(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 69, No. 1, Pesach 2014)
Jewish identity can be shown in different ways, of which one is Gastronomic Judaism – defined as ‘unattached Jews with an attachment to Jewish foods’. A good example is the poet Heinrich Heine who, having converted (without conviction) to Christianity in the hope of obtaining an academic post in Germany, did not lose his enjoyment of Jewish food.1 In 1840 he wrote in a tribute to another converted Jew, Ludwig Börne:
Börne invited me… to dine… with a friend, because the latter, in persistent loyalty to Jewish customs, would set before me the cholent stew; and indeed I enjoyed there the dish that is perhaps of Egyptian origin and as old as the Pyramids. I am surprised that Börne …has never told in his writings with what appetite, with what enthusiasm, with what devotion I once devoured the ancient Jewish cholent meal! …This dish is indeed quite excellent, and it is most painfully to be regretted that the Christian church, which has borrowed so many good things from ancient Judaism, has not adopted cholent as well… At least the Jews will then join Christianity with conviction, for… it is only cholent that keeps them in their old covenant. Börne even assured me that the apostates who had gone over to the new covenant had only to smell cholent in order to feel a certain nostalgia for the synagogue.2
But what makes foods Jewish and do these dishes form an unchanging part of our heritage? “The Jewish heritage”, wrote Heine, “was love of freedom and of good cooking.” One translation to a poem he wrote to cholent reads.”God devised and God delivered/ Unto Moses from on high,/ And commanded us to savour/ cholent for eternity.”
The concept of cholent – or other Jewish foods – for eternity will be examined in this article because food choices are subject to changes in taste, fashion, history and geography and because what is ‘yummy’ to one generation may be ‘yukky’ to the next.
Israel Abrahams, in Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, discussed traditional foods, quoting the 14th Century sage Kalonymos on Purim dishes. The latter included pies, chestnuts, turtledoves, pancakes, small tarts, gingerbread, ragouts, venison, roast goose, chicken, stuffed pigeons, ducks, pheasants, partridges, quails, macaroons, and salad. Beef was too ordinary a thing for a chag. No mention of hamentaschen! Abrahams added that goose, especially goose liver, was popular in Germany in the 16th Century as well as “what Poles called lokshen” and cheese for Chanukah.3No mention of potato latkes!
Some years ago I was approached by a non-Jewish schoolboy attending a classmate’s barmitzvah. “Which is the raw fish?” he asked. “Jews eat raw fish and I don’t want to.” It took me some time to realise that he was talking about herring. Today, however, sushi is frequently served at barmitzvahs, and that boy, now adult, probably eats it. Yet who had heard of sushi a few decades ago, let alone seen it at a barmitzvah? If sushi is not a Jewish dish, neither is herring – ask the Sephardim. Here is a 1948 description of an illegal immigrant’s arrival in Israel: “Men in blue shirts were waiting to greet them. They gave the newcomers blankets and hot tea. They also gave them pickled herring, an Eastern European delicacy, and must have thought they were being kind. Bahiyeh, raised on the cheese and spices of (Aleppo), thought it was vile.”4
Although herring stocks are suffering from over-fishing and ecological changes, it remains a cheap and popular dish – not in Syria, but in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Poland, as it was for Jews who had lived there. A friend’s mother, from Poland, refused to eat herring. She had come from a wealthy family and herring, she believed, was for poor Jews.
Among the papers belonging to the old Jewish Museum are a number of menus for communal functions.5 The oldest, from 6 September 1910, is for a banquet given by the Cape Town Jewish community to honour Dr Solomon Schechter, former lecturer in Rabbinics and Talmud at Cambridge, discoverer of the Cairo Geniza and President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Schechter was then visiting his daughter Ruth, who had married Adv. Morris Alexander, M.P., a founder of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies. The banquet started with asparagus and fried soles, then continued with hot pigeon pie or hot giblet pie, roast turkey or roast chicken, corned tongue, smoked beef, corned beef, salads, vegetables, fruit tarts, stewed fruit, jellies, fresh fruits, dessert and coffee. No herring or cholent.
Another menu is for a luncheon given on 23 May 1924 by the Dordrecht Hebrew Congregation in honour of the Rt Hon Gen JC Smuts.6 Cyril Cohen,7 the caterer, served tomato soup, fillet of sole, asparagus and butter sauce, chicken pie, roast turkey, sausage, roast goose, roast sirloin of beef and horse radish, roast hind quarter of lamb and mint sauce, trifle, steamed plum pudding, fresh fruit and cheese.
