Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Kerry Brodie: Chef To Refugees

At Kerry Brodie’s restaurant, Emma’s Torch, diners can choose between coffee-crusted beef brisket and autumn squash cavatelli, red and gold beets with maple vinaigrette or brussels sprouts with chili vinegar. This is not just any autumnal menu; the restaurant is named for Emma Lazarus, the author of the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, and these dishes are the handiwork of 70 refugees, asylees and survivors of human trafficking who take classes in cooking, English as a second language and interview prep through the restaurant’s affiliated nonprofit. Brodie, a 29-year-old graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education who learned to cook from her grandmother, started the organization in 2016. It has enrolled students from 35 countries.

Brodie was nominated by a reader, who said: “Her work exemplifies the Jewish principle set for by Maimonides that the highest level of giving is to help another person become self-sufficient.”

Kerry Brodie

Kerry Brodie

Breakfast Sometimes just coffee, or if I am lucky my husband makes the best omelettes!

What’s the last thing you listened to on your phone? NPR’s “How I Built This.”

Earliest Jewish memory: Lighting Shabbat candles with my mother.

Heroes: Emma Lazarus, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and my grandmothers.

2019 memory: This year I had the chance to bring my newborn daughter to meet our students at Emma’s Torch. It was a highlight introducing her the incredible people I get to see everyday.

What is your favorite thing about being Jewish? The idea that we can and must constantly strive to make the world a better place. I feel so fortunate to be part of a community who sees that as its mission.

Weekend ritual: Having Shabbat dinner with my family. For me, lighting shabbat candles, and hearing kiddush helps me to feel centered after a long week.

Read more:

Kerry featured as a CNN Hero

Photos and more information about Kerry’s restaurant

Follow Kerry Brodie @EmmasTorch and @EmmasTorchFood

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.