SeltzerFest Program: The Main Stage: Fizzing into the Future

Fizzing into the Future:

The Next Generation of Jewish Bubbly Beverages

Presented by The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life

Join us for a panel conversation and live demonstration featuring industry experts, mixologists, and tastemakers on the past, present, and future of carbonated Jewish beverages.

Sparkling drinks have long held a place of honor in Jewish traditions from the synagogue basement to the deli, to the family dinner table, and beyond. Here in New York, many Jews wear their love of seltzer as a badge of honor and identity, following in the footsteps of our ancestors who brought their passion for fizz from the old country.

This panel demonstration will explore the history and the future of bubbly drinks within Jewish culture, with a special focus on contemporary and innovative sparkling beverages.

Don’t miss our panel of pros as they experiment with flavor, giving you a sip of the future. The panel and demonstration will be followed by a Q&A and tasting session. Jewish drink creators include Ari Miller, Michael Harlan Turkell, and Jeffrey Yoskowitz.

Naama Tamir was born and raised in Rehovot, Israel, home of the Wiseman Institute and the Faculty of Agriculture. She moved to NYC in 2000 after her mandatory IDF service at the age of 20. Naama studied Philosophy and Psychology at Hunter college while moonlighting in the hospitality industry. In this time she worked in places such as Employees Only, Macao Trading Co., Craft Steak, Mainland, Smith and Mills.

Upon graduation it became clear that her passion lies in restaurants, sustainability and education. In 2010 along with her bother/partner Assaf Tamir, they opened Lighthouse in South Williamsburg, a sustainable, socially responsible and forward thinking restaurant. In August 2016 they opened a second location named Lighthouse Outpost in Soho.

Jeffrey Yoskowitz is a pickler, entrepreneur, and thought leader. He co-founded The Gefilteria, a culinary venture that reimagines Ashkenazi-Jewish cooking and co-authored the award-winning cookbook, The Gefilte Manifesto. He teaches, cooks, and lectures on food history to communities across the globe. His writings on food and culture have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, among other publications. He was featured on Hulu’s Taste the Nation and tapped to represent Yiddish culture by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He got his start in the food world as a pickle apprentice on an organic farm in the Berkshires and has been sharing his love for the art of lacto-fermentation ever since.

Michael Harlan Turkell, a once aspiring chef, now photographer, author, and podcast host, for years captured the inner workings of kitchens for his award-winning “BACK OF THE HOUSE” project, which documented the lives of chefs in their restaurant world. As former photo editor of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan, his recurring BACK OF THE HOUSE series was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in Visual Storytelling. He has photographed over a dozen cookbooks such as Chris Cosentino’s “Offal Good”, which he co-authored, and was nominated for a James Beard Award in Single Subject cookbook. In 2017, Turkell wrote and photographed his first cookbook, “ACID TRIP: Travels in the World of Vinegar”, which won the IACP award for Culinary Travel Writing. In 2019 he became an adjunct professor at New York University teaching food photography; the history, concepts, and techniques to photographing food in its best light. Turkell currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and continues to document the food world through word and image.

Val Weisler (she/her) is a fifth-generation New Yorker. Her love for the city runs deep; she even had a NYC subway-themed Bat Mitzvah complete with egg creams from the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. Now, she and her partner, Ky, run Egghead’s, crafting artisan syrups like lavender and orange creamsicle to bring the egg cream into the Gen Z community and give it a modern spin at markets, private events, and more. Val hopes Egghead’s helps people reconnect with their inner child—whether it’s their first time trying the iconic drink or a nostalgic sip that takes them back to summers in Brooklyn.

Outside of Egghead’s, Val is a trailblazer in children’s rights. As a doctoral candidate at Queen’s University Belfast, her groundbreaking research explores a child’s right to seek, receive, and share information in the U.S. Her work is the first to involve young children as co-researchers, reshaping how child-friendly material is created. Val has served as a United Nations Youth Delegate with We Are Family Foundation and has received prestigious awards like the National Jefferson Award and the L’Oréal Paris Woman of Worth Award.

Founder of restaurant Musi, Miller created a higher standard in the Philadelphia food world for using local, hyper-seasonal produce, cheeses and meats. There are few restaurants that take the avoidance and innovative reinvention of would-be food waste to the level that Chef Ari Miller does, who also in this short time, has been named Best Chef by Philadelphia Magazine. Miller’s menus exhibited a constant and utterly delicious repurposing of rinds, tops, tips and often tossed-away bits — with a side of exquisite pastas. He draws upon flavors honed after a decade spent in Tel Aviv, but with restraint. As Hillary Dixler Canavan put it, while naming Musi one of Eater’s 16 Best New Restaurants of 2019: “Musi prioritizes the things that diners ought to demand — a menu informed by local product and a kitchen connected to the region’s best purveyors — but the restaurant doesn’t beat you over the head with it.”

Miller was most recently the Executive Chef of The Rosewood Washington, D.C. and is currently working on opening a new Philly-based project.