From a Tel Aviv restaurant, a book that stirs memories

Here’s a beautiful book you can eat. Well, at least you can appreciate the recipes and dine on the history of Keton, a Jewish bistro that has graced Tel Aviv for 81 years. It’s run by cousins of cousins of mine. 

Third-generation owner Orna Raskin and her daughter, Gal, who also works there and wrote this book, would love for you to stop by at 145 Dizengoff Street. I’ve been there at two stages of my life. 

Its fare is Eastern European/Ashkenazic — borscht, chopped liver, pierogi, knishes, schnitzel, stuffed cabbage, tzimmes….

“Keton: Food, Culture & Tel-Aviv” tells you about the restaurant’s history and its customers — many of them from the arts — and reproduces sketches and messages they have left in a guest book.

It includes color pictures of varied dishes and historic black and white photos of the restaurant’s founders, Polish emigres who moved to Tel Aviv in the 1930s and started the business in 1945. 

I met them when I was 16 on a Young Judaea summer trip to Israel in 1960. Their names were Zvi — or Harry — Rozenberg and his wife, the former Sarah Friedman. A branch of the Friedman family had settled in Newport. Sam Friedman, a cousin of Sarah’s, married my cousin, Chickie Horvitz of Fall River, and for decades, along with sons Bobby and Jimmy, they would be prominent in Newport’s Touro Synagogue.

Before I left for Israel on that 1960 trip, Sam said I should stop by what was then called Cafe Keton (small cafe) and say hello to Harry and Sarah. One Friday, the kids in our Jerusalem-based program were set free for the weekend. I took the bus to Tel Aviv to meet up the next day with a friend from another program, but my original lodging plan fell through. It was now getting late in the afternoon.

My clunky hand-written travel journal picks up the story: “Bewildered, I entered the Cafe Keton on Dizengoff Road and asked the proprietor if he knew Sam Friedman of the USA, and I must have looked hungry, and he gave me roast beef. Upon finding out about my predicament, he (Mr. Rozenberg) & his wife (Mrs. - obviously) insisted that I remain with them which I did.” Over the weekend I would flit in and out. These hosts couldn’t have been nicer. 

There was a post-script of sorts. The following autumn, when I was in the 11th grade at Phillips Academy in Andover Massachusetts, Harry was in the United States, and my father brought him up to school, and we went for a fancy dinner at the Andover Inn. 

Now it’s 2016 and I am 72, on an Israel vacation with my wife Elizabeth. Ahead of time, via email, I introduced myself to Keton owner Orna Raskin, granddaughter of the founders, and said I’d be stopping by. She and daughter Gal were glad to see me. 

At a seat at a patio table I perused the menu. Beyond the chopped liver, the schnitzel, the stuffed cabbage, it included such items as veal tongue, goose leg goulash and kasha. And yes they still offered roast beef. 

Gal, waiting on me, urged me to try what was listed as “Helzel - Stuffed Throat.” I asked, “Whose throat is it?” She replied, “A chicken.” Well, why not? I added it to the Israeli salad, matzo ball soup and gefilte fish I was already having. The helzel, which in the book is called stuffed neck, was unquestionably one of the most luxurious — albeit not heart-healthy — things I ever ate. 

Look at the menu on the Keton web site today and you’ll see it: “Helzel chicken neck skin stuffed with goose fat, potato and onion sewed up with thread just like mother used to sew it.” 

(My mother didn’t do helzel. However, she did make schmaltz — rendered chicken fat — and gribenes — chicken cracklings. You can find recipes on Page 18 in this book.)

Back to my 2016 lunch. I finished the meal with cold fruit soup and coffee. Gal gave me what she labeled the “bill.” On it was written “0” — that is, zero. Now that’s my kind of restaurant! 

Keton’s 1945 origins were modest — at first, it was only a kiosk selling such things as watermelon and ice cream. But this book tells us, “Sarah began cooking stews in the style of her father’s home on kerosene stoves at the venue. Cholent with stuffed intestines (kishka), soup with kreplach or kneidlach, stuffed fish (gefilte fish), and appetizers like chopped liver and herring.” The fare was comfort food for a clientele of Holocaust survivors who had moved to Tel Aviv. 

Here’s an interesting item: “What do David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin have in common? Both received deliveries over the years from Keton. Paula Ben-Gurion would send their driver once a week to pick up soup, kreplach and stuffed fish from Keton during the period they lived on the nearby boulevard.

“For Menachem Begin, who was living in hiding as the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, Zvi would regularly bring chicken soup to the secret apartment of the man who would eventually become the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel.”

One passage in the book stands out to me because Orna talked about it online at the time. In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, the book says: “Keton became a beehive of activity. Regular customers, neighbors, and friends came to Keton to help. We packed thousands of meals for soldiers and evacuees. When siren after siren sounded, everyone hurried into the back kitchen, waited for the muffled explosions of the interceptions, and returned to work. Without planning it, the restaurant became a place of strength for those who need help, and for those yearning to help.” 

Orna, who took over Keton after her own mother died, is quoted in the book as saying she does not pressure daughter Gal, or other daughter, Dana, to keep Keton in business. “It has to be their choice,” says Orna, who is 61.

Well, how about it? Gal, 30, who wrote the book, declares, “I know that Keton will continue; I just don’t know how. Maybe within the family, maybe a change will be required, or maybe the city will decide for us. But one thing is clear: three generations of strong women, against all odds, turned this place into a home and a cultural anchor for many generations of strangers, in a reality that changes without surcease, in a city that never sleeps.” 

To order the book ($45), click here. There also is a Hebrew edition, available from Keton itself at this link.

M. CHARLES BAKST was the Providence Journal’s political columnist.