Kosher pizza, hat-shaped hatboxes, bike-a-thons, group flights to seminary, snoods… Who are the innovators behind these can’t-live-without elements of frum life today?,An Idea Whose Time Has Come,Kosher pizza, hat-shaped hatboxes, bike-a-thons, group flights to seminary, snoods… Who are the innovators behind these can’t-live-without elements of frum life today?
Today communities are gauged by how many pizza stores they have but back in the day Chopsie Landsberg and Naftali Itzkowitz were trendsetters
Zivia Reischer
When Chopsie Landsberg opened Brooklyn’s first pizza shop he never dreamed that frozen pizza would be the in-demand result half a century later
These days when Jewish communities are classified by whether or not they have a pizza shop it’s hard to imagine there was a time when even Brooklyn didn’t have kosher pizza. But that changed back in 1960 when childhood friends Chopsie Landsberg (pronounced Shabsy) and Naftali Itzkowitz dreamed up New York’s first chalav Yisrael pizza shop.
They didn’t know the first thing about pizza though so they devised an ingenuous plan. At the time they were 19-year-olds both employed at Golding Brothers’ Textiles in Manhattan but Chopsie quit his job and apprenticed at a treif Italian pizza store in order to learn the business. Naftali who had been earning a higher salary continued to work for Golding and split his paycheck with Chopsie. After six months they were ready to roll.
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