Elizabeth Alpern
By Elizabeth Alpern
-
Food WATCH: Your Jewish Grandmother’s Cure For The Common Cold
The arrival of cold season is loudly heralded by advertisements for flu shots and the sounds of sniffles on buses and trains. Colds are inescapable and still, year after year, armed with folk medicine and fierceness, we resolve to cure the incurable. Thankfully, Jewish tradition, from Maimonides to the shtetl, offers us some guidance for…
-
Food Jewish Dinner at JoeDoe Takes Fun Culinary Liberties
If you are a Jewish food enthusiast and happen to live in New York, your calendar has been quite busy of late. Restaurants are hosting deli-themed Shabbat dinners, museums are hosting talks on gefilte fish and venues across the city are nodding to Ashkenazi fare in any number of creative ways. These events are focused…
-
Culture From South Africa, an Activist’s Recipe Recalls the Power of Food
The early years of Nelson Mandela’s life as an organizer and revolutionary were marked by cross-cultural experiences centered around the table, even when such alliances were frowned upon politically. The Indian South African community, and the solidarity it showed in passive resistance campaigns, deeply influenced Mandela’s later mass actions and encouraged Mandela and his colleagues…
-
Culture From Egypt, a Traditional Dish Links to an Ongoing Struggle
At the start of 2011 the world watched as the Egyptian people overthrew longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. It is not often that we can so easily honor the Haggadah’s instruction that “In every generation one must look upon himself as if he personally has come out of Egypt.” The Jewish community of Egypt dates back…
-
Food Foods of Freedom: South African Vegetable Curry
To read the first installment of Foods of Freedom click here. The early years of Nelson Mandela’s life as an organizer and revolutionary were marked by cross-cultural experiences centered around the table, even when such alliances were frowned upon politically. The Indian South African community, and the solidarity it showed in passive resistance campaigns, deeply…
-
Food Foods of Freedom: Egyptian Leek Mina
After the bitter herbs, charoset, salt water and the symbolism that goes along with them, the Passover seder can easily slip into a festive meal containing minimal meaning, save for the deliciousness of this year’s soup versus last year’s. Though our Passover entrees are often filled with significance, as foods of family tradition and memories…
-
Food Kitchen Talk With Chef Lévana Kirschenbaum
“If I catch one of you putting garlic powder in your soup…oy va voy…I’ll sue you”. On a recent Monday evening, Moroccan born Chef Lévana Kirschenbaum welcomed guests to her Upper West Side home for a cooking class on Moroccan street food. Switching between English, French, Hebrew and Spanish, Kirschenbaum crafted a night of tasty…
-
Food Jewish Cooking Classes Go Gourmet
Chef Robbie Meltzer of Zola Wine and Kitchen in Washington, DC, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a devotee to complex and unabashedly treyf flavors. His infamous “conflict of interest Wednesdays” feature a pork dish paired with spicy matzo ball soup. But once a year his twice-weekly cooking class takes a…
Most Popular
- 1
Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
- 2
Culture They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
- 3
Culture ‘A Complete Unknown’ proves that one thing about Bob Dylan will certainly endure
- 4
Film & TV Why ‘The Brutalist’ resonated so deeply with me
In Case You Missed It
-
News 18 notable Jews who died in 2024
-
Fast Forward Department of Ed resolves Title VI antisemitism complaints against 5 U of California campuses, U of Cincinnati
-
Theater While Yiddish lives, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ghost stories may flourish
-
Yiddish World Frankie’s Menorah (a Yiddish Hanukkah story)
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism