Honestly, I think adults would benefit from reading children’s books, even if they don’t have kids. Generally, the books impart good messages, like how to overcome challenges or be proud of who you are, and their illustrations are works of art. The two I reviewed for this issue of the Jewish Independent are prime examples.
Tali and the Toucan by writer Mira Z. Amiras and illustrators Chantelle and Burgen Thorne (Collective Book Studio) is set in San Francisco. The young protagonist, Tali, longs to tumble, swing and cartwheel like other kids, and she would love to take martial arts. But she is debilitated by fear – that the world will shatter, that she will break into a million pieces, that she will get hurt. Then, one night, she has a dream. At first, it’s kind of a scary dream, with a storm raging, chickens flapping about. One chicken makes it to the roof, pecks a hole in the window glass, and transforms into a toucan. The colourful-beaked bird teaches Tali how to tumble and soar in the sky. She awakes with new spirit and courage, no longer feeling like a chicken but like a toucan, ready to fly – and fall – with the other kids.
While not spelled out in the story, at the end of the book, there’s a note that explains that Tali’s fear of the world shattering “is taken from Jewish teachings that the world is indeed broken and that our job, called in Hebrew tikkun olam, is to put it back together again – starting with ourselves.” In addition to the “hamsa she wears – an amulet common to peoples of theMiddle East worn to protect children – her dreams lead her to conquer her fears, begin her tikkun and follow the path of Aikido, the Japanese martial art of nonviolence that teaches harmony, mutual assistance and peaceful resolutions to conflict.”
Other than the fact that Tali wants to do martial arts, the text of Tali and the Toucan doesn’t touch upon ideas like multiculturalism, cooperation or what a well-functioning society looks like, but rather expresses these concepts through the artwork. There’s a lot to look at in the illustrations and they beautifully capture Tali’s emotional journey.
Oy, Santa!, or There’s a Latke to Learn about Hanukkah by writer Joyce Schriebman and illustrator Gil von Meissner (Intergalactic Afikoman) also expresses so much with its artwork. Whereas Tali’s hamsa makes an appearance on almost every page of her book, different kinds of light run through Oy, Santa! – white swirls full of stars, hanukkiyot with candles lit, strings of Christmas lights and exploding fireworks. While Tali and the Toucan only hints at multiculturalism and doesn’t explicitly talk about Judaism, Oy, Santa! puts both topics front and centre.
On Christmas Eve, young Oliver Overstreet writes an email to Santa: “I know you’re busy making toys, so I won’t write much. But I’m Jewish. And that means you don’t have to come down my chimney on Christmas Eve. I just wanna make sure you know.”
And so begins a delightful – and educational – email exchange between Oliver and Santa, who assures Oliver that he knows that both Oliver, and Oliver’s friend Ibrahim, do not celebrate Christmas. Oliver rails at Santa’s signoff, wishing Oliver a “Happy Chrismukkah!”
“Dear Santa,” he writes. “I know you’re still very busy. But please don’t write Chrismukkah. That’s not my holiday. I celebrate HANUKKAH. And Hanukkah and Christmas are different….” Oliver goes on to explain the story of Hanukkah and some of the fun ways the holiday is celebrated.
Santa and Oliver talk about many things in subsequent emails, from elves getting time off to celebrate whatever holidays are in their culture, to miracles and how reindeers fly, to whether it’s acceptable to put ketchup on latkes, and more. The conversation even gets a little heated, but – spoiler alert – Oliver and Santa work things out.
Oy, Santa! is a wonderful read, with lots of humour, fun illustrations, and great takeaways about identity, diversity, culture, civil discourse and friendship.
The reasons why Wendy Atkinson, who owns Ronsdale Press, wanted to publish Have Bassoon Will Travel: Memoir of an Adventurous Life in Music by the late George Zukerman, are the reasons people should read it. Zukerman had a long and impressive solo career as a bassoonist, was a pioneer in organizing concerts and tours, and gave remote communities across Canada the rare chance to hear classical music performed live.
“She recognized that his anecdotes capture a vital period in Canada’s musical history and are vivid reminders of the lengths musicians will go to tour our vast country,” reads the afterword. “George’s memoirs go beyond simply capturing a life. He expanded the cultural reach of classical music in Canada; no small feat and Canada is better for it.”
How Zukerman’s memoir came to be is an example of the communities he created in his life. When he died Feb. 1, 2023, in White Rock, the manuscript had been written, but it took several volunteers – each with their own connections – to bring it to publication quality and get it printed. After reading Have Bassoon Will Travel, you will know why they did it. Not only was Zukerman a world-class musician and impresario, but he was a world-class human being: humble, funny, innovative, hardworking, fairness-driven, adventuresome, the list goes on.
Zukerman was born in London, England, on Feb. 22, 1927. Well into the book he talks about how he never liked his name, George – his parents, both American citizens living abroad, named him after the United States’ first president, George Washington. His middle name, Benedict, was in honour of 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, who was expelled by his community for his ideas. Zukerman also discusses his surname, the spelling of which differs across family thanks to the North American melting pot. There is something to be said about living up to one’s name, and Zukerman certainly was a leader in his fields of music, both as performer and impresario; he certainly forged his own path, uplifting the place of the bassoon in the orchestral world, creating opportunities for fellow musicians to perform and bringing classical music to the remotest of areas; and he lived in several places and traveled, mostly for work, around the world.
It is incredible how much of life is directed by (seeming) happenstance. Zukerman’s first encounter with the bassoon was at 11-and-a-half years of age. It was an accidental meeting, as his older brother showed him around the London prep school Zukerman was about to attend.
“We wandered past the windows of a basement chapel and glanced down to where an orchestra was rehearsing,” writes Zukerman. “A row of tall pipes seemed to reach for the ceiling. I could see and hear very little through the moss-covered stone walls and grimy opaque windows of the old school, and I wondered what on earth these strange-looking instruments were. My brother, already in Form IV, authority on much, including most musical matters, declared them to be bassoons, and the piece in rehearsal the annual Messiah. We walked on to explore my new school, and any awareness that I would spend my life playing that instrument would have been uncannily prescient. The bassoon remained buried deep among early memories.”
His next encounter was as random. As the Second World War began, the family – less Zukerman’s journalist father, who joined later – left London for New York City. There, Zukerman attended the newly established High School of Music and Art.
“By way of an audition,” he shares, “I played [on the piano] my one and only party piece (a simple Beethoven sonatina). To my surprise as much as anyone else’s, I was admitted to the class of 1940! Dare I suspect that my acceptance had as much to do with short pants and an English accent as with any evident musical skill?”
