BERLIN (JTA) — Observant Jews have a traditional German treat coming their way — a kosher Thuringian bratwurst.
The kosher version of the famed aromatic sausage from the former East German state of Thuringen will be introduced to the public at October’s annual Onion Festival in Weimar — between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — the Berlin-based chef Elmar Werner said in a telephone interview.
The first public bite will be taken by the state’s governor, Bodo Ramelow, who was the impetus behind the product, Werner said.
Not that all his constituents are delighted. After Ramelow, of the Left Party, posted an article from Bild about the new sausage on Facebook this week, he received so many hate-filled responses that he vowed to erase them all.
Werner, who like Ramelow is not Jewish, told JTA that the governor said at the state’s recent summer festival in Berlin that he “regretted that there is nothing kosher available in Thuringen … Someone told him I was a specialist in kosher cuisine,” and the rest is history.
Werner has teamed with Weimar butcher Wolfgang Jens Blasse to create the pork-free recipe. The sausage — as yet only a limited number have been produced as a trial — is made of veal and chicken and a secret concoction of spices packed into a goat intestine. All is under rabbinic supervision, of course.
Meanwhile, the governor announced Wednesday that he was going to erase all comments about the sausage from his Facebook profile after an avalanche of remarks “full of hate, anti-religious sentiment and National Socialist cliches.”
“If you don’t know anything about kashrut and halal and have nothing to say about cheap meat, if you demonize religious slaughter but have nothing to say about how animals are transported or about the working conditions for people in the meat industry, then you should look for another FB page,” he posted.
Ramelow told the Bild Thuringen newspaper that a kosher bratwurst was not enough and that he hopes to see “halal and kosher foods, Arabic dishes combined with Thuringian cuisine — sausage, dumplings and stuffed cabbage — alongside hummus, chickpeas and kebabs.”
