Dan Pashman: Did you ever cook on the kibbutz?

Naama Shefi: No ... 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: I did many, many other jobs. I worked in the cornfield, watermelon field, in a kiosk — we had like in this country club that was open to outside, like to the city people, and that job I really loved because I was responsible to make paninis. It was just like a fun gig relatively to the other — you know, the other jobs were very difficult. I also worked at the communal — how you say it? Like where you iron your clothes,

Dan Pashman: Oh, like a dry cleaner. Not really, but, like ... 

Naama Shefi: Yeah, not really. [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: Right, like a laundromat.

Naama Shefi: Yes.

Dan Pashman: Okay. 

Naama Shefi: That was a nightmare.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: Truly. 

Dan Pashman: So you like pressing paninis. You don't like pressing clothes.

Naama Shefi: Exactly. 

Dan Pashman: Okay. [LAUGHS[ 

Naama Shefi: To this day!

[LAUGHING] 

Naama Shefi: Yes. 

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Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. This week’s episode is a conversation with Naama Shefi, founder of the Jewish Food Society. We taped it back in February, and it’s about her personal journey: growing up in Israel, coming to the U.S., and using food to create Jewish community in America.

Dan Pashman: But we can’t talk about Israel without acknowledging all the suffering that’s going on there and especially in Gaza. I won’t go into specifics here, I’m sure you’re aware of it. A staggering number of people have been displaced, taken hostage, and killed. I know folks around the world, including me, we're all feeling the pain of all of it. If you want to support some of the organizations providing aid to people in need on the ground, we have links in our show notes.

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Dan Pashman: The Jewish holiday of Passover is a few weeks away, and like with a lot of holidays, it’s a time of ritual and tradition. The Passover observance is called a seder, which means “order,” because there’s a specific order you’re supposed to follow.

Dan Pashman: In my family, the meal part of the seder has always been things like matzo ball soup and beef brisket — foods with roots in Eastern Europe. Because like most American Jews, my family’s Ashkenazi — meaning that we trace our roots back to Eastern Europe. So our traditional foods also include things like smoked fish, potato knishes, and noodle kugel.

Dan Pashman: But in recent years, I’ve become more curious about what Jews from other parts of the globe have spent generations cooking and eating. That’s why I’m excited about the release of a new cookbook called  The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories to Celebrate All Year Long. It’s a project from an organization called The Jewish Food Society and its founder, Naama Shefi.

Dan Pashman: I invited Naama into the studio to talk about the book, but first I wanted to hear her backstory, to understand why documenting Jewish food from around the world is so important to her. Naama grew up in Israel in the '80s and '90s, on a kibbutz there.

Naama Shefi: Kibbutz is a small community, a collective, that traditionally it was based on agriculture. My kibbutz, Givat HaShloshah, which is a kibbutz in the center of Israel, there were 600 members when I grew up. So very tight bubble.

Dan Pashman: You mean that like in a true sort of commune, socialist, communist type of vibe?

Naama Shefi: Yes.

Dan Pashman: Like everything is shared?

Naama Shefi: Yes. We weren't allowed to have any private ownership, so we were sharing everything — toys, clothes, cars ... [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: Yeah, there was like seven cars, or how many ... 

Naama Shefi: There were 17 state of the art Subaru.

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: Subarus! 

Naama Shefi: Subarus!

Dan Pashman: I love — of course it's Subarus. Yes. 

Naama Shefi: Yeah

Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: So you know, you really needed a good reason, like, to get a car, and, you know, to go to an event, to visit relatives, or to go to a wedding  — god forbid, a funeral or to see a doctor. You needed a good reason.

Dan Pashman: And how religious was the kibbutz? 

Naama Shefi: Oh, it's the most secular place on earth. 

Dan Pashman: A lot of Jews in Israel identify as secular, which means that they consider themselves culturally Jewish. They take part in holiday celebrations, but often skip the part at a synagogue. And that was the environment at the kibbutz. It was a place where, in some ways, there could be a lot of rules —  like who got to drive the communal cars, but it was also a place with a lot of freedom.

Naama Shefi: Listen, it was pretty idyllic to grow up in that environment. We were roaming the kibbutz barefoot, picking up fruits from the tree. There were a lot of pomegranates, a lot of oranges — we were playing outside for many, you know, long hours. Our parents didn't know where we were and what we were up to, but not everything was idyllic. We ate all of our meals in the communal dining room. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner, together with 500 people.

Dan Pashman: And what was not idyllic specifically about the meals?

Naama Shefi: The community parts was lovely — eating in community.  But the menu, less so ... 

[LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: It was just like, pretty repetitive and bland. You know, think army food. Some days we had very sad spaghetti that sat in a sauce for too long.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: Stuffed peppers ... Like really nothing to write home about, like not exciting. The only part that I actually enjoyed and appreciated was the herring cart. 