On the first day of school, the kids were told to pick an instrument. “No British prep school could have readied me for such democratic and independent action, so I hesitated,” writes Zukerman. “On all sides of me, the pushy American kids ran furiously and grasped what they could most easily identify. The violins, clarinets, flutes, trumpets, cellos and drums disappeared into groping hands. When I finally reached the shelf, all that remained was an anonymous black box. I lifted it gently and carried it toward a teacher standing nearby. ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ I asked timidly, ‘but what is this?’
“He looked down, and a broad smile covered his face. ‘Why, you are our bassoonist!’ he declared.”
With faint remembrance of the tour with his brother, he thought, “Was I now going to play such an instrument?”
Indeed, he was, and to eventual great acclaim, both as part of orchestras and as a soloist. But, as you can imagine, bassoonist was not exactly a living-wage career, at least not in Zukerman’s time, and his parallel career arose from a need for more work. Having learned during his time with the St. Louis Sinfonietta in the 1940s about community concerts – where money was raised in advance through subscriptions rather than individual ticket sales, and no contracts were signed until the money to pay for everything had been raised – Zukerman, who was by then living in Vancouver, brought the idea to Canada. His offer to an American company to be their representative here declined, Zukerman decided to do it on his own.
“Canada was coming of age, and Canadian communities were ready to make their own concert plans and to welcome Canadian groups and soloists, even if at the time they were equally unknown,” he writes. “Within a decade, Maclean’s magazine would write that I had successfully outsmarted the Americans at their own game.”
It is fascinating to read of Zukerman’s efforts to expand the reach of classical music in Canada and other countries – he visited the Soviet Union eight times between 1971 and 1992, as performer and concert organizer, and brought Soviet musicians to Canada to tour. Decades earlier, he spent a year-plus in Israel, part of the nascent Israel Philharmonic. He was also part of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in its early days, and of the Vancouver Jewish community – Abe Arnold, publisher of the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin, had a small but notable impact on Zukerman’s life.
Have Bassoon Will Travel is a truly engaging read. The way in which Zukerman writes is like how he would have spoken, though likely more concise and organized. The effect is that we the reader are having a chat with him, reminiscing. We get a feel for what life was like back in the day for a musician and entrepreneur. We feel nostalgia for a time many of us never experienced personally.
Almost every Holocaust survivor’s narrative involves some combination of extraordinary coincidence, righteous humanity amid dystopia or a series of chance events that astonishingly result in survival against all odds. The number of such flukes in the life of Vancouver woman Malka Pischanitskaya may convince readers of the author’s conclusion that survival was her destiny.
Pischanitskaya’s memoir, A Mother to My Mother, is one of the latest releases in the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. Begun in 2005, the program has now published scores of firsthand testimonies of Canadian Holocaust survivors, many in both official languages, and all of them available free of charge to educational institutions.
Pischanitskaya’s Ukrainian Jewish family knew its share of misery before the emergence of Nazism and war. Her father abandoned her mother before Malka was born, in 1931, and she was raised in grinding poverty by her grandmother and great-aunt while her mother worked in a nearby village and saw Malka some weekends.
The Stalinist-induced Ukrainian famine of the 1930s killed between three and five million people. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and its perpetration of the “Holocaust by bullets,” killed 1.5 million Jews, mostly shot at close range and buried in mass graves.
Young Malka’s earliest life, despite hardships, was not without happy memories of Jewish holidays and the changing of the seasons. These are tempered with stark recollections. Without electricity or anything but firewood for heat, she recalls Ukrainian winters so cold the ink at school would freeze solid.
A page from Malka Pischanitskaya’s memoir A Mother to My Mother, which includes paintings that she created for a 2019 exhibition.
After the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of the war, in 1939, five refugee families from Poland arrived in Romaniv (alternatively: Romanov).
“I have often wondered how much my community found out from these refugee families about what was happening under the Nazis in Poland and whether this made them more aware of the disaster that was to come,” writes Pischanitskaya.
What was to come was beyond imagining – which may help explain why Malka and her family remained in Romaniv when some other Jews fled further east into the Soviet Union.
“We were not ready – there had been no mental preparation for this moment – so we did not accept the offers to escape,” she writes.
Soon, the Nazis arrived and young Malka witnessed Jews being killed in the streets. The randomness of those murders was replaced with methodical mass executions. The story, starkly told, is predictably shocking, and differs significantly from what happened further west. Rather than ghettos and concentration camps, the Holocaust in the east was typified by summary roundups and mass killings of entire communities, usually in adjacent forests.
On Aug. 25, 1941, Ukrainian police gave Romaniv’s Jews 30 minutes to congregate in the centre of town.
“Those who were unable to walk had been taken out of their homes on stretchers,” she writes, disabusing Jews of the desperate idea they were being assembled to perform forced labour.
“We walked toward the beautiful park located a couple kilometres from the centre of town,” writes Pischanitskaya. “The crowd of close to 2,000 walked with visible sadness, expressions of disbelief.
“Men were rounded up, separated from their families, and then marched deeper into the forest where, previously, pits both massive and deep, had been dug. Women, children and the elderly were forced into rooms in the military building. Crowded in, there was hardly space to stand. Windows were locked. No fresh air; no water; no washrooms. People screamed, fainted, losing their minds; children were scared and restless.
“One by one, several groups of Jewish people were taken to slaughter. While we were kept in the building, waiting our turns, the heavy ring of machine gun fire instilled extreme fear and terror in all. The slaughter of the Jews from the Romaniv community continued from early morning until dusk – the sun had faded from our lives forever.”
Then: the first of the miracles that spared the life of Malka and her mother.
“Eventually, mothers with children were let go from the building,” she writes. “Perhaps the murderers were tired from their orgy of death and torture, or perhaps there was no room in the pits for the rest of us, but those who had to remain were slaughtered. We left them, still alive, when we had the chance to run for our lives.”
Here, Pischanitskaya catalogues the names of the many family members killed that day. She goes into grim detail about what witnesses reported from the pits.
Thus began years of hiding – and a succession of near-misses, any one of which would likely have been fatal.
The relationship that gives the book its title, of young Malka mothering her mother, is a story of a parent so paralyzed by events that she becomes almost incapacitated. Malka’s astonishing and perilous actions to ensure their survival form the bulk of the book. She begs door to door in the villages where they hide, often receiving small portions of food. At one home, she sees her own portrait on the wall, apparently pillaged from Malka’s family home after they fled – an uncanny and grotesque coincidence.
When, after the war, they returned to Romaniv, “Almost nothing remained except for memories.”
“Adult survivors went to the mass graves to pray for and memorialize their loved ones, and to bear witness,” writes Pischanitskaya.
Of all the people who survived and showed up alive after the war was Malka’s “so-called father,” as she calls him, a man whose sadistic cruelty Malka and her mother would have been better off without.