The farewell dinner for Mr Herman Lichtenstein held at the Masonic Hotel, Indwe,8 on 5 May 1925 included soup, fillet of sole, roast turkey, York ham, roast duckling, spring chicken, chicken in aspic, roast sirloin of beef, roast hind quarter of lamb, corned silverside of beef, ox tongue, salads, trifle, royal cream, vol au vent and cheese.
French terms replaced the plain English of former menus as can be seen in an undated menu from a dinner addressed by Adv. Alexander. The menu boasted hors d’oevres riches, lockschen[sic] soup, fillet rock cod muniere, lamb cutlet clamart, pommes croquettes, petit pois, roast chicken parmentiere, vegetables in season, peach melba, black coffee and cheese.
Several things are noticeable from these meat and potatoes banquets attended by Jewish leaders. The menus followed the European custom that the grander the meal, the more courses there were. There is an over-abundance of meat dishes – in earlier generations meat was a rarity in Jewish households except perhaps on the Sabbath. Moving to Africa has affected their diet and their standard of living. Other noticeable things about these menus are the plainness of the dishes – roasts and more roasts – the lack of vegetarian options, no pasta, no fancy desserts AND the lack of observance of laws of kashrut.
Twenty years on and the menu was simpler and without cheese. This was a 3 May 1949 banquet given by the SA Zionist Federation in the Cape Town City Hall in honour of Field Marshal the Rt Honourable JC Smuts, to celebrate the first anniversary of the proclamation of the State of Israel. In the chair was its Vice-chairman, the Hon Mr. Justice Joseph Herbstein, who went on aliyah, becoming Telfed Chairman.9 The cover was in English and Afrikaans, the menu in Hebrew, English and menu-French. The guests ate hors d’oeuvres, consommé of lockshen, fried sole, pate de foie gras (in Hebrew “chopped goose liver”), roast chicken (baby chicken in Hebrew) and turkey, vegetables and compote of fruit (“pickled fruit” in Hebrew).10
Looking at these celebratory banquets one is struck by the absence of gastronomic Judaism over which descendants might wax sentimental. Yes, lokshen consommé was served at two of the meals; perhaps the hors d’oeuvres included herring, but there was nothing else associated with Jewish food. As far as the lockshen/ lockschensoup is concerned, although Abrahams mentioned that in 16th Century Germany Jews ate what Poles called “lokshen”, the word is of Turkic origin; people living in that part of the Russian empire probably picked up the noodles from their Uigur and Kazan Tatar neighbours along with their word lakča for noodle. Gil Marks claims that Italian Jews introduced lokshen to the Franco-German Jews, and chicken soup with egg noodles, became standard.11 As with the adoption of lokshen, assimilation to the current fashions of the outside world is more noticeable in these menus than adherence to traditions. Even when Rev Schechter was the guest with the Gardens shul’s minister AP Bender presiding, there is no mention of benching, not even at the banquet for the State of Israel which started with a prayer by Chief Rabbi Israel Abrahams. Instead there were toasts, to the King, to the Governor General, to Dordrecht, to South Africa, to the State of Israel, to the guests.
Skipping a half century, menus becomes less cholesterol-laden, more health conscious. Fish replaces meat, gone are the soups, with or without lokshen. The seven or eight courses have been replaced by three. The stodgy fattening North European dishes heavy on carbohydrates and animal protein have morphed into nouvelle cuisine with greater simplicity and elegance. The emphasis is on healthier eating, imaginatively presented vegetables, herbs, salads, more elaborate puddings and fewer pretentious French names.
A celebratory dinner given in 2005 by the SA Zionist Council and the Bnoth Zion Wizo on 28 July 200512 followed a selection of hors d’oeuvres and sushi, with Norwegian salmon with its high omega-3 fatty acids and high vitamin D content, with roasted vegetables on wasabi mash and a beurre blanc sauce and a dessert buffet.
