Changing times affect kosher-butcher trade

PITTSBURGH - Past the produce aisles, beyond the deli counter, behind the plastic strip curtain and on a metal table's far side, Juda Kohenbash trimmed fat from a marbled rib steak and reflected on his life's work.

"This is what my talent showed," he said. "Everybody has a talent for something. This is where my talent took me."

It took him from Iran, where he was born, to Murray Avenue Kosher, a market in Squirrel Hill, the heart of Pittsburgh's Orthodox Jewish community.

Blood was on the metal table. It stained Kohenbash's white apron and its cuffs. The butcher room was cold, illuminated with fluorescent lights and filled with thousands of pounds of raw beef, veal, chicken and turkey.

It's hardly a place for a historical marker, yet on this concrete floor are believed to be Pittsburgh's only remaining kosher butcher-cut short ribs.

Supermarkets across the city sell kosher meat shipped in from out of state. But Kohenbash is the last man still working here trained to soak and salt the beef sides and know which veins and fats must be removed before consumption to meet kosher dietary guidelines.

"You see this vein?" he said, pulling with his right index finger at a white vessel along a beef shoulder. "It's OK."

Squirrel Hill once was filled with kosher butchers, Kohenbash said. But one by one, old hands retired, and shops closed.

Market trends have made the neighborhood butcher nearly extinct, and the trade no longer is passed down from butcher to son. Kohenbash's oldest son, David Kohenbash, 23, is a research engineer who works in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

"This job, you can't make a career out of it," Juda Kohenbash said. "It is what it is. You get by."

Kohenbash's parents sent him from Iran to the United States to study in a Baltimore rabbinical school when he was 14.

He has seven children now. He's 52 with graying sideburns and a friendly disposition. He joked that the only reason he came here was to work with butcher assistant Melvin Barnes.

Barnes laughed. Kohenbash smiled. The playful banter is frequent, Barnes said.

"He's genuine to his job and his customers," Barnes said.

Kohenbash typically starts about 6 a.m., filling special orders for French roasts and deckle, a cut of beef. He leaves about 2 p.m. and heads to a second job overseeing the Weinberg Terrace retirement home's kosher operation.

Kohenbash said he wanted a spiritual job. He called it a feeling to serve the Jewish community.

He did not go to college. Instead, he ended up learning traditional kosher-meat preparation. Contrary to popular belief, the meat is not blessed. Kosher butchering removes certain parts of the animal that, according to the Torah, should not be consumed.

Kosher meat is labor intensive and expensive. The animals must be slaughtered in a specific way before the meat is soaked and parts removed.

The process pushes the price on rib steaks to $12.59 a pound at Murray Avenue Kosher. London broil is $8.59 a pound.

A United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh study said about 42,000 Jews live in the Pittsburgh area. Shaare Torah Rabbi Daniel Wasserman estimated that 10 percent to 12 percent of them keep kosher.

In the past, kosher meat typically had to be bought in an Orthodox neighborhood.

Not any more.

Transportation and industrial advances made it possible for meat to be shipped into Orthodox communities from the outside, and some households buy their kosher meat online to save money, Wasserman said.

Still at the heart of Orthodox communities are the synagogues, which members must walk to on Saturday, and religious law creates walking neighborhoods such as Squirrel Hill.

Need medicine? Walk to the pharmacy.

Need a book? Walk to the bookstore.

Need kosher meat? Pick it up at the neighborhood butcher on the walk back from the bookstore.

"To many people, it's a symbol," Wasserman said.

He says he is unsure that symbol is needed anymore for the community to survive. With global and electronic markets supplying kosher meat to his community, Wasserman is not convinced the kosher butcher has to be in Squirrel Hill for the Orthodox Jewish community here to continue.

He wants someone to take over for Kohenbash. He wants the demand for kosher diets to be so much that it supports the traditional job within his community, but if no one replaces Kohenbash and the kosher meat is processed in another state, it does not mean the Orthodox community here would be affected as it would have been in the 1950s.

"As long as people stay kosher, that's my first concern," Wasserman said.

Kohenbash's children are not in line to take over for him. He doesn't want them to cut meat for a living, even kosher meat.

"No advancement on this job," he said. "There's no future in it. Here, it's treading water so to speak."