Dan Pashman: They wheeled a cart around?

Naama Shefi: They didn't wheel it. It was like in one of the corners. 

Dan Pashman: Okay. 

Naama Shefi: Of the hader ohel

Dan Pashman: Like the way a popcorn [Naama Shefi: Yeah.] cart would be in the corner, except this one had .... [LAUGHS] Had pickled herring. [LAUGHING]  

Naama Shefi: Exactly.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: That's not what I expected. Usually herring, when you talk about certain traditional Jewish foods, that's not one that gets a lot of love. 

Naama Shefi: I loved it. I think I appreciate it because the man who served the herring it just put a lot of passion to his task, and he loved serving the herring, and I remember that he treated me really well, because probably he saw like a little girl, like the only customer ... 

Dan Pashman: Right ... 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: The only one who wanted more pickled fish.

Naama Shefi: Exactly. So it was just, you know, I think maybe I recognized a link to tradition, because in the dining room, you know, the stories were divorced from the recipes. And here, there was some sort of tradition and storytelling and a sense of nostalgia.

Dan Pashman: Things like spaghetti and meatballs, these were meals that were quick and accessible, but they had no cultural significance. Naama understood that the pickled herring was special, because it was a link to Jewish food from the past. It was a piece of culture. And the herring cart wasn't the only good part of the food on the kibbutz. There was one other dish Naama remembers fondly. 

Naama Shefi: There was one very talented cook named Batsheva, and her talent really sparked. Like, I remember one dish that she made for every Saturday lunch, cholent, this is like an overnight stew. 

Dan Pashman: It's kind of like Jewish chili.

Naama Shefi: Sure. 

Dan Pashman: Right? 

[LAUGHING] 

Naama Shefi: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: It's a stew of meat, beans, you know, vegetables — right.

Naama Shefi: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: Kind of whatever you have, you throw it in there.

Naama Shefi: Potatoes is a is a major — yeah — ingredient there. And she had a touch, like it was so good. So that's another highlight that I remember. And I would also say I feel that I trashed like ... 

[LAUGHING] 

Naama Shefi: You know, the dining room which — yes, that it's true, but ...

Dan Pashman: To be clear, Naama is not about to backtrack. 

[LAUGHING] 

Naama: I do want to say that breakfast was pretty awesome. Because we were just talking like fresh vegetables, [Dan Pashman: Right.] eggs, cheese ... Like very basic situation, but super fresh.

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Dan Pashman: As Naama got into her teens and traveled more to different parts of Israel with her family, she began to realize there was a lot more out there than the army meals she had on the kibbutz. And there were all kinds of people, just like the herring cart man, who loved to share their culture and heritage through food. 

Naama Shefi: We went to the Yemenite quarter in Tel Aviv to try Yemenite soup. And we went to the neighboring Arab village of Kfar Qasem to eat hummus and roasted lamb. And it just like, that was you know, this mosaic of flavors that made me realize that food is culture. And for me, it was really a way to explore my identity outside of the kibbutz.

Dan Pashman: But this realization didn’t immediately push Naama towards food as a career. Her first passion was film. She went to an arts high school in Tel Aviv, where she studied filmmaking. She went to college there too, and then enrolled in a master’s program in film. She moved to New York to finish her program. Like Israel, New York is also a hub of immigrants and immigrant food. But still, Naama had a bit of culture shock when it came to Jewish food here.

Naama Shefi: It was very clear when I moved to New York that when people here in the States, when they think about Jewish food, they think about Ashkenazi Jewish food. They think about oftentimes about deli food ... 

Dan Pashman: Ashkenazi food is sort of Eastern European Jewish food, which is most American Jews are Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. So, you get smoked salmon, bagels and cream cheese, potato knishes, white fish salad, couple other things. 

Naama Shefi: Sure. And again, it's beautiful. But when I think about Jewish food, I think about Iraqi sabich or Yemenite jachnon or like just so many dishes from all around the world.  So I just felt that it's unrepresentative in the way people think about, you know, Jewish food and people.

Dan Pashman: Naama struggled to find her place in the Jewish community in New York, where gatherings are more often centered around religious observances, in synagogues. She wanted the community and culture, without the religious part.

Naama Shefi: In retrospect, I took my Jewishness for granted. And here in New York I just didn't find a way to realize my identity because I'm not interested in going to shul ... 

Dan Pashman: Temple. 

Naama Shefi: Temple or —  yeah, or practice, you know, Judaism in that way. And that's where I started to dream of different experiences that I can create for myself and for my community through food.

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Dan Pashman: Coming up, a fateful meal provides the inspiration that Naama is looking for. Then later, we hear from a chef who contributed a recipe to Naama’s cookbook, for a very polarizing Jewish dish. Stick around.

