In Bnei Brak, the restaurant Challah Viznitz was \u201cpopping with an eclectic mix\u201d of diners \u2014 albeit Orthodox but not strictly haredi Jews, according to Melissa Weintraub, who made the trip with an Arab friend who regularly visits Bnei Brak for cholent. In Geula, the workers at Cholent al Hagag (Cholent on the Roof) said they hadn\u2019t even heard of Zilberstein\u2019s ruling \u2014\u00a0though a handful of diners had.<\/p>\n
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The restaurant Challah Viznitz in Bnei Brak, Israel, was filled with diners enjoying the Shabbat stew on Thursday, July 10, 2025. (Courtesy Melissa Weintraub)<\/p>\n
Eating out of plastic bowls in an enclosed rooftop above a schnitzel shop and ice cream parlor, the diners at Cholent on the Roof ranged from packs of haredi tweens to visitors from the United States to secular Israelis. On the menu: meat cholent, pareve cholent and two kinds of kugel: potato and Yerushalmi, made with a caramel.<\/p>\n
Behind the counter, a man wearing a velvet kippah said business was slower than usual around 9 p.m. Thursday. But it wasn\u2019t because of the halachic ruling, which he said he found amusing, or the fact that tourism is slow after last month\u2019s war with Iran.<\/p>\n
Instead, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s not the hour yet.\u201d Cholent on the Roof is open on Thursdays \u2014 the only day it opens at all \u2014 until 2 a.m.<\/p>\n
A few blocks down Geula\u2019s main thoroughfare, the deli Hadar Geula was so packed that it was often impossible for customers to make their way to the tiny dining room. Many patrons were buying takeout for Shabbat \u2014 but some were pulling over to sample cholent before they headed home. A visitor from the United States said she had not heard about Zilberstein\u2019s ruling as she hefted her haul through a narrow pathway to the shop\u2019s front door.<\/p>\n
One Hasidic man, who asked not to be named, said he welcomed Zilberstein\u2019s ruling. His teenage daughter had started going out with friends on Thursday nights to cholent in their Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, and he disliked the \u201ccasual hangout\u201d it generated.<\/p>\n
Online, the ruling drew scattered but spirited reactions. One post<\/a> on X noted, \u201cThere\u2019s no midweek cholent in the army: A holy place\u201d \u2014 an apparent dig at haredim who avoid army service. Another user wondered if the ruling applied<\/a> only to cholent or if it extended to Sephardic equivalents such as tefina and s\u2019khina. Under one English-language article<\/a> on the rabbi\u2019s ruling, one reader recalled that Uncle Moishy, an Orthodox children\u2019s entertainer in the 1990s, was summoned to the White House to make the dish but firmly declined, declaring in song<\/a> that \u201cyou can\u2019t make cholent on an ordinary day.\u201d<\/p>\n A robust conversation \u2014 with comments ranging from nostalgic to critical \u2014 took place on a Facebook post on the topic by Freedman, a freelance journalist who has written for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the past. He wrote that cholent drew him to the neighborhood around Yeshiva University as a teenager in New York and was \u201cthe carrot I needed to study some extra Torah on Thursday night.\u201d The tradition has more recently taken off in haredi strongholds in Brooklyn and Monsey, New York.<\/p>\n Cholent on the Roof opens in Geula, Jerusalem, for just 10 hours a week \u2014\u00a0on Thursdays until 2 a.m. (Philissa Cramer)<\/p>\n In the comments, Hilla Benzaken agreed, describing how Thursday-night cholent had transformed late-night get-togethers into study sessions with friends, with \u201ccholent and wine at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, she sympathized with the spirit of the rabbinic ruling, saying she understood the value of distinguishing between weekday and Shabbat dishes. \u201cMy friends always laugh at me that I refuse to eat curry and Asian food on Shabbat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Others were less measured. One commenter likened the rabbi\u2019s position to \u201ccutting off the source of medicine\u201d for Jews searching for meaning, with the ruling implying that \u201ctaking in the energy of Shabbat early is a bad thing.\u201d Another mused whether everyone could skirt the ruling by eating leftover cholent from the week before, and if so, whether that would lead to halachic grounds for making it fresh to prevent food poisoning.<\/p>\n Liz Nelson took issue with the broader optics of the ruling, writing that she felt \u201cextremely cynical\u201d seeing rabbinic focus on cholent while more serious communal issues go unaddressed.<\/p>\n \u201cI do realize one can speak out about things on the level of cholent, without it being to the exclusion of caring about things like sexism, racism, abuse\u2026.still\u2026.when I see things like this, I can\u2019t help but think \u2018ah, so we\u2019ve handled all the Real Issues I guess, such that this is what we have time to prioritize.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She later clarified to JTA that she was grappling with \u201cwhether I\u2019m really being fair,\u201d acknowledging that she wasn\u2019t the intended audience of the rabbi\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IMG_8484.jpeg\")
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