Rothenberg Restaurant in the Jordan Valley Will Close at Year-End After Yizhar Sahr’s Death

About a year and a half after chef Yizhar Sahr died of cancer, Hila Ronen announced that Rothenberg, the distinctive restaurant she founded with him in the Beit HaShita, Jordan Valley area, will end its current operation at the end of the year. In a post on the restaurant’s Instagram account, she wrote, “A legend that was,” and said the place had been a shared dialogue between her and Sahr.

Ronen said she now wants to “develop a new dialogue that is not buried under loss and longing.” She added that the restaurant’s legacy will remain, but that “it is time for a new story in this wonderful place.” She described how the couple, young parents of two daughters, left Tel Aviv, moved to the Jordan Valley, and spent about a decade building an unusual culinary project near the Jordan border.

Ronen recalled that they learned to cultivate a garden, deepen their foraging, study the region’s culinary history, and work with ancient preservation methods, wine, and alcohol. After Sahr’s death, she said, the restaurant became a source of comfort, with chef Chen and the staff continuing to create “wonderful food,” Manoa tending the garden, and Tal developing the wine and alcohol program.

In their last interview with N12, about a month before Sahr died, the couple spoke about the shock of being told he had a brain tumor. Sahr said that during the war the army initially would not let them open, and later the evening service no longer felt relevant because the isolated restaurant becomes completely quiet at night. Ronen said their 4.5-dunam garden and orchard, including two dunams of wheat for bread, made the project much more than a garden. Sahr said he stopped working about two years into the illness, and that “family, friends, the restaurant and the garden” mattered more to them than treatment.