The professionals who show up to help before Pesach share an unfiltered peek into our chaos, quirks, and kitchens

Behind the Blowtorch

Sammy and Noam Sonnenberg of Pristine Kosher

Sonnenberg brothers Sammy and Noam never planned to open a kitchen kashering business, but when Covid changed so many people’s Pesach plans, they found people desperate for help with their kitchens. The cRc-approved business began in the Gourmet Glatt parking lot, with the brothers finding customers among the shoppers there. Today, Pristine Kosher services over 1,000 kitchens a year across the US, Toronto, and Israel.

Inside a Thousand Kitchens

We see EVERYTHING across the entire spectrum, from the very frum to the barely religious people who still want to keep things kosher for Pesach. Some people hire us because they’re very machmir and want everything done to the highest standards, and others hire us just to be yotzei and don’t seem to care what we do as long as they can say it was done. (Obviously, we follow halachah, no matter what.)

We serve communities anywhere that there are erlich bochurim and avreichim willing to pass our rigorous certification and standards. We don’t hire anyone we wouldn’t trust in our own kitchens.

The truth is, we’re living in a chitzonius society and people are very concerned about public perception. In most houses we kasher, people work hard to show us that they’re normal. They’re constantly apologizing for everything. But when we come to turn over the kitchen, everything is actually ready. The house is spotless. The kids are curious — quietly peeking through the kitchen door, captivated by what we’re doing. We’re the entertainment.

I’m sure it’s much less crazy than the mom of the house imagines it is.

Boiling Point

We use a special machine to kasher. It shoots out the minimum boiling water necessary for kashering, to avoid creating a mabul in your kitchen. Because it’s such a small amount of water, it cools almost instantly.

We had this one chassidish fellow in Monsey touching the counters after us, shaking his head. “It’s cool. That thing’s just not hot enough.”

“You want to feel?” I asked him and he stuck out his hand.
I let it touch him for just a fraction of a second, so it wouldn’t cause a burn, but he jerked his hand away instantly. “Oh, yeah, it’s hot enough.”

We warn everyone that they can’t use the kitchen for 24 hours beforehand. Once, we walked into a kitchen and the housekeeper was cleaning the oven grates in the sink with very hot water. When we said we’d have to reschedule for another day, the family looked us in the eye and said it hadn’t been used and we could go ahead.

Another guy asked, once we’d arrived, if he could take a shower. We had to explain that when we’d told him to be especially careful not to use any hot water, we’d only meant in the kitchen.

What We See

This generation is more concerned with eliminating anxiety than anything else. Most people are more than willing to pay to have us kasher their kitchen so they don’t have to worry that they’re not doing it right or they’ll ruin their things.

But overall, the Jewish nation is doing great. People are amazing. 95 percent of people are so ready when we come, and the house is stunning. We show up when everyone is at the finish line, and there’s a real buzz of excitement in the air while we work. It’s great to be a part of.

Moments That Mattered

For the last two years, someone gifted our services to a woman whose son was sick with cancer. When we walked in, the relief on her face was so obvious. It was really heartwarming. We have that a lot — people gift our services to someone in need. We get a lot of business from organizations that help single mothers, families with a sick child, or those struggling financially.

Our Nationwide PSA

If I had one public service announcement (PSA) to Klal Yisrael it would be:

Sammy: Spend the couple hundred bucks to save yourself the agmas nefesh of kashering your own kitchen. You’re already spending so much money on Pesach, and this is a small investment that’s well worth it.

Noam: If you do hire someone, make sure they’re certified. There are a lot of people out there advertising kashering services, but most of them have no certification, which means they don’t necessarily know the halachos or how to deal with your appliances. We have so much experience, there’s no sh’eilah we haven’t dealt with, and we know every brand of appliance and kitchen material on the market and how to take care of it.

Scenes We Can’t Unsee

In one home, the wife was very anxious — following us around, asking a lot of questions, very worried we were doing everything halachically. It’s not an uncommon behavior, and we’re actually pretty used to this. Her husband must have felt uncomfortable and embarrassed in front of us, because he started screaming at her to leave us alone. It never occurred to him that his behavior was much more embarrassing than his wife’s. We would’ve totally forgotten about her if not for his screaming.
But we’ve also seen some happily-ever-after shalom bayis stories. We try very hard to be on time and stick to our schedules, because people plan their whole timetable around the kashering. But sometimes, changes are unavoidable. We had to call one woman and apologize that we had an unavoidable delay and would come two hours late. We offered her a huge discount, but she kept screaming.

Finally, she confessed that she was hiring us behind her husband’s back, and needed us to come at a specific time he was out. We agreed to come at 10:30 that night when he would be at a shiur at shul.

She called us the next day to tell us that when he came home, she confessed everything to him. But when she explained how anxious she was about the cleaning and how much she felt she needed us, her husband told her she’d done the right thing by hiring us.

In the future, he said, she should hire us without hesitation.