In a twist, the mother who had been “a dependent child” transformed into a courageous woman who pursued Polish and Ukrainian police for war crimes.
Like so many survivors, Pischanitskaya demonstrated improbable resilience, marrying, becoming a teacher, becoming a mother, escaping the Soviet Union, migrating to Canada and raising a successful family that continues to contribute to Vancouver’s Jewish and broader community.
A Mother to My Mother is illustrated with harrowing, moving paintings that Pischanitskaya created for an exhibition titled Romanov: A Vanished Shtetl, which was presented at the conference of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and their Descendants, held in 2019 in Vancouver.
To order a copy of A Mother to My Mother in print or ebook format, or any other survivor memoir, visit memoirs.azrielifoundation.org.
Faith Kramer’s Roasted Salmon with Citrus-honey Sauce. (photo by Clara Rice)
Somehow, I missed the cookbook 52 Shabbats: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Jewish Kitchen by Faith Kramer when it was published by the Collective Book Studio in 2021. Well, I now have a copy and, in an ideal world, my next year of 52 Shabbat dinners would all be cooked à la Kramer. Instead, it’ll probably take me several years to make all the special meals in this informative, well-laid-out, easy-to-follow cookbook – but at least I’ve gotten a head start.
In this last month of the Jewish year 5784, I made two of Kramer’s main dishes, a salad dressing and a dessert. Each recipe is prefaced with a blurb containing more information about the dish. Many recipes have suggestions of what to serve together (starter, main, dessert, etc.) to elevate the meal for Shabbat, as well as suggested variations and what can be made in advance. Kramer also provides explanations of lesser-known ingredients.
52 Shabbats begins with some discussion of different Jewish traditions around Shabbat and various Jewish communities’ ways of cooking food and the ingredients they use. Kramer gives a brief overview of Jewish dietary laws and shares her preferences for the common ingredients she uses throughout. The book is divided into the four seasons, plus chapters on side dishes and accompaniments, desserts, and fundamentals (sauces, etc.). There are additional resources listed near the end, as well as measurement conversions.
I chose the recipes to make from the fall section, focusing on Rosh Hashanah. I made a carrot and lentil main because, as Kramer writes: “Carrots are symbolic in Judaism of asking for prosperity and for our blessings to multiply. Combined with the sweetness of silan [date syrup] … or honey, they make an edible wish for a Happy New Year at Rosh Hashanah.” I also made a fish main, because fish is another symbol of Rosh Hashanah, with the hope that we be the head and not the tail, ie. a leader rather than a follower.
Kramer recommended mini cheesecakes as the dessert for both of these mains, so I made those as well. I also made the Lemon, Za’atar and Garlic Dressing for a green salad, but much preferred the dressing as a marinade for blanched green beans. For space reasons, I’ve not included the recipe intros or the “make it in advance” suggestions, nor have I included the dressing recipe. The three recipes here will hopefully inspire you to get a copy of the cookbook, and perhaps start some new Shabbat traditions this year.
SWEET-AND-TART SILAN-ROASTED CARROTS WITH LENTILS (serves 4 as a main, 8 as a side)
for the lentils: 1 cup green or brown lentils 3 cups vegetable broth 1/4 tsp ground black pepper 1/4 tsp ground cumin 1/4 tsp paprika 1/2 cup chopped fennel or celery 1/2 cup chopped onion 1 tsp minced garlic 1 tsp minced jalapeño, optional 1/4 tsp salt, plus more if desired
for the carrots: 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for baking sheet 1 cup silan, honey or agave syrup 1/4 cup water 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice 1/4 tsp ground cumin 1/4 tsp ground cardamom 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper or paprika 1/8 tsp ground cloves 1 lb multicoloured carrots, peeled (cut large carrots into thirds) 1 tsp coarse sea salt 2 tbsp tahini 2 tbsp chopped fresh mint or flat-leaf parsley
In a large saucepan, stir together the lentils, vegetable broth, black pepper, cumin and paprika and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Stir in the fennel, onion, garlic and jalapeño (if using) and return to a simmer. Cover and cook, lowering the heat as needed to maintain a gentle simmer, until the lentils are tender and the liquid is absorbed, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the salt and stir well. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if desired. Remove from the heat, drain any excess liquid, and set aside while you make the carrots.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Grease the parchment paper with olive oil.
In a wide, flat dish, whisk together the silan, water, olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, cardamom, cayenne and cloves. Add the carrots and toss until evenly coated.
Place the carrots in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Set aside any left-over silan mixture.
Lower the oven temperature to 400°F. Roast the carrots for 40 to 50 minutes, or until tender and browned, tossing in the pan juices every 10 to 15 minutes.
Reheat the lentils, if desired, or keep them at room temperature. Add any leftover silan mixture to the lentils and stir to combine. Transfer the lentils to a large serving dish and top with the roasted carrots. Sprinkle with the coarse salt, drizzle with the tahini and garnish with the fresh mint.
ROAST SALMON WITH CITRUS-HONEY SAUCE (serves 4-6 as a main, 8-10 as a starter)
1/3 cup fresh orange juice 1/2 cup light-coloured honey 1/2 tsp dried mint 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper or paprika 1/4 tsp ground black pepper 1/2 to 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, lightly crushed, optional vegetable oil for baking sheet 1 1/2 to 2 lbs salmon fillet 6 tbsp thinly sliced green onions
In a small bowl, mix together the orange juice, honey, mint, salt, cayenne, black pepper and crushed Sichuan peppercorns (if using) to make a marinade. Set aside half of the marinade to use later for the sauce.
(photo by Clara Rice)
Grease a rimmed baking sheet with oil. Place the salmon, skin side down, in the pan and brush the top of the salmon with some of the marinade. Let sit for at least 30 minutes or up to 60 minutes, brushing often with the marinade.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
While the fish is marinating, pour the reserved marinade into a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced by two-thirds, 15 to 20 minutes. Taste, and adjust the salt and other seasonings, if desired. Set the sauce aside.
Brush or spoon the remaining marinade over the salmon. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes, basting with the pan juices after 10 minutes, until the salmon is cooked to the desired doneness. For fully cooked fish, it should read 145°F when an instant-read thermometer is placed in the thickest part of the fillet. The flesh should be opaque all the way through but still be very moist.
Transfer the salmon to a platter and spoon the sauce over the fish. Sprinkle with green onions and serve warm, at room temperature, or chilled.
