Personal Stories

The Chef Who Closed Her Restaurant on Shabbat; “G-d Will Provide for Me”

For over a decade, the Bagassi restaurant in Tel Aviv served customers on Shabbat, but recently, restaurant Chef Chaya Klor, who is perhaps known to our readers for participating in the Chef Games reality show, decided to make her restaurant kosher and close it on the day holy to Jews.

“What caused the revolution? Life taught me what is truly important,” she says in an interview with the Kipa web site. “I will get my livelihood from the Creator of the universe.”

If you thought it was a passing caprice, you are mistaken. “It was a process that began a while ago,” Klor explains. “Life taught me — and I went through a lot in life — that we have our path in life, and a spiritual person who looks at his past, will begin to connect the dots and understand what is truly important. I didn’t feel good about working on Shabbat, I felt that it wasn’t bringing me blessing. I believed this all along and was unhappy about working on Shabbat, but I always put my feelings aside and what I felt was right, and instead asked myself ”Will the Tel Aviv crowd accept it or won’t accept it?”
 
My clients told me: “What, you’re now kosher? You won’t see us here anymore”.

Immediately after the decision, things changed. “One Friday, something in my soul told me, ‘That’s it.’ I decided that I wouldn’t work any more on Shabbat. I didn’t want to feed people unkosher food any more.”

Klor describes the difficult feelings she had from the moment she made her decision. “The neighborhood is very hardcore. All the way on the other side of the fence. There are almost no kosher businesses here. I can’t tell you I wasn’t afraid.”

But she didn’t let her fears paralyze her, and despite the harsh responses that she absorbed in the secular stronghold for her decision, she persevered to attain her objective.
 
“People burnt me at the stake. There were clients who had come here for years and ate here every Shabbat, and suddenly they found it was closed on Friday night – Shabbat. We had a couple of regular clients who came in and said, ‘What? You’re kosher? You won’t see us anymore,’” says Klor. 

But on the other hand, there were also respectful and encouraging responses that strengthened her resolve and welcomed the process she was undergoing.

When the time came to make the actual change, she was surprised. “I was afraid of the process, but I was favorably surprised. The kosher change was implemented quickly, and they did everything so I would lose the minimum in time and money. They were very pleasant about it,” Klor says.

Now Klor hopes that more kashrut observers will visit the restaurant and enjoy the delicacies that she offers. “I really hope that in my own way, I’ll bring people in one way or another to understand the right path, and how to reach the proper decisions in life. To see the truth and to see what gives you inner strength to live properly.”

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