Whether you are Jewish or not, practicing or not, most foods bring common ground to cultures we can share and learn from, yes?!!
The Jewish Food Society is built on the idea of preserving a culture through food stories and recipes shared generationally. The recipes areboth simple and complex; the stories priceless. When I first retired, I spent several months making bread and breaking bread with friends I now had full time attention for. Full stop-homemade bread makes (most) people happy.
The bread recipes on this site, are some of my new favorites when the temp is ideal to bake a loaf…or three!
I hope you will get enjoyment out of this painstaking project. Its worth sharing.
Perhaps the site owners will consider an index. I think the layout is designed to encourage visitors to read the stories behind the recipes rather than just a recipe collection. Submissions are made by people interested in contributing to the mission/project.
Thank you Rooster. My grandparents immigrated from Allepo Syria and Kilis Turkey, on the boarder of Syria. I try to cook many of the foods I grew up with.
My father’s father and my father’s mother’s parents were burned out of their village in what is now part of the Ukraine around 1900. They walked across Europe (family story says this took two years) and sailed from France to Ellis Island. By the time the remnants landed in NY they fell into one of two categories: those who felt their faith was what allowed them to endure and those who decided that Judaism was not a survival characteristic. My grandparents were in the latter category.
My grandmother was the only (ethnic) Jewish grandmother on the planet who couldn’t cook. Add in my own lapsed Catholic mother who didn’t cook very well either and there isn’t much legacy.
I have reconstructed matzo brei that gets pretty good reviews and am working on brisket.
I’ll work my way through the JFS site as time permits and try some more things to add to my meager cultural heritage.
My dads family came over from a village in was is now the Ukraine too. It was called Kalamya (sp.?) At that time it was part of Austria. My fathers mom cooked a lot of the old stuff, but not the greatest cook. She did make a mean potato kugel. My grandmother on moms side was from Poland but came here when she was so young she had no accent. But she was a great cook. Brisket!!!
I don’t know the name of the village my grandparents came from. It was then in White Russia I believe. My mother tried to get as much from my grandfather before he died as possible but between fading memories and a long history of a fleeting relationship with truth we don’t really know. She did track down a relative still in Eastern Europe but no details forthcoming from there either.