Four menus of the United Jewish Campaign13for dinners with international speakers in the first decade of this century show a similar concentration on simpler food, high-end fashionable dishes with the fish grilled or poached, not fried. The hors d’ oeuvres for the three meals include a trio of salmon with saffron, orange and ginger with a filo basket filled with fresh garden salad; gravad Norwegian salmon with dill potato salad and mustard dressing; three kinds of salmon with a seafood dressing. The main courses for these events were grilled kabeljou on a bed of wild mushroom risotto together with fresh asparagus with a basil verblanc dressing; delice of sole with fondant potatoes, haricots vert and tomato butter sauce; baked line fish with coriander and cashew nut pesto served with spring onion, crushed new potatoes and roasted vegetables. The final menuoffered sesame crusted salmon, steamed asparagus spinach tart and potato gratin. It is when one comes to the desserts that the differences are most marked – gone the fruit compote, trifle or baked pud. Enter the chocolate mousse, the poached pears on a chocolate tart with vanilla creme fraiche, the cheese soufflé.
Where in Jewish gastronomy does one find cashew nut pesto, wild mushroom risotto, filo baskets? These meals are cosmopolitan, showing modern trends and tastes. Japanese sushi and wasabi, Italian pesto and risotto, Greek filo, French mousse and soufflé – but with Beth Din supervision. But this is what Jewish food has always done – adopted the tastes of the people amongst whom the Jewish community was living while adapting their preparation to conform to the laws of kashrut.
“What is known as traditional Jewish dishes vary with each place of Jewish sojourn and a comprehensive history of Jewish cooking would require a map of the Jewish dispersion,” explains Chaim Bermant, adding that many of the better-known Jewish dishes are but a means to making a little go a long way, with gefilte fish symbolising this.14 When one adopts a new food or recipe, one usually takes on board the name it came with, so by identifying the origin of the word, one can identify the source.
Using this knowledge, let us now examine the roots of other foods traditionally eaten by Jewish people – latkes, kugel, kichel, kneidlach, blintzes, bagels, borsht – the list is long. Is there any validity to the concept of Gastronomic Judaism?
What about potato latkes and potato kugel? So popular and traditional were these staples of the Jewish diet that when a character in Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar wants to mock her attempt to sound less Jewish, he taunts: “Those overtones of potato pancakes, Friday-night candles, gefilte fish – that’s what you don’t like.”15 But the Maccabees never ate potato latkes at Chanukah. Nor did they make potato kugel. Not even the words are Jewish. Latke is Slavic for pancake16 as kugel is German for ball (as in the Afrikaans koëel – bullet). There is a Yiddish saying that if a woman cannot make a kugel – divorce her.17 Which reminds one of the adapted nursery rhyme: “Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?”……She can bake a cherry pie,/ But I cannot tell a lie,/ Twas her father gave me acid indigestion.”
Well if she can’t bake a kugel, maybe it is her husband who is the problem! Although many regard a kugel made with lokshen and raisins as a traditional Jewish dish, Romanians claim the baked noodle and raisin dish as their culinary patrimony.
Even as late as 425 years ago, no Jew would have made potato kugel or potato latkes. Nor would the Slavs or the Germans. None of them would have ever seen a potato. Italian Jews were supposed to be the first to serve latkes at Chanukah, but made with ricotta cheese, not potatoes. This vegetable was only introduced into Western Europe in 1588, and it took another 200 years before potatoes became a familiar European food. Potato recipes first appeared in a Swiss cookbook in 159818, filtering into Eastern Europe’s pantries to reappear hallowed by tradition for Chanukah or Passover.Poverty plagued the shtetl storerooms. Potatoes were cheap and traditional recipes made economic use of the cheaper foods available. There was even a popular Yiddish song Bulves (potatoes), celebrating its ubiquity: “Sunday, potatoes, Monday potatoes, Tuesday and Wednesday potatoes, Thursday and Friday potatoes, but on Saturday for a change – a potato kugel! Sunday, potatoes… Must one only eat meat and have a fat belly? In time of poverty potatoes are also a delicacy.”19
The Maccabees did not bake challah, meaning ‘loaf’, the traditional braided bread we eat on Shabbat. According to John Cooper, the first mention of challah occurred among 15th Century Jews in southern Germany and Austria.20 Only South African Jews refer to challah as kitke, but kitke, from the Polish for ‘twisted’ or the German for ‘putty’, just refers to the braids or decorations attached before baking to the challah, not to the whole loaf. Isaac Reznik believes that the word comes from the Khoisan ‘kitkoi’, meaning twisted, which referred to the twisted plaits of hair of many Jewish women and children. Jews who had been attracted to the Kimberley diamond fields and then moved on to the Witwatersrand gold fields, settling in Ferreirasdorp, often took with them their Khoisan and Griqua employees, who would be asked to take loaves on Shabbat to neighbouring Jewish families, and would say that they were delivering kitkes.21
Is challah an authentic Jewish recipe? Friday honors the Scandinavian goddess Freyja, Odin’s wife, goddess of love and fertility, patron of marriage and motherhood, who assisted in childbirth. Her name meant “beloved one”, from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to love” as in the word “friend”. It is not surprising that on Friday, her name day, housewives in central Europe and the Slavic countries would bake braided loaves, representing the goddess’s long plaits, in her honor. Nor is it surprising that Jews moving into pagan Europe saw and copied these with their Friday loaves.
