Jackson Hole is not an easy place to reach. Tucked into the Wyoming mountains hours from the nearest city, it has long drawn celebrities and billionaires who prize its distance from everything else, and sky high prices to match. For most of the year, that remoteness keeps the town quiet.
But during the summer millions of tourists pass through the town on their way to places like Grand Teton and Yellowstone, the country’s most visited national parks, filling hotels and restaurants for a few crowded months before the town empties out again.
This summer, for the first time, both locals and visitors have a kosher restaurant option.
The Kosher Jackson Hole Grill, which will run until mid-August, opened earlier this summer as a pop-up out of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center of Wyoming, directed by Rabbi Zalman and Raizy Mendelsohn.
For nearly 20 years, the only freshly prepared kosher food available near Jackson Hole came out of the Mendelsohn’s kitchen.
“Offering kosher food as a service took an incredible amount of my wife’s time and focus,” explains Rabbi Mendelsohn. “But kosher is an important mitzvah, and it’s something that we are always happy to provide.”
In the summer of 1975, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, called for a new mitzvah campaign to encourage Jewish people to kosher their kitchens and consume kosher food. The Rebbe quoted the teaching in Tanya that a person is affected by the food he or she eats, on both physical and spiritual levels. He explained that consuming nonkosher food can cloud the natural purity and innocence that a person is born with.
The Kosher Jackson Hole is operated by Mayer Balkany, Tzvi Torenheim and Yehudah Schultz, three rabbinical students who drove from Brooklyn, N.Y., specifically for this mission. Setting up the Grill took nearly 100 hours of logistics before opening day, and by mid-July, it had served hundreds of meals to visitors from over a dozen countries and more than 50 American cities.
Word of the Grill’s presence has spread quickly.
“Our phones are ringing off the hook from people asking about kosher food,” he said.
The pop-up kosher joint has allowed the Mendelsohns to focus on other pressing projects, such as construction of the Cowboy State’s first mikvah.
During the Nine Days, the period of time ahead of Tisha Be’Av, when Jews refrain from eating meat in memory of the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples in Jerusalem, the Grill switched its menu to fish, pizza and dairy.
The Grill closes every Tuesday. On those days, the student rabbis leave Jackson for Yellowstone’s most visited landmarks to offer the thousands of tourists a moment of spirituality and connection. They are offered the opportunity to wrap tefillin, get Shabbat candles, and are always pointed back to the Jackson Hole Kosher Grill for a tasty kosher bite.
The Grill’s impact is far more reaching than just food.
A man wandered into the store, having searched for a nearby restaurant and seeing the Grill turn up in the results. When he walked in, he was expecting lunch. Before he had a chance to look at the menu, one of the young rabbis behind the counter asked whether he was Jewish.
He was. He said he had even celebrated his bar mitzvah, but had never put on tefillin. Grabbing a nearby pair of tefillin they keep handy, one of the young rabbis wrapped them with the appreciative man.
“We danced, sang, and celebrated. It was a very special moment,” said Mendelsohn. “All enabled by having a kosher restaurant right here in Jackson Hole.”
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