Yeshivah cooks dish up the secret sauce of their success — along with a heaping serving of story

Photos: Avi Gass, Naftoli Goldgrab, Eli Greengart

(No) Pressure Cooker

Beth Medrash Govoha

Eli Rand

Two flights up from the two batei medrash on Beth Medrash Govoha’s landmark Sixth Street campus is the yeshivah’s kitchen, where a mind-boggling 9,000 meals are pumped out on a daily basis. But while the sheer numbers are enough to get one’s heart racing, the man responsible for every morsel of food here seems surprisingly unruffled, sitting in a tiny office sandwiched between the milchig and fleishig sides of kitchen.

Eli Rand is at home here in the yeshivah; the Toronto native learned in BMG as a yungerman before moving out to Bensalem, Pennsylvania, 14 years ago to take advantage of the higher stipends the out-of-town kollel offered.

“I was looking to start working part time when I saw a sign that the Bensalem Kollel was looking for yungeleit. I figured if I moved out there, I could get in another few years of learning,” he explains, before winking and taking a long, mischievous pause. “This was before Adirei HaTorah.”

Ultimately, joining the Bensalem Kollel set him on a path that brought him right back to BMG — albeit in a different capacity than he could have imagined.

“I had already started working part time doing fundraising for the kollel, when someone from the community, who was learning in Chofetz Chaim of Cherry Hill, a short drive from Bensalem, told me that the yeshivah was looking for a cook.”

Eli wasn’t a cook per se, but as a bochur, he was the “food guy” in his dirah, and he also arranged the kiddush every week in Bensalem. Apparently, his kugel was good enough to convince Chofetz Chaim to retain his services.

“They basically hired me on this guy’s recommendation that I know how to cook,” he said.

It turned out to be a good call; for the next two years, Eli cooked three meals a day for the yeshivah and set up a professional system, including accounts with kosher vendors and real equipment. Then, in 2017, Eli heard that Aryeh Spilman of Lakewood was looking to hire. While Aryeh was the chef in BMG, he was also running his own catering company, and Eli was sure he was looking to hire staff for his company.

“When I heard about the position, I had no clue that it had anything to do with BMG,” he remembers.

When he arranged to meet Aryeh, he was rather surprised to hear a very familiar address; it was where he spent seven years poring over a Gemara — just two flights down. In Elul of that year, Eli rejoined his old yeshivah, but in a slightly different role than the one he’d previously occupied.