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David and I snag seats at Ceremony Coffee in Bethesda. With breeze and birds (seriously, a huge crow) circling in the afternoon heat, we chat about the Capital Kosher BBQ Competition, why we should be asking more of our kosher food options, the barbecue guy at shul, WWII spies in the Maryland mountains, “Hill people,” scrapple, and more.
Samuel: What brought you to the DMV?
David: I grew up in Columbia and Ellicott City. I’ve been here for all my life. I met my wife, who was living in Georgetown, back in 2005. I was in Howard County, so we met halfway in Bethesda, and we’ve been in Silver Spring and now Rockville since.
Samuel: What kept you guys here?
David: I was always in summer camping, so I actually used to leave for the summers and go to Maine. Which is the best time to leave DC. I did that for a long time. When I left my job in Maine, there was an opportunity to come in as COO at Capital Camps…and that was always my home. It was an opportunity to come back to the place I grew up at, so I’ve been there since 2023 and I don’t leave the area anymore.
Then, my wife is from LA and loves DC. She’s one of those, you know, [Capitol] Hill people. She’s been on the Hill for as long as I’ve known her and loves it here. My folks are still around in Columbia. It just makes sense to be here.
Samuel: You work in summer camps, you attended summer camps. Every summer it seems like I talk to people who are endlessly fascinated with – or chasing – that summer camp feeling from when they were kids. Why is that such a formative place for so many people?
David: I can’t say why it is for other people. But I can speak for myself. For me, camp is where Judaism came alive. I was in Hebrew school, B’nai B’rith, BBYO – I was always involved and had my foot in the door in Jewish community. But it wasn’t until I went to Capital Camps that it just came alive for me and meant something more to me than it ever had. I’m not really sure why.
Samuel: What’s the difference between feeling involved and feeling like something is alive?
David: Let’s put it on camp – camp is a place where you grow because you’re challenged, you’re a little uncomfortable, there’s new challenges in front of you and you’re out of your comfort zone. But they’re manageable challenges! And you’re in community, and you’re in nature, and all those things together make camp powerful. It’s a shared experience with other people in a beautiful setting. Jews in America have known this experience for a long time and we value it. It’s a powerful thing. I don’t know how else to explain it. There’s nothing like Shabbat at camp, right?
Samuel: Okay, let’s talk about the barbecue competition. How did this come to be? Is this something you’re taking over? Was it your idea?
David: In my old job, I used to run summer group retreats. In this job, I was charged with coming up with ideas that we can put our stamp on. I looked at some of the programs that I had experience in and played around with a few different ideas. I’d actually never done a barbecue competition before, but I realized…well, one I like barbecue. Pair that with the fact that I have a facility that is prime – no one else has this opportunity – because we have a mashgiach [Editor’s note: someone trained in supervising food for kosher compliance] who lives on site; we’re under Star-K supervision; we’ve got meat, pareve, and dairy kitchens; we’ve got an eruv…I’ve got the infrastructure for this that nobody else does, and nobody else is doing this.
Last year, we got the competition sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbeque Society. They put it on their calendar and it adds a level of credibility to it. We ended up with seven teams, and I saw the value in going through this governing body. So now, we’ve got nine teams, and probably three or four times the number of people signed up at this time than I did last year. Everywhere I go, I’m telling people about it. I’m obnoxious about it.
Samuel: In terms of “things to be obnoxious about,” a barbecue competition is pretty fun.
David: It’s so non-alienating, right? Like, the guy is nuts about barbecue. Fine. If you’ve had real barbecue, it’s amazing. Here’s the thing. When I met my wife, I wasn’t keeping kosher. I’ve eaten everything. But when I met my wife, we agreed that we would keep a kosher house, that we would raise our kids kosher. But I know what I’ve had, and what I like, and I like eating food. I like trying things. To me, travel is about going and eating the things that are there. Every time I travel, all I’m doing is planning out my food. When you start keeping kosher, it’s pretty limiting, right? But what I realized is that there’s so much food where there’s no reason why it can’t be kosher.
That’s what started bothering me. There’s things that I knew can and should be kosher, but nobody’s doing it, or there’s no market for it. Like, I love scrapple, right? I grew up in Maryland, I’ve been to a diner, I like that stuff! You go to any grocery store in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, they have 20 different versions of it – turkey scrapple, beef scrapple. There’s no reason why it can’t be kosher. So I made it.
I started thinking the same thing with barbecue. If you try to find commercial kosher barbecue, you might find places calling it barbecue, but what they’re doing is making your grandmother’s brisket and then pouring barbecue sauce on it. That’s good. I love my grandmother’s brisket. But that’s not barbecue. Barbecue is slow-cooked and smoked. It’s a poor man’s meat, full of gristle and connective tissue. Barbecue is about doing it slow, over long periods of time, and then that connective tissue goes through a chemical change and turns into juicy collagen.
So, for 20 years I’ve been making it myself. And every synagogue has that guy – and it could be a woman – but there’s that guy who is super into barbecue. So there are all these little disparate communities, and if I can do this competition, and make it my job, I can bring together all these different synagogues, and all the people there who don’t talk [to each other], and how cool would it be if we all got together for Shabbat and learned from each other in friendly competition?
Samuel: Thinking about last year’s competition, and thinking ahead to this year’s, what’s been unexpected about the whole process?
David: At first, I felt like Star-K was looking for reasons we couldn’t do this. Of course, that’s their job – they have to be a gatekeeper. But once I worked with the mashgiach, I said: Tell me everything you’re concerned about. And he walked me through, and I said: If I do this, is that okay? If I do this, is that okay? And once we went through that process, my mashgiach was as excited as everybody else, because we’d done all the things that had to be done.
And it worked for everybody! Star-K really came through, and people had a good time. It was a joyous, fun day, and I got to expose a lot of people to barbecue they’d probably never had before because they’re observant and there was no opportunity. My subtle hope is that the marketplace responds. More people will understand what barbecue can be, and they’ll go: I want that.
Samuel: Okay, a couple quick ones to close. You can invite any three people to Shabbat dinner. Who are you bringing?
David: I’d invite Dan Bern. He’s kind of a Jewish troubadour – a wonderful singer-songwriter. I’d invite Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway because they’d ask fascinating questions and keep the conversation interesting. I like their podcast. I’d also invite a Ritchie Boy if they were still alive. I’d love to hear the experience of a Jew in the rural Catoctin mountains, 80 years ago, 5 minutes from Capital Camps.
Samuel: Last one. Finish the sentence: When Jews of the DMV gather…
David: They ought to be demanding better barbecue brisket.
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