From the start, Jamie Geller’s cheesecake crawl of Jerusalem was more decadent than expected.

“I asked them to bring us one slice of cheesecake for us to share, but they brought out their whole Shavuot collection — five different kinds,” she exclaimed with mock horror as the group sat down at its first stop at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. “We’re really going to have to pace ourselves to make it through all the stops we have planned for today.”

Ahead of the Shavuot holiday this Thursday evening and Friday, Geller, a bestselling cookbook author and kosher food influencer who is also the Chief Media and Marketing Officer at Aish, led a small group of journalists to explore some of the best cheesecakes in the Holy City.

“Our goal is to sample a variety of different styles of cheesecake ahead of the holiday,” Geller explained at the outset. Many Jerusalemites have a similar custom of sampling Sufganiyot donuts during the Hanukkah season, she noted.

As the group embarked on a three-hour tour that would include sharing 14 slices of cheesecake at seven different kosher establishments and bakeries in the center of Jerusalem, Geller hoped that others would follow in her path in future years.

“We can make this a new Jerusalem tradition,” she said.

History and local customs

For centuries, many Jewish communities have embraced the tradition of eating dairy foods on Shavuot, with a range of mystical and practical reasons suggested over the ages. As early as the 13th century CE, Rabbi Elazar of Worms, Germany, referred to a custom of beginning the holiday meal with a bit of cheese before cleansing his palate and switching to a meat meal. But in recent years, the holiday has been transformed into a festival of dairy foods for many. In Israel, sales of dairy products rose more than 60 percent in the........

© The Times of Israel