Boro Park Snapshot: Zion Kosher Market
Rows of every conceivable type of nut line the walls, with
woolen bags next to them to take them home. Huge steel bowls filled with a
variety of olives and pickles greet customers. A selection of Moroccan, Yemeni
and Israeli food fills the air with its pungent smell.
Walking into the Zion Kosher Market, you could mistake its
13th Ave. location for the Machane Yehuda shuk on Rechov Yaffo. And that is
exactly the intentions of the owners, Nir Melamed and Gavriel Kindel. The store
was opened by their father, who has since moved back to his native Israel, to
provide Israeli expatriates with a taste of home, to give the Sephardic palate
a stimulating and reminiscent spice of life.
“We came into the business,” Mr. Melamed told boropark24.com’s Heshy Rubinstein in an interview,
“and we saw that there were not enough stores here selling Israeli products
like spices and bakery items. My mother started making them, salads and things
like that. We are a specialty store for all Israeli products. We also have all
the Israeli newspapers.”
The store, located at 3802 13th Ave., opened 35 years ago three
blocks away. It moved to the current location 15 years ago when the old
building was demolished. The store’s ethos is based on health, Mr. Melamed
said.
“My grandfather Shalom was very much into health,” Mr.
Melamed noted. “The chicken that he ate on Friday night was made from a chicken
that he raised. He ate very basic foods — no food coloring — and boruch Hashem
my grandfather lived a very long life. My father saw how my grandfather used to
live and my father tried to stress and keep everything as homemade as
possible.”
The storeowner’s father, Ovadia Melamed, was born in Yemen
and immigrated to Israel where his son was born. He would research the health
of every spice before allowing it to be used. Eventually, he published his
findings in a book that has since been distributed in both Hebrew and English.
“He looked through the Talmud,” his son recalled. “He
researched articles that big doctors wrote about their research over many
years. He took all this and put it into one book and he published it. My father
said that for every disease in the world there’s got to be a cure for it.
Hashem created a cure for it, we just don’t know where it is. So he looked for
it.”
Everything in the store is made on site, with no added sugar
or preservatives. Behind the shopkeeper lay jars of cardamom, turmeric, cumin,
sweet paprika, hot paprika, curry, cinnamon and hilba seeds — all the result of
Ovadia Melamed’s research into healthy eating.
Ovadia also published a sefer explaining the minhagim and
mesorah of the Sephardic Adat Yeshurun, comparing them to the Ashkenazi
minhagim. The elder Mr. Melamed has since moved back to Israel, though he comes
to visit every year. His son Nir and son-in-law Gavriel Kindel took over
management of the store.
The busiest time of the week is Thursday and Friday when
people shop for Shabbos. The store sells every exotic taste known to the
Israeli tongue. Laffa bread, Moroccan fish, dips, six different types of olives
and pickles, Yemeni dishes such as schug, hilbah and jachnun, nuts, candies and
beans sold in woolen sacks as in the shuk.
Indeed, Nir says that customers tell him that when they come
into his shop they very well may be in the Shuk Machane Yehuda.
“A lot of Israelis living in Boro Park in the ‘80s used to come here,” he recalled. “Today we have grandparents and their grandchildren coming to shop here. An entire generation of Boro Park has grown up with our tastes.”