With a new food truck, Manischewitz shares Jewish food and culture in a fun, accessible way.

When my parents moved from New York to Florida in the 1970s, they sought Jewish comfort food like pastrami, blintzes, kosher hot dogs, and by the 1980s they were able to find it at a place around the corner from our house called Pastrami Club. Such a feat is significantly less possible now. While by the 1930s, Jewish delis numbered some 3,000 in New York alone, there are only a comparative few left today in the city, not to mention around the country in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, among others. What if it was easier to get treats like these, if Jewish food and thereby the culture from which it came was more accessible? After all, Jewish culture is part of American culture, too.

A possible answer to this question comes this week in the form of the new Manischewitz food truck, which begins today in Brooklyn and will be traversing different parts of New York and New Jersey until Passover, when it will close and then reopen the following week. The famous Jewish food brand, which started in Cincinnati in 1888, is rebranding, and the food truck is part of this initiative. Not only did their logo and social media presence get an update, they’ve got merch now, too. With bright orange hues and retro styling, it’s as much an welcoming appreciation of the culture as it is fun and campy–a tote says “schlep,” and a tank top says “man, I shvitz,” for example.

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Shani Seidman, who is the Chief Marketing Director of Manischewitz’s parent company Kayco, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year that the rebrand is “an effort to update the cultural relevance with a younger Jewish audience as well as mainstream culturally curious audience.” And since a food truck has come to represent a certain sense of accessibility–we live in a world now where you could go up to a truck and get something as delicious as in a restaurant with a white tablecloth–so it becomes a natural fit for a rebrand like Manischewitz.

Seidman also made a great point about Manischewitz to New York Jewish Week this week: “It’s just as much an American brand as it is a Jewish brand,” she said. “It’s ingrained in American and Jewish culture.” For context, as a brand, Manischewitz is about two years younger than Coca-Cola and about nine years older than Jell-O. Indeed, if you know Jewish culture, you know Manischewitz, whether it’s their matzo (they’re the world’s largest manufacturer), their egg noodles, their wine, or even their gefilte fish. In my family, for example, around Passover you’d hear something like “Break out the Manischewitz!” before opening a box of matzo or twisting a wine bottle cap.

For those seeking either comfort or new experiences, food is often a great way in. Accordingly, the Manischewitz truck will serve beloved Jewish foods like knishes, matzo ball soup, rugelach, kosher hot dogs, franks in a blanket, babka, egg rolls, blintzes, and more. “I think actually the majority of people who aren’t Jewish, a lot of times they access Jewish food and culture through the deli,” Seidman also told New York Jewish Week. “It’s one and the same. It’s part of the tapestry of our faith, of our history, of our culture. We can’t really separate it. And for the brand, it’s the same way.”