What's cooking. / Memories Jewish culinary culture Personal stories

Aaron Ladowsky left Kielce for Canada in 1906. Having settled in Toronto, he married Sara Eichler, also an immigrant from Kielce. In 1912, they opened a small bakery-café which they named The United Bakers. The venue soon got a reputation for serving food reminiscent of the old world; it was a place where one could still—just like once in Poland—converse in Yiddish. Today, The United Bakers is being run by the fourth generation of owners. It is famous for its high quality vegetarian dishes steeped in traditional Ashkenazi and East-European cuisine, such as cheese blintzes, latkes, gefilte fish and pea soup.

Golda Tencer was born in 1949 to a family of Shmul Tencer, a survivor, and Sonia Tencer who had survived the war in the USSR. Golda spent the first 20 years of her life in Łódź. Jewish culinary tradition was very much alive at the Tencers’ otherwise secular household. More recollections from the family home can be found in the book "At Mum Sonia’s Kitchen" which she published in 2005 together with her brother Janusz Tencer.

The book titled "Żydzi od kuchni. Opowieści rodzinnego stołu" [Jewish Cuisine. Stories Heard at the Family Table] was published in 2019 and contains culinary recipes and stories of people of Jewish origin who live in Poland and all across the globe. To quote the author Hanna Merlak: “recipes served only as a pretext to talk to people and evoke memories.”

The Jewish Food Society is a non-profit organization founded in 2017 that works to preserve, revitalize, and celebrate Jewish culinary heritage from around the world. At its core is a digital archive which is home to hundreds of recipes and the family stories behind them. Recipes carry with them the marrow of who we are as individuals, as families and as a people. The recipe archive is brought to life through dynamic public programming including pop-up dinners, holiday cooking classes, events and a podcast, "Schmaltzy".

Among the stories collected by the Jewish Food Society is that of Esther Serruyia Weyl's family. Her relatives emigrated from Morocco in the late 19th century to northern Brazil, near the city of Belém. Despite the fact that the ingredients of the dishes turned out to be completely different from those of their homeland, they adapted local products and cooking methods to create their own unique blend of Moroccan Jewish traditions and Brazilian flavors. Esther remembers double Shabbat meals from her childhood: the first, eaten in the community synagogue, and the second, with her family, at her grandmother's house, who often made adafina or couscous, and sometimes amoronia (a dish of chicken, onions, and eggplant).