red calf stumble
unsteadily out of the wreckage, its legs buckling like a drunk, as it mooed and stepped out
to join the morning traffic.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:BBEKOpEqlm8J:www.jonpapernick.com/public/pdf/The_King_of_Falafel.pdf+%22king+of+the+king+of+falafel%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
yiush’s treif-sniffing jewish shnoz was cited on gothamist.com. send that man a box of Fenway Franks.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
No body knows me to take my word but i will give it a try anyway.
I try to be a good Jewish man a model of a real “yaakov” A man how is love hashem and do all misvos available to me, to love and take care of my wife and kids, but i couldn’t not predict this beautiful life that i have today if i didn’t meet the owner of the restaurant, i can go on and on about this man but not at this time, just will tell you that this man is a REAL yare shamaym, Marbits Torah, Gomel chasadim, Baall sedaka,
If like to eat out to have good KOSHER food and to know that your money just bought you a great meal and to know that the same money will probably end up in a ANI or ALMANA or a TALMID CHACHAM hands please go to the shawarma king!!!!
who ever like to contact me get a reference about the owner or the restaurant please do: asafnewyork@yahoo.com
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am
asaf,
nobody is going to stop going to cheskel’s shwarma king because of kashrus based on what we say. on the contrary, i think we gave him the best possible hechsher and maybe some crossover business. i’m glad to hear such a nice jew exists. if you want, call the press and they can take a picture of all us cows eating franks and shwarma and whatever else he’ll give us for free.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
r tartekov is a pathetic farse!!
he doesn’t even apologize for the breach.
the chutzpa in telling us that it never happened!!!
he is only covering up for himself.
who did he ask that it never happened?? the suspect himself?
of course it did and he should be run out of the kosher business together with the evil king!!
April 8th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Oyoyoy! Boohoohoo! Someone ate an un-sanctioned frank! Oh, god! Oh, rebbe! Help us! Save us! This Golus is so terrible!
Vechulhu ad nauseam.
April 8th, 2009 at 6:54 am
ad nauseam, yes, we never gave do to the people who forced themselves to vomit upon hearing the news. if people want to know what snags talk about while not learning it’s whether rav moshe (feinstein, of course) vomited after he drank kosher but not cholov yisroel milk. i think it’s their most divisive issue.
now, because it’s the holidays and i’m not blessing the sun, one more story. once upon a time on shabes the vilna gaon touched onion peel and fainted because it’s muktza so his wife ate the peel but it didn’t help because even if you eat it it’s still eyno rouy l’achila and remains muktza. the moral of the story is that mrs. gaon was a dumbass. happy passover!