We do not have recipe books from Biblical or Talmudic times, but the ingredients would have been limited: Bread made from wheat, millet or lentils was a staple food, along with cooked grains, and legumes as well as birds, eggs, fish, locusts, with occasionally meat from goats or sheep, grapes, dates, pomegranates, nuts wine, and olive oil.22 No rice, no sugar. No potatoes, tomatoes, maize, avocadoes, chilli peppers, lima, string or runner beans, red and green peppers, peanuts, vanilla, chocolate, turkey23 – these all came from America many centuries later. When Jews were entering Europe after the destruction of the Temple, when they were fleeing into Eastern Europe one thousand years later after the massacres of the Crusades, they were celebrating Pesach and Chanukah, but were doing so without any of these foods. The diets in Eastern Europe were far more limited – onions, cabbage, peas, broad beans, rye or wheat flour. One immigrant interviewed by the Kaplan Centre in Cape Town recalled her mother-in-law visiting her in Lithuania and refusing to let her put a new-fangled tomato in the stew as she was convinced it was poisonous. Another, also from Lithuania, recalled their belief that the top of the tomatoes caused cancer.
Are the kneidlach eaten at Pesach authentically Jewish? It is true that only Jews make their dumplings out of matza meal. However, cooked dough balls/ dumplings form part of the cuisine of most people, whether these are Czech knedlíkor Slovakian knedliček, South German kneidlachor Austrian knödel,nockerl or knöpfle, or what, with different names, are eaten by people living in Japan, Poland, Hungary, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Ghana, Chile, Jamaica and the Caribbean. There is even a potato dumpling museum, Thüringer Kloßmuseum, in Heichelheim near Weimar, Germany.
In one of Shalom Aleichem’s stories,24 Tevya narrates how he tempted a young man to spend Shavuot with them by his description of Golda’s blintzes – “Such blintzes as your ‘blessed ancestors never ate in Egypt’… plump and juicy and as sweet as the life-giving manna from heaven.” So, are blintzes Jewish food?
Wikipedia claims that blintzes were popularised in America by Jewish immigrants who used them in Jewish cuisine25 but before taking the credit, it must be accepted that blintzes (or pancakes /pannekoek / blini / crepes) are cooked everywhere and that even the word blintze is Ukrainian, from old Slavic. As blintzes were round, the Slavic people in pre-Christian times regarded them as a symbol for the sun and prepared them at the end of winter to honor the rebirth of the new sun. So can we claim them as Jewish cuisine?