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+++BREAK+++

 

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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. Thank you so much to all of you who have come out to see our tour, Sporkful Live: Anything’s Pastable. It has been a ton of fun doing these shows and getting to meet so many of you. And the tour continues this Saturday night in Philly! I’ll be doing a live Sporkful taping in conversation with the Emmy winning host of Check Please, Kae Lani Palmisano. My book will be for sale, I’ll hang out afterwards to sign copies of it. And this just in — we’re teaming up with the Community College of Philadelphia's Culinary School, they’re gonna cook up something special with cascatelli and give out free samples! That’s this Saturday night in Philly and tickets are going fast! 

Dan Pashman: Speaking of tickets, our Boston and Seattle shows are already sold out! San Francisco and L.A. are close behind. That L.A. show will also include some food samples. Plus, I’ll be in conversation with comedian Andy Richter and get this — special appearance by my pasta fairy godmother, Evan Kleiman. Yes, Evan, will be on stage with us! Get info and tickets for all our shows at Sporkful.com/tour.

Dan Pashman: Okay, back to my conversation with Naama Shefi. In 2005, Naama met Ilan, the man who would become her husband. He was living in Israel, she was in New York, and after a few years of dating, she traveled back to Israel to meet his family. One night, they went to visit Ilan’s grandmother, who everyone called Nona, at her home outside Tel Aviv. Nona was preparing for a big family Shabbat dinner.

Naama Shefi: She lived in this one bedroom apartment. I think it was like 500 square foot. Her dining table was just not that large. It was like kind of tiny, and I was like, how she is going to fit 20, 25 people around it? They all arrived and Nona made room for everyone. She started to cover the tables with pickles and lots of salads and albondigas and stuffed tomatoes and onions and a Swiss chard pie, and just like so many dishes. 

Dan Pashman: Did you say albondigas?

Naama Shefi: Albondigas.

Dan Pashman: Right, I think about — thats' the Spanish word for meatballs.

Naama Shefi: Exactly

Dan Pashman: So some people are going to be surprised to hear that that’s on a table at a Jewish dinner.

Naama Shefi: And that's a direct evidence for the family roots in Spain.

Dan Pashman: Some of Nona’s ancestors came from Spain, and she grew up speaking Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish language. She was born in Turkey — from there her family moved to Greece, then Zimbabwe to escape the Nazis. And in 1976, they made it to Israel. 

Naama Shefi: And every dish on that table represented this exact journey. And I was just like eating and eating and also need to make good impression, you know? But I was just like, how did you make this? And what the story of this one?

Dan Pashman: Nona began telling the stories behind this array of dishes. There were recipes that came from long-held traditions, and other ones that came from adapting to new cultures. There were also recipes that were more about survival — making meals from whatever you have on hand.

Naama Shefi: She had a dish of just like the peels of the zucchini with some paprika and lemon. And she talked about how you really needed to make — just to use 100 percent of everything. So you know, I was just inspired by that and I thought to myself, okay, we need to do something about it. We need to protect her legacy.

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Dan Pashman: The next day, Naama and her husband Ilan returned to Nona’s apartment, and began documenting Nona’s recipes. Since they were both working in film, they brought their video cameras, and began recording Nona cooking her dishes. 

Dan Pashman: When Naama returned to New York, she started organizing events around Jewish food. She did one about Moroccan Jewish Food. Then she did a whole conference about gefilte fish, a sort of fish meatball. It’s popular around Passover but also polarizing in American Jewish households, because the gefilte fish that you get in a jar, it’s filled with a gloopy jelly that's not very appetizing to a lot of folks. Naama centered a whole conference around it. 

Dan Pashman: And just like — I mean, to put this in the terms of other cuisines, I imagine this would be kinda like creating an entire conference around limburger cheese, or lutefisk, or durian. As these events grew, Naama realized food was a way for her to connect with the Jewish community, without going to synagogue. In 2012, she hosted one event that stands out over all the others.

Naama Shefi: I feel that the event that was most satisfying for me, or most powerful, was the Kube Project. And it was an Iraqi Jewish comfort food concept. It gave me an opportunity to see firsthand the reaction of people that are coming in the door and the first thing they said was like, "What do you mean Iraqi Jewish? What do you mean Jewish Arabs? Like, how can it be?"

Dan Pashman: And what would you say if people when people said that?

Naama Shefi: I would say, yes, there was a very extensive Jewish community in Iraq. And here, we're here celebrating this community's food. I think that, you know, to this day, many people, when they think about Jewish people, they think about Eastern European representation. But 50 percent of the Jewish people who live in Israel today are from the Middle East and North Africa.

