Meet the Patterson Park Entrepreneur Behind Jewish Jerky

In 2020, at the height of COVID-19, Adam Kaufman and his partner were looking to leave LA. While Zillow surfing, they stumbled across a townhome in Charm City. Baltimore hadn’t exactly been on their list, but housing was in short supply, so, on a whim, they bought it.

“We said, what the heck?” Kaufman recalls. “Baltimore is as fine a place as any.”

Kaufman, who formerly worked in marketing, packed up the Prius and the two dogs and, along with his partner, drove east. “I was like Jed Clampett, but in reverse,” Kaufman says with a laugh.

But a funny thing happened by the time they hit Arizona. “I started seeing road signs for jerky,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘I didn’t know people liked jerky that much.’

Then somewhere in the middle of Texas, I see this sign out of nowhere that says, ‘Jerky made from brisket.’ And I turned to my partner and said, ‘That’s like Jewish jerky’—and we giggled and laughed.”

By the time they got to Mississippi, Kaufman thought that just maybe he was onto something. “I went to GoDaddy and did a URL search in the middle of the night to see if anyone owned jewishjerky.com, and for $9.95 I became the proud owner of Jewish Jerky.”

“I AM INTERESTED IN EXPLORING THE CROSSROADS OF THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN CULTURAL IDENTITY AND CUISINE THROUGH A JEWISH LENS.”

Jerky has been Kaufman’s job ever since. Little did he know that he’d stumbled into a region that’s something of a jerky hotbed, with meatsnacks well-represented, including Aufschnitt Meat’s kosher jerky in Owings Mills and Righteous Felon in nearby Chester County, PA, which partners with Roseda Farm in Monkton to produce its  scratch-made sticks (and features a Maryland Monroe flavor sprinkled with crab spice).

But Kaufman’s all-natural, gluten-, soy-, and additive-free product, whose packaging he describes as “Monty Python meets Marc Chagall,” distinguishes itself from other meat products on the market by leaning into his heritage.

“Jews have lived all over the world,” says Kaufman, “and their cuisine is represented all over. I am interested in exploring the crossroads of the intersection between cultural identity and cuisine through a Jewish lens.”

That means that his vegetarian tzimmes-style jerky includes roasted carrots and roasted yams inspired by the traditional Jewish stew of carrots and dried fruit for Rosh Hashanah. And that his charoset-style jerky, also vegetarian, takes its cues from the dish served at Passover, and consists of dates, figs, raisins, almonds, cinnamon, and clove. And that his pastrami-style jerky has Eastern European roots.

“When you open the bag up, there are little seeds and spices that are on the jerky—so you can see it, and you can taste it,” says Kaufman. “It’s more flavor-forward than most jerky out there, especially the big brands, which taste like you’re eating a salt lick. People taste it and they’re like, ‘Wow, I didn’t expect it to be so good.’”