A 23-year-old Israeli woman died overnight Wednesday of an allergic reaction to dairy whipped cream she was served at a kosher meat restaurant in the northern Israeli town of Rosh Pina.
The nifteres, Osher Deri, a’h, of Chatzor Haglilit, had ordered dessert at the restaurant on Wednesday night, assuming it was pareve of course since she was dining in a fleishig kosher restaurant.
Apparently, the 19-year-old chef had noticed the restaurant was out of whipped cream and had told a co-worker to purchase some at a nearby store. The employee mistakenly purchased dairy whipped cream.
Deri, z’l, began feeling unwell after eating the dessert and was rushed to Ziv Medical Center in Tzfas, where doctors attempted to save her life, performing resuscitation techniques for almost an hour, but ultimately were forced to declare her death.
Israel Police opened an investigation and has shut down the restaurant and detained five employees, including the owner and chef, of suspected negligent homicide.
The suspects were released to house arrest after the police clarified that they did not act intentionally.
Osher’s mother, Galit Deri, told Kan News that Osher had worked at the restaurant in the past and the employees there were aware of her allergy, adding that her daughter’s allergy was severe, and if she tasted anything dairy, she needed to receive life-saving treatment at the hospital within five minutes.
“I watched her for 22 years that she wouldn’t get close to anything dairy,” Galit said tearfully. “We didn’t have any dairy in the house at all so she wouldn’t be at risk.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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8 Responses
Really tragic. I wonder why if someone has that intense an allergic reaction to dairy products, to the extent of a 5 minute window to live in the case of error, they would go out to a restaurant.? At a minimum, why would they order a desert with a dairy substitute? There are many options at most restaurants which clearly have near-zero risk of any dairy products so this seems strange.
BDE
was she related to Minister Aryeh Deri?
May her Neshama have an Aliya and may we all open up our eyes to see Hashems Wake up calls for serious teshuva ASAP.
We need to all face reality ASAP cause honesty we all know the truth that there’s no such thing as coincidence and at this moment there’s another family suffering of an innocent child’s death due to carelessness and other reasons
BD”E. What a sad story!
Horrible tragedy. Even in Israel, even with a Jewish owner or chef, a feishig restaurant should have a mashgiach temidi who is not employed by the restaurant and who actually observes and works, not sits with his head in a sefer at the restaurant.
Absolute negligence. The level of awareness of allergies in Israel is terrible. While I lived there, hardly a single restaurant or hotel could tell you what was in their food ( therefore we’d pretty much only went to family if we’re needed to get out).
Additionally, there is an Israeli restauranteur in Brooklyn who told me that he is super careful with cross contamination of any food that people are allergic to. The reason for this is, that he had previously been a head waiter in a restaurant in Israel, and a waiter lied to a customer about what was in the food (just tip make a bigger sale) and he watched a woman die in his restaurant.
I would investigate the hechsher as well(if they even had one). If this sort of
last minute shopping was allowed without a mashgiach’s approval then that would new extremely disturbing.
What does it mean to have a 19 year old chef?
It takes years of hard work to become a proper chef.
In Israel you can’t hire 19 year olds because they are subject to the draft and must new in the army.
Robert is 100% right, it’s supposed to be a Mehadrin fleishig restaurant. @fakenews, I fully agree. But apparently she didn’t have her epipen with her, so I bet the restaurant owner & staff will use that as a “defense.” What a tragedy.
HML, it is not mehadrin. It has a regular rabbanut hechsher, which means the mashgiach is nichas veyotzei. He was there a few hours earlier and everything was fine. It’s not his fault that they ran out of whipped cream and sent someone out to buy some specifically for that customer.