MANGO AND CARDAMOM MINI CHEESECAKES (makes 24 individual cheesecakes)
24 ginger snaps, lemon snaps or wafers, or vanilla wafers 1 1/2 cup fresh or defrosted frozen mango chunks, divided 3 (8-ounce) packages regular or light cream cheese, at room temperature 3 large eggs, beaten 1 cup sugar 1/2 tsp ground cardamom 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp ground ginger 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two 12-cup cupcake pans with paper or foil liners. (If you don’t have enough tins, use foil cupcake liners on a baking sheet.)
Put a cookie in the bottom of each liner. Break cookies to fit and cover the bottom of the liner, if necessary.
In a blender, purée 3/4 cup of mango chunks until smooth. Set aside.
Cut the cream cheese into 1-inch chunks. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, cardamom, salt, ginger, vanilla extract and lemon juice and beat with an electric hand or stand mixer until light and lemony in colour, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the cream cheese chunks in 3 batches, incorporating each batch before adding the next. Beat on medium-high speed until totally smooth, 3 to 4 minutes.
Fill each cupcake liner two-thirds full. Place 1 teaspoon of the mango purée in the centre of each cake. Using a knife, swirl the purée through the batter to create a marbleized look.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until the centres of the cheesecakes are a bit loose and jiggly, puffed up and pale in colour. Turn off the oven, open the oven door and leave the cheesecakes there for 30 minutes. Transfer the cheesecakes to a wire rack and let cool. (The tops of the cakes will collapse.) Place the cheesecakes in the refrigerator until chilled.
To serve, remove the cheesecakes from the liners, if desired. Chop the remaining 3/4 cup of mango and spoon it onto the cheesecakes. Serve cold or cool.
Gregor Craigie, host of CBC Radio One’s On the Island, interviews Eleanor Wachtel at Congregation Emanu-El on Sept. 15, at 2 p.m., about her career helming the CBC’s premier literary program, Writers & Company. During her 33-year tenure with the show, Wachtel spoke with a Who’s Who of authors, including Saul Bellow, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, John le Carré and Kazuo Ishiguro.
“[Eleanor’s] sense of respect, her tact, her utter lack of obsequiousness . . . and her uncanny ability to ask difficult questions have endeared her to readers and listeners,” said Canadian writer Carol Shields, whose book, The Stone Diaries, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1995.
Craigie is both an author and an expert interviewer in his own right. A journalist for more than 25 years, his most recent book, Our Crumbling Foundation, which examines Canada’s housing crisis, is a national bestseller.
The event is part of Emanu-El’s 160th anniversary celebrations, and is a fundraiser for the synagogue, which is undergoing structural and other renovations. Tickets ($36) can be purchased at ticketowl.io/cevbc.
“Our thoughts are influenced by our core belief system. Our opinions are shaped from things we have seen and heard in the past and those opinions affect what we see. The problem is our thoughts are not always necessarily true,” writes Michelle Biton in her new book, The Instant Anxiety Solution (Hatherleigh Press).
“Our own thoughts and beliefs often cause us more anxiety than the actual emotion itself,” she writes. “And sometimes our beliefs are faulty or inaccurate. In order to get to the facts, it’s important to question your thoughts and not always believe everything you think.”
But this is jumping ahead to Step 5 of Biton’s five-step program ALARM, which starts with ways in which we can get our bodies “out of ‘the acute stress’ stage and into a calmer state so you can think properly” (activating the parasympathetic nervous system). It moves to labeling what you’re feeling, then acknowledging that emotions are temporary. Step 4 is about how to remember to avoid building narratives around your thoughts and emotions, and Step 5 is how to move forward and take action.
Originally from Vancouver, Biton is a Los Angeles-based coach, author and health educator. She has a master’s in holistic nutrition, a bachelor’s in psychology and a certificate in kinesiology, health and fitness studies. Her reasons for writing The Instant Anxiety Solution are personal.
“I had been trying to deal with anxiety as if it was logical, but anxiety is not logical. It’s primal and cannot be rationalized. My best friend helped me realize that, in order to manage mine and my daughter’s anxiety, we were going to have to look it in the eye and go through the discomfort of it,” writes Biton. “Going through the anxiety was the only way out of the vicious cycle.”
Biton’s own experiences with anxiety inform her approach. “You are re-learning ingrained patterns and behaviours that will take time to unlearn,” she acknowledges, “so be easy on yourself and give yourself time to go through the process.”
The Instant Anxiety Solution comprises a foreword by marriage and family therapist Nadine Macaluso; an introduction in which Biton lays out some of her reasons for writing the book; an overview of what anxiety is and its effects; a chapter for each of the ALARM steps; a brief conclusion; many exercises readers can do to learn how to better manage anxiety; and 20-plus blank pages for the purposes of journaling.
There are many causes of anxiety, including biological makeup, learned behaviour, lack of sleep, trauma, not eating properly, financial difficulties.
“When we get triggered by an event, our amygdala gets activated, causing the impulsive fight or flight response, and the prefrontal cortex, the logical thinking part of the brain, shuts off,” writes Biton. Our bodies focus on one thing: survival. The sympathetic nervous system is activated, “causing your heart rate, breathing and blood pressure to rise dramatically…. You’ll likely even feel shaky and nauseous.
“Many people make the mistake of trying to problem solve when anxiety hits, but it is absolutely impossible to do,” she writes. We can’t think until we have calmed down, and Biton offers many ways to shock the body out of its anxious state, such as splashing cold water on our face or putting a cold pack on the back of our neck; intense exercise, like a sprint to the end of the block or some push ups; and humming or singing.
There are ways a person can semi-instantly calm themselves, but the crux of tackling anxiety is self-awareness and, for that, there is no quick fix. Biton offers advice on how to identify and deal with feelings, but a main takeaway is to train ourselves to not act in those first moments. Apparently, an emotion lasts seven minutes max, then runs out of steam. It’s “the additional energy that is added in the form of our ‘extra’ thoughts and emotions that we ‘attach’ to the original emotion that keeps the feeling alive and the suffering occurring,” writes Biton.
“Do not act on impulse,” she warns, “you will only regret it afterwards.” But don’t numb yourself either. If you feel like crying, cry. Notice and acknowledge your emotions without judgment. When you’re calm, you can figure out what is really going on, consider both sides of the situation – what happened or was said and your reaction.
We all have pain, she notes: “It is how we ‘react’ to the pain that determines our ‘suffering.’” Suffering, she says, is a sign that you’re not accepting the here and now. Some clues that you might be fighting against reality are that you’re feeling bitter or resentful, or you’re regularly unhappy or frustrated.
“A major reason that many of us suffer from anxiety today is because we have ‘felt unheard’ or ‘dismissed’ in our lives,” she writes. “We were told that we ‘weren’t good enough’ or that we ‘shouldn’t feel a certain way.’ This negative environment taught us not to trust ourselves, and not to trust our emotions. As a result, we have a lot of self-doubt and anxiety.