What about perogen served in chicken soup on Rosh Hashana? Jack Shapiro, memorialising life in Doornfontein, recalled that his “(Bobba) loved making perogen the heimishe way… I cried bitter tears when I found out that my favourite Jewish dish was really a Polish dish, the peasant’s favourite dish paragi and kiske”26 Similarly an article on changes in Poland as a result of the temptations of Western consumerism quoted a Pole saying “pirogen is not a noble dish.”27
So Jews must have picked up pirogen while living in Poland along with kishka. Both are mentioned in a popular 1950s polka tune Who Stole the Kishka? by Polish American Walter Solek: “Someone stole the kishka/ Someone stole the kishka/ Who stole the kishka/ from the butcher’s shop? Who stole the kishka?/Who stole the kishka?/Who stole the kishka?/ Someone call the cops!/Fat and round and firmly packed /It was hanging on the rack/Someone stole the kishka/ When I turned my back/Take my sweet krusczyki [biscuits]/ Take my plump pirogin/ You can even have my chernika [blueberries]/Take my long kielbasa [sausage]/ But give me back my kishka etc. etc”. Fortunately, the song ends happily: “Yusef found the kishka etc…. And he hung it on the rack.”28
Then there are the kreplach served in soup before Yom Kippur. One school believes that the word Kreppel or kreplach is derived from the Old High German kraepfo meaning grape (as in the Middle English word grapple from a grape vine hook), while another school believes that the word entered Yiddish from the Old French wordcrespe meaning ‘pancake’ or ‘filled pastry’ or any wrinkled, crapy material (like crepe de chine)or crepes suzette via the Latin crispum.29 It is intriguing to think that the Yiddish word could be related to so many other things, but there is nothing especially Jewish about kreplach – Italians call them tortellini, the Chinese call them wontons. Nor is borsht Jewish even though the Catskill Mountains, a popular holiday spot for mostly Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants and their families from the 1940s to the 1960s, was nicknamed the ‘Borscht Belt’ (a play on the name Bible Belt). It is a Ukrainian beetroot soup.
Ah, but what about the hamentaschen at Purim?30Hamentaschen is German for Haman’s pocket or bag and the pastries are filled pockets, often with poppy seed (mohn in German and Yiddish). They were called mohn taschen, or poppy seed pockets, but as mohntaschen sounded like Hamentaschen, hamentaschen they became31(except in Italy where they were called Haman’s ears because they believed Haman had donkey’s ears and elongate their hamentaschen to look like ears). Bohemian Jews32 filled theirs with prune sauce to celebrate the release of the family of David Brandeis, plum merchants, after being falsely accused of killing gentiles with poisoned plum jam in the 1731 Brandeis Purim – the ‘Plum Jam Purim.’33 So who knows what the original hamentaschen looked like or when they were first prepared?
We do know that bagels were the first Jewish food to go into space.34 In America lox and bagels (brought there by Polish Jews) are regarded as a typically Jewish dish and Jewish astronaut Dr Gregory Chamitoff, an engineer whose cousin owns Montreal’s Fairmount Bagels, took 18 sesame seed bagels with him as part of his personal allowance. He spent 198 days in space from May to November 2008, travelling to the International Space Station, and the bagels must have made a nice change from space food.35
It was thought that bagels were first made when King John Sobieski of Poland drove off the Turks attacking Vienna in 1683. One soldier took as booty sacks of unfamiliar coffee beans left behind by the Turks and when he found out what to do with these indigestible beans, he started the first Viennese coffee house, serving the drink with crescent shaped rolls. When Sobieski entered Vienna with the grateful citizens clinging to his stirrups (beugel being German for stirrups36), the baker redesigned the Muslim crescents into stirrup shapes – and the Jews moved into Poland bringing their bagels with them. Webster’s New World College Dictionary derivation agrees with the story, as it says that the word comes from Middle High German via the Austrian German beugel, a kind of croissant, similar to the German bügel, a stirrup or ring.
The stirrup derivation is, however, contested by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which claims that the word comes from the Middle High Germanböugel or ring. Poles say they were the ones who invented bagels, for Lent in 16th Century Krakow – they became a staple of the Polish and Slavic national diet. The first record of bagels is supposed to be found in a decree in the 1610 Krakow Community Regulations37 granting a gift of bagels to every woman in childbirth. Bagels could be seen in London in the middle of the 19thCentury, often displayed in baker’s windows on vertical wooden dowels up to a metre in length.
What about gefilte (a German word) fish, known on Russian and Polish hotel menus as ‘Jewish fish’.38 Maybe this is a genuine Jewish invention of the frugal and impoverished Jewish mother. It is believed to have originated in Holland to where the Jews fled after the 1492 expulsion from Spain. In Rumania and the Balkans, Jews would serve whole fish stuffed between the skin and backbone. In America and South Africa, these became minced fish balls.
