Judaism has a long and diverse history that takes years to fully comprehend. I have been lucky in the sense that I have grown up with a strong Jewish identity and access to people who have been able to teach me the history as they saw it. My family history starts during World War 2 in Poland, my great grandmother ripped out of her home and brought to Auschwitz to watch millions of Jews suffer and die at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis. While I was never able to meet my great grandmother, I was able to learn her story in detail through my grandmother and learn more about the time period thanks to writers of the time.
Upon speaking to my grandmother, I learned that food was something that her family took back after the war. After struggling in the camps, my great-grandmother took food to say, ‘we are still here’. One source I found very helpful in understanding this concept more is “Night” by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel wrote his memoir to describe the gruesome horrors of life in the camps. When describing food, Elie stated: “Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time”. I found this memoir very interesting in the sense that the author uses words to paint a picture of suffering in a very compelling way, these are real life records of someone in the camps. Without writers like this it would be hard for us in the present day to understand why Jewish people are so proud of how much they’ve overcome.
Another source I found interesting was cookbooks of Claudia Roden. Claudia is an exiled Egyptian Jew who was the first person to bring Mediterranean cooking to the western world. She wrote her cookbook as the first English cookbook that highlighted Mediterranean meals, before these recipes were mostly only shared through word of mouth or between family members. I find this to be an amazing source, seeing how my Polish grandmother had to stay in the kitchen with her mother-in-law for 3 days to learn the traditional Turkish and Mediterranean dishes that my grandfather was used to. Meals were often taught to the younger generations in order to keep the legacy and tradition alive. Now there are many resources for those who wish to prepare a traditional Mediterranean dish.
Now, you may be asking how this all comes together? Well, my Ashkenazi grandmother and Sephardi grandfather did meet in Israel, which was a small sprout of a country at the time. At this time, Jewish people from all over the world were coming to Israel, this was post-WW2, and the Jews finally had a place to go where they did not feel as though they were refuges. This brought Jews together, but it also brought flavors, spices, and traditions together. Everyone came from a different place, and all had different ideas of traditional dishes, but they were all able to come together and create something beautiful.
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