“On top of that, many of us project fears from the past into the future. Very rarely do we go into a situation without the ‘baggage’ and ‘opinions’ that we have carried from past experiences.”
Biton believes it possible to “become unstuck from the past.” The advice and exercises in The Instant Anxiety Solution may not result in instant results, but they do offer tangible steps to a solution.
My new favourite dessert: Inbal Baum’s Coconut Cream Malabi. Baum is one of the contributors to June Hersh’s new digital cookbook, Cooking for a Cause. (photo by Ingrid Weisenbach)
I have a new favourite dessert: malabi. At least Inbal Baum’s Coconut Cream Malabi. Baum is one of more than 70 cooks, bloggers and others who have contributed to June Hersh’s new digital cookbook, Cooking for a Cause. All proceeds from the book’s sale support Leket Israel, whose focus is “rescuing healthy, surplus food and delivering it to those in need through partner nonprofit organizations.”
“By purchasing this digital cookbook,” notes Leket’s promotional material, “you will not only be supporting Leket Israel’s routine food rescue operations, distributing fresh, nutritious, surplus food to over 330,000 people in need each week, but you will also be part of Leket’s emergency relief campaign, providing much needed assistance to displaced Israelis throughout the country as well as to the Israeli farming community who has been significantly impacted by the ongoing war.”
Hersh has written several cookbooks “with a charitable flavour,” supporting various causes. She contributes to food blogs and magazines, appears on radio and TV, and gives talks on the importance of preserving Jewish food memory. Cooking for a Cause is a response to the Oct. 7 terror attacks, and Hersh and Leket Israel “reached out to everyone we could think of who has made an impact in the world of Jewish food,” writes Hersh in the introduction. “Additionally, we approached those incredibly outspoken Jewish and non-Jewish supporters who have taken a stand and used their moral compass to point the way. The response was overwhelming!”
The result is a unique cookbook that is interesting both for its recipes and its stories – each entry tells users a bit about the contributor and/or the food being presented, and there are eye-catching colour photos throughout. The cookbook “is not arranged from starters to desserts and it is not consistent in its format,” writes Hersh. “I say this not as an apology but with pride, as this book is deliberately different. It reflects a cacophony of voices that have come together to support Leket and the people of Israel. Each contributor presents their connection to Jewish food and expresses it with a different perspective, writing style and point of view. You, the reader, benefit from diverse cooking techniques, interpretations of Jewish cuisine and fresh commentary with each recipe.”
Recipes that caught my eye as I skimmed through the book included Vegetarian Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Holishkes) by writer Joe Baur; Pandora’s Chicken with Artichokes, Oregano, Olives and Sundried Tomatoes by Joan Nathan, “award-winning ‘godmother’ of Jewish food”; Aunt Rini’s Tahini Cookies by Elise Addlem, founder of Feminists Against Antisemitism; and Olio Egg Salad by Ben Poremba, who “infuses his Israeli-Moroccan heritage into all his restaurants.”
I have bookmarked these recipes for future cooking/baking sessions, and will certainly try others as well. Between the Jewish Independent’s Passover and Israel special issues, I only had time to try out three recipes. In addition to Coconut Cream Malabi, which Baum writes was inspired by “Our Chef Sevim [Zakuto], with her Turkish-Jewish roots, [who] shared the cherished recipe from her grandmother,” I made Rachel Simons’ Fennel and Herb Salad (Simons is a co-founder of the company Seed+Mill) and award-winning chef and restaurateur Jonathan Waxman’s Steelhead Trout with Vermouth, Baby Sorrel, Chanterelles and Fingerlings.
The salad was as big of a hit as the malabi, and I enjoyed the meal part of the trout recipe but wasn’t so keen on the sauce, which contained vermouth. Not being a lover of vermouth, I had put the sauce on the side, and I thought the food was better without it. When I make the fish again, I’ll try to halve the vermouth or reduce it on the stove to see if that makes it taste less sharp.
COCONUT CREAM MALABI (by Inbal Baum)
1 can coconut cream (fat content should be greater than 14% for the best results) 3 tbsp sugar 3 tbsp cornstarch 1/3 cup of water 1 tsp of vanilla extract, or rose or orange blossom water crushed (or chopped) nuts, to taste desiccated coconut, for serving pomegranate molasses and/or silan, for serving optional toppings: chopped seasonal fruit (strawberries, apricots, mango)
In a small saucepan, combine the coconut milk and sugar. Bring to a gentle boil. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix the cornstarch and water until well combined. Slowly add the cornstarch to the saucepan, continuously stirring.
Over medium heat, continue stirring until the pudding thickens – this may take 3 to 5 minutes. If needed to thicken, add additional cornstarch in small amounts until the mixture begins to thicken.
Mix in the vanilla extract, orange blossom or rose water, then pour or ladle into four small bowls.
Allow to cool before serving (approximately one hour, but can be less).
When ready to serve, top with a layer of pomegranate molasses or silan (date honey), desiccated coconut and ground nuts.
FENNEL AND HERB SALAD (by Rachel Simons; 4 servings; 30 minutes to prepare)
1 fennel bulb, very thinly sliced crosswise juice of 1 lemon 1 cup cold water 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped 1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped 1 tbsp white wine vinegar 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tsp flaky sea salt 1/8 tsp ground black pepper 1 cup parmesan cheese, thinly shaved (optional)
Place the sliced fennel into a bowl with the lemon juice and cold water. Let sit for about 10 to 15 minutes. Drain the fennel.
In a large bowl, mix the fennel, mint leaves, parsley leaves, white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and parmesan (if using). Mix to combine well. Serve the salad cold.
STEELHEAD TROUT WITH VERMOUTH, BABY SORREL, CHANTERELLES AND FINGERLINGS (by Jonathan Waxman; serves 4)
4 x 4.5-ounce skin-on, boneless steelhead trout fillets 1/2 cup white vermouth 2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp olive oil 1 cup baby sorrel 1 cup cream 1 cup sliced raw fingerling potatoes 1 cup button chanterelle mushrooms
Season steelhead with sea salt and fresh ground white pepper.
Cook the potatoes in simmering salted water for 12 minutes. Set aside.
Wash mushrooms.
In a sauté pan, add 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp butter, heat to sizzling, add the trout, skin side down and sauté for 2 minutes.
When skin is crispy, turn over and add remaining olive oil and butter. Then add the potatoes and chanterelles to pan. Cook over medium heat for 5 to 8 minutes.
Remove steelhead to a warm platter. Ensure potatoes and chanterelles are cooked, add them to the fish platter.
Add the vermouth to pan and then add the cream. Turn off heat and add the sorrel leaves.
