Kugel Yerushalmi (AKA Yerushalmi Kugel or Jerusalem Kugel)* is a strange dish for the uninitiated. It’s a kugel, but unlike a crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside potato kugel, it’s not strictly savory, and unlike a rich dairy noodle kugel, it’s not creamy and sweet with raisins and/or fruit peeking out from among broad egg noodles. Those other kugels were invented in Europe. But Kugel Yerushalmi was born in Jerusalem.
From the Jewish Exponent:
It all started in Lithuania. A wave of disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in the Holy Land in 1808, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov. Although they first went to Tiberias, they later relocated to Tzfat, where they fostered warm relationships with the local Sephardic community. A second and third wave of students came to Israel in 1809, and purchased agricultural land.
But a plague broke out in 1812 in Tzfat, forcing many Jews to flee to Jerusalem. The refugees succeeded in renewing the Ashkenazi presence in Jerusalem after nearly 100 years of banishment by local Arabs. And they made Yerushalmi kugel.
They couldn’t afford raisins, the story goes, so they browned sugar to make their kugels look dark. There is also a legend that local Jews of Polish descent preferred sweet kugels, while the Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) opted for savory ones — hence the combination. I cannot vouch for the veracity of either of these stories.
Kugel Yerushalmi lore aside, it is a popular hobby these days to accuse Israeli Jews of stealing or appropriating Arab or “Palestinian” food. Just how popular is this cute little propaganda concept? I consulted Google. As it turns out, “stealing” is the preferred term of those frantically searching Google for “facts” with which they might demonize the Jews Zionists.
Here are the different search parameters I tried, with the approximate number of search results yielded by each:
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