Temple Beth Shalom’s Kosher Dinner returns for its 74th year

By Jo Miller

Anthony Giangreco recalls some of the most fun times at Temple Beth Shalom’s Kosher Dinner were being a kid in the youth group washing dishes with friends while listening to music and eating a nibble here and a nibble there of the brisket.

“You can be guaranteed there’s going to be some good brisket,” Giangreco says.

The temple’s 74^th Annual Kosher Dinner that draws in about 1,800 attendees is set for Sunday, March 8 from 11 a.m -6 p.m. Giangreco, a member of the congregation who has been volunteering at the dinner off and on for the last 30 years, started out washing dishes as a kid, then as a youth group advisor and now works on the ticket committee. Over the decades, he’s seen the menu change a bit, but not much.

There’s always beef brisket along with some kind of potato item and vegetables, he says. This year it’s potato knishes, carrot tzimmes, spiced apples and apricot kuchen. Each table is set with a relish tray of traditional Jewish delicacies like pickles, pickled herring, garbanzo beans, challah and horse radish for the brisket.

After the 1,500 pounds of brisket gets hauled over in a refrigerated truck from a kosher food distributor in New York, volunteers begin to cook it after the Sabbath the week before the dinner. They cook all night in shifts, finishing Sunday evening, and return the following weekdays to slice it up.

But before all this can happen, a couple of hours have to be spent converting the temple’s dairy kitchen into a meat kitchen.

“Koshering back and forth from dairy to meat is an in-depth process and time consuming and labor intensive,” says Giangreco.

That’s why throughout the year the kitchen is kept dairy for things like bar and bat mitzvahs, after-service snacks and luncheons. But for the dinner, the kitchen utensils are boiled, boiling water is splashed over the counters and down sinks, and everything gets scrubbed before the meat arrives.

On the day of the dinner, there’s entertainment in the sanctuary — usually live music and a skit or two — then guests gather in the social hall for the meal. At different points during the day, the rabbi or the president of the congregation gets up to welcome everyone and explain some of the ritual items around the sanctuary, like the ark and Torah scrolls, the Tree of Life and the Eternal Flame. As guests exit, a gift shop and a bake sale offer Jewish trinkets and homemade cakes, cookies and breads in the foyer.

Guests can also swing by the temple and pick up takeout dinners and some people who dine at the temple or buy to-go dinners to take to family and friends or to eat the next day.

“We’ve seen that grow drastically over the last seven to eight years that I’ve been doing it,” Giangreco says. “I’ve seen our takeout meals grow to almost over 500 meals.”

But Giangreco says for him, the purpose of the kosher dinner isn’t fundraising.

“For me it’s always been about community outreach,” he says.

It takes about 200 volunteers to make the dinner happen, so that means the members of the congregation going to the dinner are volunteering and the guests come from out in the community, which is the whole purpose, he says.

“People drive by a church and they have an idea of what it looks like, what goes on,” says Giangreco. “They drive by the synagogue and they don’t have a concept. They may have some preconceived notions, which could be highly inaccurate. So we like to get people in here not as a way to proselytize, but as a way just to invite people into our home and say hello and we’re neighbors, to break down those barriers and those walls of preconceived notions.”

Tickets for the dinner are $14 in advance and $16 at the door for adults and $7 in advance and $9 at the door for children. Tickets can be purchased online at spokanetbs.org or at Manito Super 1 Foods, Manito Ship and Copy, Rosauers on 29^th Avenue, New Moon Family Wellness and Pawn One on North Division, in Spokane Valley and Post Falls.