Taste sauce for seasoning and gently coat the potatoes and chanterelles with sauce. Serve hot.
* * *
To purchase Cooking for a Cause, go to chef.leket.org. For more on Leket Israel – including how you could join the organization’s approximately 54,000 annual volunteers “in gleaning, sorting and packaging rescued food for the Israelis in need” – visit leket.org.
For 20 years, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, Prof. Chris Friedrichs delivered a lecture to the congregants of Temple Sholom on the subject of the Holocaust. It started in 2004, when Rabbi Philip Bregman, now rabbi emeritus of the shul, asked Friedrichs to speak on the most solemn day in the liturgical calendar. The rabbiasked him to reprise the lecture the following year, and it became an annual event.
After the 2014 passing of Friedrichs’ wife, Dr. Rhoda Lange Friedrichs, like her husband an historian, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz announced that the presentation would be known as the Rhoda Friedrichs Memorial Lecture.
Two decades of Prof. Chris Friedrichs’ Yom Kippur lectures at Temple Sholom have been compiled into a book, Reflections on the Shoah. (photo from Chris Friedrichs)
Friedrichs, now professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia, decided to end the tradition after 20 years and his friend and UBC colleague, Prof. Richard Menkis, suggested the idea of compiling the lectures in a book.
The volume, Reflections on the Shoah: Yom Kippur Sermons Given at Temple Sholom 2004-2023 is a small but irreplaceable volume offering deep and original insights on the lessons of history from a leading thinker on these subjects.
In these lectures, Friedrichs does not dwell on the facts of history so much as draw broader insights into their meaning. In 2005, he reflected on the term “martyrs,” which is often used in reference to the victims of the Nazis.
“A martyr is someone who has accepted death rather than renounce his or her Jewish faith,” he said. Yet, he noted, among the six million were many, like the Jewish-born Catholic nun Edith Stein, who were not killed because they refused to renounce their faith. Indeed, he said, renunciation would not bring redemption. It was Jewish “racial” identity, not adherence to Jewish ideas, that drove the Nazis’ murderous objectives.
In an historic sense, though, Friedrichs argues, Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because generations of ancestors had refused, against all pressures, to abandon their identities. “And, therefore, it is in fact right to honour those who died as martyrs,” he said.
In 2007, Friedrichs struggled with theologians’ explorations of the meaning of the Shoah, as though some divine purpose could be discerned from it.
“The Shoah was an entirely human event,” he said. “But that hardly removes the question: where was God while it took place? Why did God allow it to happen?”
God gave humans free will, he concluded, but this does not answer the unknowable question.
“In a world we cannot begin to understand, we can still hope for mercy, and we can pray for strength,” he said.
In a brief postscript to this lecture, Friedrichs writes that the daughter of a friend, having heard the sermon, asked her father “Where was God?” In response, the father said, “Where was man?”
In 2012, Friedrichs spoke of the first Holocaust memorial ever created, in May 1943, in the Majdanek death camp, where a group of prisoners persuaded the SS administrator that the camp could be made more beautiful if they could erect a pillar topped by a statue of three eagles about to take flight. The commandant never knew that under the base of the pillar the inmates had buried a container of ashes of the victims taken from the crematorium.
In 2013, Friedrichs addresses the problem with the very word Holocaust, which means a burnt sacrifice.
“What a meaningless term!” Friedrichs declared. “Six million Jews were sacrificed? Sacrificed to what God? Sacrificed to what end?”
In 2020, when his lecture was recorded and shared virtually because of the pandemic, Friedrichs spoke of the sanctity of life.
The next year, after unmarked graves were discovered adjacent to a former residential school in Kamloops, he spoke of the “humanitarian obligation to go beyond just our circle of Jewish concerns.” He drew parallels between the MS St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees turned away from ports of refuge, including Canada’s, and the Afghans clambering through the Kabul airport, struggling to escape the country before the takeover of the Taliban.
In 2022, he invoked a very different piece of history. In high school, his most memorable teacher was Anne Schwerner. When the news came, in the summer of 1964, that three civil rights workers had been murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi, one of them Michael Schwerner, Friedrichs realized this was his favourite teacher’s son. He reflected on the lessons of obligation to universal freedom and rights embodied in Jewish tradition.
In his last lecture in the series, Friedrichs spoke of how, when he speaks to audiences of high school students, as he frequently does, he makes the lessons relevant to young, multicultural Canadians.
“I tell the students that it is normal to dislike somebody because that person, as an individual, is bad or unkind or unpleasant,” he said. “But to dislike or hate somebody not because of their own characteristics but because they happen to belong to a group, to hate them just because they are Chinese or Filipino or South Asian or Black or members of any other group, is to take the first step on a path that has led and could lead again to things like the Holocaust.”
In most of his lectures, Friedrichs describes predations that are difficult to read and must have been more difficult to hear on a Yom Kippur afternoon, in a room that includes survivors of precisely such atrocities. This, though, is one of the invaluable aspects of Friedrichs’ approach. Whatever reservations might exist in this time of safe spaces and trigger warnings, one can hardly make the case that it is too burdensome to listen to a few examples of the barbarism for the sake of education, memorialization and understanding, when there are people in our community, including in the congregation Friedrichs was addressing, who experienced the cruelties themselves.
Anyone who heard these lectures when they were delivered, or has heard any of Friedrichs’ many presentations elsewhere, can hardly help but hear his deep voice and commanding delivery while reading his words. Those who haven’t had the privilege of hearing him speak are fortunate to have these lectures compiled in this new book.
Chef and dietitian Micah Siva’s new cookbook, NOSH: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine, proves that plant-forward meals can be bursting with flavour and colour. (photo by Hannah Lozano)
“This is really good,” said my wife, as she tasted the steaming hot Spiced Cauliflower Chraime I had made from the new cookbook NOSH: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine (The Collective Book Studio) by chef and dietitian Micah Siva.
“‘Plant forward’ is a way of cooking and eating that emphasizes plant-based foods without limiting one’s diet to being vegetarian or vegan,” writes Siva. “This book is meant for anyone who follows a plant-based diet or is looking to adopt a plant-forward way of eating.”
It’s also for anyone who appreciates delicious food, from what I can tell from the plates I tried. Nonetheless, Siva does offer solid advice for meat-eaters wanting to become more plant-forward. In that regard, she talks about getting enough protein and iron, what can be substituted for eggs, etc.
On the Jewish side, she gives milk and butter substitutions to make a recipe pareve (permissible for observant Jews to eat with milk or meat dishes) and offers sample holiday menus. I found the Shabbat Matrix interesting – the cooking time required (little, more and lots) is on one axis and the effort involved (low and high) is on the other. Siva offers some ideas to think about
depending on the time and effort you can put into the meal. So, you can buy store-bought challah or make your own, make spritzers or just buy a bottle of wine and/or grape juice, for example.