However, one genuine Jewish invention seldom credited as being a Jewish innovation is the typically English fish and chips! Sephardi Jews when they came to England as refugees in the sixteenth century were not going to fry their fish in lard – they used olive oil. In 1544 Manuel Brudo, a Portuguese Marrano, wrote that the favorite dish of Marrano refugees in England was fried fish, which they sprinkled with flour and dipped in egg and bread crumbs. When Thomas Jefferson, later US president, visited England in 1786 he wrote that he ate “fried fish in the Jewish fashion”. When his granddaughter, Virginia, put together a collection of his favorite recipes, she included a recipe for fried fish in the Jewish manner using oil.39 The first British Jewish cookbook, published in 1846, included a recipe for it.40 Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant, opened the first fish and chip shop in London’s East End in 1860 and the first fish restaurant, serving fish and chips, bread and butter, and tea for nine pence was opened by Samuel Isaacs in London in 1896.41 Malin’s of Bow was presented with a commemorative plaque by the National Federation of Fish Fryers in 1968 to recognise its founding role in the chip business. Yet who thinks of fish and chips as authentic Jewish cuisine?
What we regard today as traditional Jewish food is really just the food traditional to some of the lands through which the wandering Jews passed. While we sojourned there, we ate the foods available, adapted the recipes to our dietary requirements, and adopted the words used for them. Traditional Jewish cookery therefore reveals our journeys, as do the words used for these dishes.
The English language also adapted the foods and adopted the words. The Angles and Saxons had cows, sheep, calves and swine. The French conquerors in 1066 brought French words to the table as beef, mutton, veal, and pork.42 Some foods were adopted with their original names, others with the name of the place from where they originated. Tomatoes took the Mexican name tomatl43; potatoes were grown on Mount Potosi by the Potosino silver miners in Peru44 and xocolatl (chocolate) was drunk in the court of the Emperor Montezuma of Mexico45. Tea – tcha in Cantonese, but tay in the dialect used in Amoy, the Chinese port from where it was imported by the Dutch East India Company – became the English ‘tea’ but the Slavic tchay46and the teapot became the tchynik, as in the Yiddish phrase hak a tchynik47(‘strike the teapot’).
S.Y. Agnon describes the first encounter of a party of early 19th Century Jewish pilgrims with coffee: “Their Sephardic brethren boiled kahava, a kind of drink which rouses the heart and causes sleep to depart and which is not known in the land of Poland although it is mentioned in the ‘Ordered Table’”.49
Eastern Europe immigrants to South Africa were introduced to many unfamiliar foodstuffs. One remembered being given grapes and bananas at Madeira: “The grapes I ate, but the bananas I threw overboard as I did not think they were food.”51 Another remembered her mother buying her a green ball on the vegetable cart in Cape Town and not realizing that squash was a vegetable not a toy.52
When we consider traditional foods we forget that although our culinary tastes are conservative, habits can change. Could you think of a children’s party without coke or chips? But a century ago there was Life without Coke. Could one imagine a dinner where sardines on toast was served between the dessert and the coffee? This was offered on the first class carriage dinner menu (cost 5/-) of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway of 9 April 1924.
Certainly Lucy, enjoying tea with Tumnus the faun in CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, was given sardines on toast. Today, no first class dinner menu today would offer sardines on toast, let alone after the dessert.
One menu of much sentimental interest to this writer demonstrates clearly the changes in taste and availability of food. This comes from the Waldorf Restaurant, then one of the smartest restaurants in Cape Town, to where my father took his girlfriend (who became my mother) on her 21st birthday in 1941. The nine-course set menu cost 2/6d. One could order separate dishes which included, under ‘Sundries’ – sweet corn on toast, asparagus on toast, welsh rarebit, sardines on toast (but not after dessert) and sardine, tomato or cheese omelettes. Desserts cost 6d – stewed apple and cream, stewed figs and cream, stewed prunes and cream or bananas and cream. If you really wanted to splurge and spend 1/- you could order canned pears and cream or canned peaches and cream. This was in the middle of the war and was a long way from the meat-rich banquets earlier in the century.
To return to Heinrich Heine, the Gastronomic Jew, and his much loved cholent: A slow-cooked stew of meat, potatoes, beans and barley, cholentis regarded as the typical Jewish dish, invented by Jews to enable them to have a hot, cooked dish on Shabbat. Many are the stories of children sent down to the bakers on Fridays, each with their own specially marked pot to be placed in the baker’s oven where the heat would keep it cooking slowly after Shabbat came in. There are stories of children stealing meat out of the pot on the way home, or moving a potato from the pot of the rich to the pot of a poor family.
