When Linda Weiss redesigned her kitchen a year and a half ago, she knew what she wanted: two separate sinks, double counter space, two dishwashers and a double wall oven.
Not only did she expand her Skokie kitchen by 50 percent, but Weiss also made sure to buy appliances such as an oven with a Sabbath override. Many newer ovens automatically shut off after 12 hours, but this feature allows the owner to override the shut-off so the oven can stay on for the duration of the Sabbath. As an observant Jew who entertains every week, Weiss needed the option of leaving the oven on to warm food without lighting a new flame.
Weiss also needed double of everything because she separates meat and dairy, according to the dietary laws known as kosher. When designing a kosher kitchen, she advises people to “get a designer who understands your needs. With a kosher kitchen, you need more cabinet space. I wanted a space for folding chairs, and [the designer] did a section for hanging tablecloths.”
For centuries, the kitchen has reflected the way people want to live. From Neanderthal days, when early man first learned to put a stone on the fire, until the 19th Century, when the kitchen and dining room were strictly segregated, lines were drawn between sustaining life and living it.
Today, the kitchen is the most popular room in the house. It’s where Americans spend half of their at-home time, according to John Driemen, author of “Kitchens: Exciting Ideas for Creating the Kitchen You’ve Always Wanted.” In fact, remodeling this room is the most popular large-scale home fix-up project, Driemen says, with roughly $17.8 billion spent annually.
Kosher-keepers have a double whammy: they need room to fit everything while still making the space attractive for resale, most likely to a family that doesn’t need two of everything.
Rick Glickman, president of Dream Kitchens Inc. in Skokie, designs things “to look integral. There are ways to make it look natural and not a double kitchen,” he says. “It’s not different from doing a standard large kitchen. I vary the heights and depths. Extra cabinets don’t detract.”
As with any good design, a kosher kitchen has to reflect the lifestyle of the people using it.
If you regularly invite 15 people over for a Sabbath meal, the kitchen must accommodate that, as opposed to just meeting the needs of everyday family meals, says Glickman.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, says the laws of kosher raise the mundane act of eating to something spiritual. “It sanctifies the Jewish home,” he says.
Jews aren’t the only ones who express spirituality in the kitchen. According to author Terrence Conran, in his “Kitchen Book”: “A kitchen provides physical and spiritual nourishment and for many homes is now the heart and soul of family life.”
Just as there are many different ways of being Jewish, there are many ways to keep kosher. But one thing is for certain, kosher kitchens need ample storage for double sets of dishes. Separate counters, ovens, sinks and dishwashers for meat and dairy activities are a convenience.
The laws about which foods are permissible come from the Biblical books Leviticus and Deuteronomy, says Lopatin, and “the concept of flavor coming into vessels” comes from the Book of Numbers. Rabbis teach that materials can take on food properties, which is why kosher-keepers have separate pots and pans, silverware and dishes and sometimes countertops and sinks, says Lopatin.
Before Esther Kapetansky remodeled her kitchen, there wasn’t enough room for meat and dairy dishes. “We needed more cabinet space,” says Kapetansky, who also wanted an area for pareve, or neutral, utensils as well as for storage for Passover dishes.
“I wanted everything equal,” she says. The sinks have even space on both sides and the cooktop is flanked by equal counter lengths.
Kapetansky, who lives in a Skokie split-level contemporary, installed a divider into a wide, shallow drawer, with space on either side for two sets of silverware. She also opened up “half-shelf cabinets,” entirely filling empty space.
“Go back to the basics,” she advises. “When you come down to it, for a kosher kitchen, you do cook a lot. I have two dishwashers–that’s a savior–two sinks, enough cabinet space. Big gourmet kitchens all have two sinks. I don’t think a kosher kitchen has to look different than a regular kitchen.”
In typical kitchen design, stylists arrange things around the half-century-old work triangle, developed at the University of Illinois “to formulate the best use of small residential space for four-person families,” according to Donald E. Silvers, author of “The Complete Guide to Kitchen Design with Cooking in Mind.” “He says, “The refrigerator, range and sink make up triangle points, with 12 to 22 feet between each station.
A kosher kitchen may ruin the triangle model, which Silvers advises against anyway, as it doesn’t accommodate fluctuating party sizes. Glickman uses the refrigerator as “the kingpin,” with a cooktop, oven and sink completing two separate triangles on either side.
Although Julia Aaronson lives in a large apartment on Lake Shore Drive, she didn’t have a ton of room to renovate. Built in 1928, her eight-room apartment has a 16-by-12-foot galley kitchen, with 9-foot ceilings. “My cabinets go all the way to the ceiling and the floor,” says Aaronson, who used an L-shaped area in a former butler’s pantry for the dairy part of the design. She also hung racks in a back hallway for pots and pans and added a countertop to the laundry room for the food processor and mixer.
Aaronson’s personal touch came over the six-burner Viking cooktop. She added a water faucet for filling soup and pasta pots, directly, instead of lugging them in and out of the sink.
Although it sounds like a hassle, designing a kosher kitchen actually unifies Jews. According to Rabbi Lopatin, keeping this set of laws “adds a communal dimension to something that we think is just opening up a can and eating–very mundane and individual. This is a community of people eating foods that are prepared in the same way. You’re keeping it not only for yourself, but for the entire community.”