Given that Passover is approaching, I focused on a few of the recipes Siva highlights for the holiday. Her list comprises Turmeric Vegetable Matzo Ball Soup, Vegan “Gefilte” Cakes, the aforementioned Spiced Cauliflower Chraime, Herbed Horseradish Salad, Cast-Iron Potato and Caramelized Onion Kugel, Passover Black and White Cookies and Passover Coconut Macaroons. In addition to the chraime, I made the kugel and the macaroons. For fun, and because I have a huge bag of sumac from another cooking experience, I also made two Olive and Sumac Martinis – though neither my wife nor I are hard-liquor folks, we enjoyed our sips.
The production quality of this cookbook is high. The layouts are beautiful, with lots of colour photos and easy-to-follow instructions, which are supplemented by dietary labels (ex. vegan, gluten-free, Passover-friendly), the time required to get the food or drink on the table and clearly listed ingredients, as well as a brief introduction to each recipe and notes about certain ingredients that may be new to some cooks, or variations that could be used, possible substitutions.
NOSH includes a glossary and I learned a lot perusing it. Amba, for instance, is a “tangy, spicy, pickled mango-based condiment or sauce of Indian-Jewish origin” and toum is a “garlic sauce, similar to aioli, made of garlic, oil, salt, and lemon juice.” Siva gives some hints about measuring, choosing ingredients and shopping efficiently. There is an index at the back of the book, plus conversion charts for liquid and dry measures, and a Fahrenheit-Celsius temperature table. Acknowledgements and a bit about the author round out the publication.
In the few recipes I tried – and Passover-friendly ones at that – the expansive flavour palette on offer was evident.I look forward to making some of the 80+ other recipes in this cookbook, which illustrates the global diversity of Jewish culture. Siva may have grown up in Calgary, but her repertoire travels well beyond, to the Middle East, India, Africa, Europe and elsewhere Jews live or have lived. Her blog, at noshwithmicah.com, is worth checking out.
The cauliflower chraime was packed with spices – all of which I miraculously had in my cupboard! – and I will definitely make this dish again, as it was not only tasty but also easy to put together. According to Siva, it “is typically made with a whitefish poached in a tomato broth” and is often served in Sephardi families instead of gefilte fish during Passover. The recipe suggests serving it with couscous or rice, neither of which observant Ashkenazi Jews can eat during the holiday, so I plated it with mashed potatoes, which are OK for all Jews on Passover, and the two paired well.
It is worth sharing Siva’s note in the cookbook, acknowledging that the recipes “that are ‘Passover Friendly’ will have kitniyot,” even though “Ashkenazi Jews typically prohibit kitniyot, which includes rice, corn, millet, and legumes (beans), as they look too similar to grains. While customarily left out of Passover menus, it is not technically prohibited by the Torah.” So, “[i]f a recipe is listed as suitable for Passover, please use your discretion, and do what feels more comfortable for you and your family.”
In the recipes that follow, all of which I recommend, I don’t include (for space reasons) the informative introductions that appear in the book. I made only one adaptation, choosing not to dip the coconut macaroons into chocolate, my personal preference being to just enjoy the richness of the coconut, brightened by the splash of lime juice and zest.
SPICED CAULIFLOWER CHRAIME (serves 4, on the table in one hour)
The Spiced Cauliflower Chraime from NOSH will be an immediate favourite. (photo by Micah Siva)
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 medium white onion, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 3 tbsp tomato paste 4 tsp smoked paprika 2 tsp ground turmeric 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground ginger 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp red chili flakes 1/4 tsp sea salt juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tbsp) 1/2 cup canned diced tomatoes 1 1/4 cups vegetable broth (low-sodium, if preferred) 1/2 cup golden raisins 1 small head cauliflower, cut into 6 wedges (if using a large cauliflower, cut into 8 wedges) 2 tsp date syrup or maple syrup 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro,for serving Cooked couscous or rice, for serving (I used mashed potatoes)
Heat the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it begins to soften, 5 to 6 minutes.
Add the garlic, tomato paste, smoked paprika, turmeric, coriander, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, chili flakes, and salt, stir until combined, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour in the lemon juice, canned tomatoes, broth and raisins and stir to combine.
Place the cauliflower in the pan, cut side down in a single layer. Bring the liquid to a boil, decrease the heat to a simmer, cover and cook until the cauliflower is tender, 15 to 20 minutes.
Drizzle with the date syrup and garnish with the cilantro. serve with cooked couscous or rice.
Note: Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.Reheat in a pan, oven, or microwave until warmed through.
Variations: Substitute chopped dried apricots or figs instead of raisins. Looking for more protein? Add a can of drained and rinsed chickpeas along with the canned tomatoes and/or crumble some feta cheese on top.
CAST-IRON POTATO ANDCARAMELIZED ONION KUGEL (serves 10 to 12, on the table in 2 hours)
Micah Siva’s Cast-Iron Potato and Caramelized Onion Kugel can be a side or a meal. (photo by Micha Siva)
5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided 2 medium yellow onions, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 1 1/2 tsp salt, divided 2 pounds (3 or 4) russet potatoes 4 large eggs 1/2 tsp black pepper 1/4 cup matzah meal sour cream, coconut yogurt, crème fraîche or labneh, for serving (optional) fresh chives, chopped, for serving
In a 9-inch cast-iron pan, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat until the oil is hot but not smoking. Add the chopped onions, spreading them evenly over the bottom of the pan. Decrease the heat to medium-low and let cook, undisturbed, for approximately 10 minutes.
Sprinkle the onions with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and broken down, 30 to 45 minutes. Once golden and caramelized, transfer the onions to a large bowl.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil to the cast-iron pan and place it in the oven to heat up while you prepare the potatoes.
Fill a large bowl with ice water.
Using a food processor fitted with the shredding disk, or a box grater on the largest hole, grate the potatoes. The potatoes will oxidize, so be sure to shred right before use.
Add the potatoes to the bowl of ice water. Let sit for 10 minutes to remove excess starch.
Drain the potatoes, transfer them to a clean kitchen towel, and wring out any excess liquid. The more liquid you can remove, the better! Add the potatoes to the bowl with the caramelized onions.
Add the remaining 1 teaspoon of salt, eggs, pepper and matzah meal and stir to combine.
Carefully remove the cast-iron pan from the oven and spread the potato mixture in the pan, pushing it down to compact the potatoes. It should sizzle on contact with the pan. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 1 hour, or until deep golden brown on top.
Serve with sour cream and chopped chives.
