Disney World Is Now Serving Matzo Ball Soup

Image by iStock/Forward montage
Well, well, well. If the rumors are true, then the anti-Semitic man who gave his name to the Disney company wouldn’t be too pleased to hear that the folks at Epcot, after years of delay, have finally offered up some Jewish food in the form of a “L’Chaim! Holiday Kitchen booth” for the 2018 Epcot Holiday Festival.
Eats will include pastrami on rye with mustard, potato knishes, black and white cookies and egg creams. The booth will be located somewhat incongruously between the France and Morocco pavilion, notoriously Sephardic areas of Jewry, while serving all the greatest hits of Ashkenazic cuisine. And considering that this is the Holiday Festival, and this booth is supposedly a commemoration of Hanukkah, why the assortment of random delicatessen items and not some Hanukkah-themed doughnuts or latkes?
Between November 18 to December 30, 2018, tourists can look forward to paying Disney’s shocking prices for sandwiches and cookies while nobly sticking it to Walt Disney’s legacy. Is it shocking that the festival received a kwanzaa booth before Hanukkah ever made its debut? Is it shocking that little-to-research was done on Jewish food culture before pumping out a menu and calling it a day? Is it shocking that I’m still bitter about the fact there has never been a Jewish Disney princess, even when there are so, so many options? Well, it’s not exactly shocking, but it ain’t exactly great.
It might be a few decades overdue, but Disney’s super-late acknowledgement of Jewish cuisine is a decent start.
Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at [email protected] and @shirafeder
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Fast Forward Brooklyn event with Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled days before Israeli far-right minister’s US trip
-
Culture How Abraham Lincoln in a kippah wound up making a $250,000 deal on ‘Shark Tank’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.