How Isaac Bashevis Singer’s translator edits without editing
David Stromberg, the Yiddishist behind a new collection of the Nobel Prize winner's essays for the Forward, talks about the challenges of bringing his work to a modern audience
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Food A Woman’s Place Is Not In The Kitchen — Until It Is
I was around 10 when I fell in love with cooking. I liked the way ingredients could be shaped and assembled by my small hands and transformed into something delicious — a quick and satisfying victory. But more than anything, I loved watching family members devour my food, what my then-pre-adolescent brain couldn’t have understood…
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Recipes From Bubbe’s Kitchen: Chicken Paprikash
I had a beautiful Hungarian grandmother, born Erzsébet Weisz and redubbed Elizabeth Weiss when she and her parents and brother and sister moved to New York from Miskolcz in the 1920s. I called her Nana and she called me darling. (It sounded like dahhrrlink, as if spoken by a brainiac Zsa Zsa Gabor.) Nana said…
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Food Doctor Up A Cold-Weather Classic Like This Matzo Ball Maven
Like matzo balls, bagels used to be plain — or sesame if you were lucky. There were no pumpkin, jalapeño or asiago-cheese bagels on which to shmear your cream cheese. Now, it’s the matzo ball’s turn to diversify, and Dr. Susan Sandler, a creative kosher cook in suburban Philadelphia, is doing her part: She’s doctoring…
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Food My Zayde Has Cooking Down To A Science
“My father would always say that there are two kinds of people: those who eat to live and those who live to eat,” my grandpa, who I call Zayde, said to me over the phone. “I definitely eat to live.” And, believe me, if you knew Zayde, you’d know that this could not be more…
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Food Zayde’s Top-Secret Recipe
“For me, noodle kugel has special significance because it is the one thing that I get credit for,” said my maternal grandpa, who I call Zayde. As you can tell from his daily eating routine, Zayde is not much of a chef. Though he can’t recall when my great-grandmother (and namesake) Goldie gave him the…
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Food The (Sour) Cream of the Crop
When it comes to latkes, we are a sour cream family. In fact, my mother thinks sour cream goes with everything. Not that there’s anything wrong with applesauce. But sour cream, or smetana in Russian, is in our DNA as one of the key ingredients in Russian cuisine. So this year, I’d like to take…
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Food Kosher ‘Crisis’ Averted Through Tsuris-Filled Thanksgiving Text Exchange
The following story, posted a year ago today, is as relevant now as it was then. As you’ve doubtless heard, the citizens of these (decreasingly) United States of America are freaking out about Thanksgiving this year, worried they’ll find themselves trapped at the table with relatives whose political points of view are painfully opposite their…
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