Note: Prepare this kugel up to 4 days in advance and store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Variation: Add 1/2 cup chopped parsley to the kugel along with the matzah meal.
Substitution: This recipe uses russet potatoes, but you can use Idaho potatoes instead.
PASSOVER COCONUT MACAROONS (makes 12 [large] macaroons, on the table in 45 minutes, including 10 minutes resting time)
Lime juice and zest make Micah Siva’s Passover Coconut Macaroons special. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup potato starch 1/2 cup canned full-fat coconut milk 1 tbsp lime juice 1/2 tsp lime zest 1/4 tsp sea salt 6 ounces (about 1 cup) dark chocolate chips 1 tbsp coconut oil
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, combine the coconut, sugar, potato starch, coconut milk, lime juice, lime zest and salt until well combined.
Using a cookie scoop or ice cream scoop (large enough to fit approximately 2 tablespoons), scoop up some of the coconut mixture and pack it very firmly into the scoop. Use your fingers or the back of a spoon to press it into the scoop. Gently remove the coconut mound from the scoop and place it onto the prepared sheet pan. Tap the back of the cookie scoop to release it, if needed, and reform the mounds after placing them on the pan. Repeat with the remaining coconut mixture.
Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, or until golden. Let cool on the sheet pan. Once cool, remove them from the pan and place them on a plate. Line the sheet pan with wax paper.
While the macaroons are cooling, combine the chocolate chips and coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30-second increments, mixing well between each increment, until smooth.
Once the macaroons are cooled, dip the bottoms into the melted chocolate and place them on the prepared sheet pan. Refrigerate the macaroons until the chocolate is set, about 10 minutes.
Note: Once the chocolate has set, store the macaroons in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Store them in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Variation: Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract to the mixture in place of the lime zest and lime juice. Fold in 2 tablespoons of rainbow sprinkles and dip them into melted white chocolate.
OLIVE AND SUMAC MARTINI (serves 1, on the table in 10 minutes)
An Olive and Sumac Martini is one of the unique drink options in NOSH. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
1/2 ounce olive juice, plus more to rim the glass 1/2 tsp sumac, plus more to rim the glass 2 1/2 ounces gin or vodka 1/2 ounce dry vermouth ice 2 or 3 olives, pitted
Pour a little olive juice into a shallow dish. Place some sumac in another shallow dish. Dip the rim of a cocktail glass into the olive juice and then into the sumac. Gently shake off any excess sumac and set aside.
In a cocktail shaker or a jar with a lid, combine the gin, vermouth, 1/2 ounce olive juice and 1/2 teaspoon sumac and fill with ice. Stir or seal and shake until well chilled, 20 to 30 seconds. Strain the liquid into the rimmed cocktail glass and garnish with olives.
The historic milestones that led to the creation of the state of Israel are well known: Theodor Herzl’s Zionist congresses, the Balfour Declaration, the Partition Resolution, the War of Independence. Oren Kessler – who participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 13 – believes that a significant chunk of history has been largely overlooked and he sets out to right that wrong in his new book, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict. The Arab uprising of 1936 to 1939 in Palestine, he writes, “was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced.” It also set in stone the intransigence toward Jewish self-determination in the region.
An Arab reaction to increased Jewish migration to Palestine – presaging both the potential for an eventual Jewish majority in the British-controlled Mandate and an even more alarming political outcome, a Jewish national homeland – inspired three years of Arab terror and British colonial repression, with the Jews inevitably caught between, argues Kessler.
Beginning with a series of strikes and protests in April 1936, the haphazard opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration was soon corralled and led by the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, into a mass movement of terror and anti-colonial (and anti-Jewish) violence.
While the British, on the one hand, hammered the Arab guerrillas – and plenty of civilians – they also rewarded that violence with policies such as those emerging from the 1937 Peel Commission report and the 1939 White Paper, both of which effectively caved to Arab demands by massively reducing Jewish immigration just as the Nazis were closing their fists across Europe. At the same time, the British left the Arabs unsatisfied by throwing tiny offerings to the Jews as a sign of compromise.
So unyielding was the mufti’s opposition to even considering Jewish migration that his Arab Higher Committee boycotted the various commissions’ hearings.
“Amid Hajj Amin’s boycott, no Arabs came forward,” writes Kessler. “Jerusalem Vice Mayor Hassan Sidqi Dajani, the mufti opponent who had once contemplated testifying, was found along the train tracks outside the city with two broken hands and two bullet holes in his forehead.”
In the end, the revolt was a disaster foreveryone.
“The great revolt had exacted a withering toll on Palestine,” writes Kessler. “About 500 Jews had been killed and some 1,000 wounded. British troops and police suffered around 250 fatalities in their ranks. But the most onerous price of all was paid by the Arabs themselves: at least 5,000 – perhaps more than 8,000 – were dead, of whom at least 1,500 likely fell at Arab hands. More than 20,000 were seriously wounded.”
The Arab economy in Palestine was ruined, even as the Jewish economy hummed along.
Kessler’s thesis is that the events of 1936-1939 deserve to be recognized more as pivotal to the history of the region as a whole. There are also voluminous parallels and lessons for contemporary times in his review of that era.
The uprising did not, in the end, prevent Jewish national self-determination in Palestine. What it did prevent was a refuge for the Jews of Europe when they needed it most – and, for at least some of the players in this tragic drama, like the Hitler-allied mufti, perhaps that was a reward in itself.
Tali and the Toucan by writer Mira Z. Amiras and illustrators Chantelle and Burgen Thorne (Collective Book Studio) is set in San Francisco. The young protagonist, Tali, longs to tumble, swing and cartwheel like other kids, and she would love to take martial arts. But she is debilitated by fear – that the world will shatter, that she will break into a million pieces, that she will get hurt. Then, one night, she has a dream. At first, it’s kind of a scary dream, with a storm raging, chickens flapping about. One chicken makes it to the roof, pecks a hole in the window glass, and transforms into a toucan. The colourful-beaked bird teaches Tali how to tumble and soar in the sky. She awakes with new spirit and courage, no longer feeling like a chicken but like a toucan, ready to fly – and fall – with the other kids.
Oy, Santa!, or There’s a Latke to Learn about Hanukkah by writer Joyce Schriebman and illustrator Gil von Meissner (Intergalactic Afikoman) also expresses so much with its artwork. Whereas Tali’s hamsa makes an appearance on almost every page of her book, different kinds of light run through Oy, Santa! – white swirls full of stars, hanukkiyot with candles lit, strings of Christmas lights and exploding fireworks. While Tali and the Toucan only hints at multiculturalism and doesn’t explicitly talk about Judaism, Oy, Santa! puts both topics front and centre.