In 1840, Heine wrote Princess Sabbath53,part of his “Hebrew Melodies” collection as a parody of Schiller’s Ode To Joy (set to music by Beethoven in his 9th Symphony). Heine’s collection resulted from his outrage on learning of the Damascus Affair in which eight Jews were accused of ritual murder, following the death of a monk. Heine’s conversion was only skin deep and this antisemitism brought to the fore his identification with his fellow Jews as is obvious in his ode to schalet (cholent).54
“Loved one! smoking is forbidden/ For today the Sabbath is./ But at noon, in compensation / Thou a steaming dish shalt taste of,/ Which is perfectly delicious – Thou shalt eat today some Schalet! Schalet, beauteous spark immortal, Daughter of Elysium !/ Thus would Schiller’s song have sung it,/ Had he ever tasted Schalet. Schalet is the food of heaven,/ Which the Lord Himself taught Moses/ How to cook, when on that visit/ To the summit of Mount Sinai,…Schalet is the pure ambrosia/ That the food of heaven composes / Is the bread of Paradise; And compared with food so glorious,/ The ambrosia of the spurious/ Heathen gods whom Greece once worshipp’d/…Was but wretched devil’s dung.
Is cholent then an original Jewish dish with an original Yiddish name – possibly a corrupted ‘shul end’?55 The cholent cooked in Eastern Europe by Jews fleeing the Crusades and the persecutions of Western Europe had its name gradually changed from the Western Yiddish schalet, which had been used in Holland, Germany and Bohemia. The name derives from the Old French chaldain, meaning anything hot, which in turn had come from the Latin calidus. The answer is, probably.
So what can one conclude from all this? That, for Ashkenazi sentimentalists, Gastronomic Judaism refers to the East European recipes picked up by the wandering Jews from their neighbors with the exception of authentic dishes like boiled matzo meal dough balls (kneidlach), possibly gefilte fish, probably cholent if you take Heinrich Heine’s word for it and definitely fried fish and chips. And that tastes do change from one generation to the next. When last did you eat turtledoves, pheasants or partridges, let alone pitcha, grievenes, kishka or stuffed helzel or sardines after dessert?
Have I made a tzimmes of the subject. i.e. a prolonged procedure (aka a dish of slightly sweetened mixed cooked vegetables, from the German zum essen – to the eating)?56 B’tay Avon.
Gwynne Schrire is Deputy Director of the Cape Council of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She is a veteran contributor and active member of the editorial board of Jewish Affairs and has written, co-written and edited numerous books on local Jewish and Cape Town history.
NOTES
- He called conversion “the ticket of admission into European culture”.
- Heinrich Heine on the magical powers of cholent (schalet);19 Sep 2010; onthemainline.blogspot.com/…/heinrich-heine-on-magical-powers-of…
- Abrahams, Israel, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1919, p151.
- Friedman, Matti, The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, Algonquin, North Carolina, 2012, p64.
- I thank genealogist Paul Cheifitz for photocopying these and drawing them to my attention.
- Dordrecht is in the Eastern Cape and its synagogue was completed in 1913 with a celebration that took place in the home of Mr and Mrs M Stern with its president Joseph Moss giving the opening speech. At the lunch for Smuts 11 years later, Councilor Moss and Mr Stern both spoke. With thanks to Tammy Glanger of the Jacob Gitlin Library who checked this for me, and found information about the congregation in Vol 3 of the Bet Hatfutsot SA Country Communities.
- A relative of Paul Cheifitz; paulcheifitz@gmail.com.
- Herman Lichtenstein’s farewell took place at Indwe in the Eastern Cape, about 40 km south-east of Dordrecht. Lichtenstein, a character of note, fought in the Boer War, With thanks to Paul Cheifitz, pers. communication, 29.11.2012.
- David Sherman (ed), 40 Years in Retrospect: The story of the Western Province Zionist Council 1943-1983, Western Province Zionist Council, Cape Town, 1984, pp 44-5.
- With thanks to Yaniv Nachmias and Tamar Lazarus for help with the translation, 28.11.2012.
- Gill Marks is a rabbi, author of Encyclopedia of Jewish Food and founding editor of Kosher Gourmet magazine. From ‘Is There a Secret Ingredient in the Jewish Relationship with Food?’, Moment, July, 2013.
- With grateful thanks to Tamar Lazarus, former chairman Bnoth Zion Association-WIZO, 2012.
- With grateful thanks to Barry Levitt, of the United Jewish Canpaign, 2012.
- Bermant, Chaim, The Walled Garden: The Saga of Jewish Family Life and Tradition, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London and Jerusalem, 1974, pp 165-166.
- Quoted in Adam Kirsch, ‘Herman Wouk’s Last Shot’, Tablet Magazine, November 20, 2012.
- Rosten, Leo, The Joys of Yiddish, Penguin Books 1968, pp 43,188,210.
- Rosten, op. cit. p202.
- Usherwood, Steven, Food, Drink and History, David & Charles, Newton Abbot,.1972, p54.
- Bulves. Folksong. Text first published by Kisselgos in 1911. This song was popular among Jewish soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War.
- Both quote John Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food; Winston-Macauley, Marnie , ‘A Brief History of Challah’, 7 Jul 2012,www.aish.com › Jewlarious › Cool Stuff; Fass, Jonathan, “Challah: a richly fascinating history: Jewish Herald Voice On Line 8 March, 2012, Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast’s Jewish Community Newspaper, jhvonline.com/challah-a-richly-fascinating-history-p12674-220.htm
- Isaac Reznik, “Origin of kitke: Another view”, In Lionel Slier, Community Buzz, SA Jewish Report, 23 .4.2010. With thanks to Lyane Polonsky for passing this article onto me.
- Jewish cuisine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish.
- Tannahill, Reay, The Fine Art of Food, Folio Society, Norwich. op cit. p92.
- Shalom Aleichem, Tevya’s Daughters. transl. Butwin. Crown, New York 1948, p149.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blintz.
- Shapiro, Jack, The Streets of Doornfontein, 2010, p130.
- Time magazine, 27 November, 1989.
- Who Stole the Kishka?, originally spelled “Who Stole the Keeshka?” is a traditional polka tune, written by Walter Dana (music), and by Walter Solek (lyrics), and recorded and performed by various bands including Walt Solek, Frankie Yankovic, Matys Brothers and Brave Combo.
- Sivan, G. ‘The Terms of a Yiddish Romance’, Jewish Affairs, Vol 43, No 4 July/August 1988, p8.
- Rosten, op. cit. p134.
- Sella,Uri and Avnon,Naf. So Eat My Darling.: A Guide To The Yiddish Kitchen, Massada, Givatayim 1977, pp147-8.
- Leonard, Leah, Jewish Cookery Andre Deutsch London 1951, op cit. pp 5-6.
- Encyclopaedia Judaica ,vol. 13, col. 1392, pp 1397-9.
- Kosher food has been sent up when required.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Chamitoff.
- Appel, Barbara. El Al Looks into the Bagel. El Al, New York. Undated.
- Rosten, op. cit. p26.
- Leonard, Leah, op.cit. p27.
- Claudia Roden, “Gefilte Fish and the Jews”, in Jewish Heritage Online Magazine jhom.com/topics/fish/gefilte.html.
- Jay Rayner, ‘Enduring love – Fish and Chips’, The Observer, Sunday 19 January 2003. He credits Claudia Roden, a cultural anthropologist, cookery book writer and BBC cooking show presenter for the information and she has said that nobody has challenged her version.
- Fish and chips – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips.
- Partridge, Eric, The World of Words, Hamish Hamilton London, 1949, p23.
- Funk, Wilfred, Word Origins and their Romantic Stories.Funk & Wagnall, New York 1950, p179.
- Usherwood, Steven, Food, Drink and History, p54.
- Usherwood, op. cit. p50.
- Usherwood..op. cit. p38.
- Rosten, op. cit. p157.
- Tannahill, Reay, op cit, p88.
- Agnon, S Y, In The Heart of the Seas, Gollancz, London 1967, p92.
- Usherwood. op. cit p47.
- Informant J.T. From Kaplan Centre Oral History Collection, Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town
- Esther Miller, Cape Jewish Seniors Association, personal communication.
- Princess Sabbath, The Works of Heinrich Heine, Romancero, Third Book, Hebrew Melodies, William Heineman, London, 1905.
- Shollar, Leah-Perl, Ode to Cholent, 31/5/2011, The JLI Community Blog, The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute. www.myJLI.com
- Sella,Uri and Avnon, op cit, p8.
- Rosten, op cit p421