Dan Pashman: Naama is referring to Israeli Jews who are Sephardic or Mizrahi, who can  trace their origins from Spain to the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Through these food events, Naama was raising awareness about the diversity of the Jewish experience. And after a few years, this led her to a big moment. In 2017, she founded The Jewish Food Society. 

Naama Shefi: Our mission is very simple. We work to preserve and celebrate and kind of push forward Jewish culinary heritage from all around the world. So at the heart of what we do is an online archive of family recipes and the histories that are attached to them. And to bring it to life, we host all sorts of creative, crazy public programs. [LAUGHS] It could be seders, or it could be pop-ups, or educational panels, or different things.

Dan Pashman: I mean, I think there's merit to preserving all kinds of food history across all kinds of cuisines.

Naama Shefi: Sure.

Dan Pashman: Why do you feel like it was specifically important to preserve Jewish food history? 

Naama Shefi: When I think about Jewish food, I think about a very global cuisine. For 2000 years, Jewish people lived all around the world and they created very unique and interesting micro cuisines that were a result of this very constant negotiation between Jewish traditions, including kashrut, the kosher dietary laws, and Shabbat and Jewish holidays — again, in negotiation with local food traditions and ingredients all around the globe.

Dan Pashman: For example, Jews in Rome eat a traditional ricotta cheesecake on Shavuot, which likely came from Sephardic Jews who fled Sicily during the Spanish Inquisition. Jews who emigrated from Iraq to India have preserved a recipe for Pantras, a fried crepe with chicken that’s eaten on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Naama Shefi: It created very unique and fascinating kitchen.

Dan Pashman: I would think also part of it is that the Jews that were in those places aren't in a lot of those places anymore. They chose to leave or were forced out.

Naama Shefi: The later.

Dan Pashman: Right. I would think that also contributes to the desire to preserve.

Naama Shefi: 100 percent. Yes, like when I think about Jewish recipes, I think about the D.N.A. of our culture. So I think that we can learn how people celebrated, loved, mourned, and endured.

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Dan Pashman: After years of collecting and archiving these recipes, Naama and the Jewish Food Society have now published a cookbook, The Jewish Holiday Table. Each section of the book features one contributor’s table for a certain Jewish holiday — everything they serve on that occasion, which varies widely from one person to another depending on where their family has lived over the generations. Along with the recipes for all the dishes on each spread, there are stories of how all these foods ended up on a Jewish person’s table today.

Naama Shefi: There are a journey in the book of a family that immigrated from Baghdad to Calcutta in India and then in the partition in '47, they moved to London, and now we are capturing a snapshot of their menu. 

Dan Pashman: A lot of the sort of the family histories in this book read as sort of the history of the Jewish people being chased all around the globe.

Naama Shefi: Yes, yes. There is a family who moved in the 18th century from Morocco to northern Brazil. And Hester, the cook, shares with us a very unique Shabbat spread. Like, it's a whole menu and it's so interesting. And this is also what contributes to the deliciousness of the recipes. They are layered with flavors and traditions from different influences.

Dan Pashman: There's a celebration at the end of Passover that’s unique to Moroccan Jews, it’s called Mimouna. Another contributor to the book, Ruth Stulman, shares her recipes for that occasion. At its peak in the 1940s, the Jewish community in Morocco numbered 270,000. Ruth talks about celebrating Mimouna while living in the Moroccan city of Rabat.

Naama Shefi: When she grew up, Mimouna was just a very joyous day where Jewish people and Muslims, participated in this holiday and she told us how she was like, hopping from one place to another, and it was a custom to eat something sweet in every stop that you make. So it just sounded so incredible and so happy. The star of the table is a dish called Mufletta, which is this crepes that is served with butter and honey.

Dan Pashman: In 1948, there were anti-Jewish riots in Morocco, killing 44 people. This triggered the first of several waves of emigration. And over the decades that followed, Moroccan Jews continued to leave the country. Today, there are only about 2,000 Jews left in Morocco. Ruth’s family left in 1971 and moved to Virginia, outside of Washington D.C.

Naama Shefi: They settled in a community that there weren't other Moroccan Jews. Their mom, Perla, decided to, you know, literally wear their Jewish tradition and celebrated Mimouna every year with a bang — with all the traditional customs, you know, the jalabeas, and like with the music, and with the spread, and with the open door policy, and invited neighbors, and everyone to participate. 

Dan Pashman: Including a lot of non Jewish people.

Naama Shefi: Yes, and again, for me, I appreciate how back then, and still, by the way, they host mimouna every year, how they wear their tradition with a lot of pride.

Dan Pashman: Another contributor is Fany Gerson, who owns the donut shop Fan Fan Donuts in Brooklyn, one of my faves, by the way. Her guava and cheese glazed braided is in my pastry hall of fame. Anyway, her family fled Ukraine and moved to Mexico City, where Fany grew up. For the cookbook, Fany shares her table for a Passover seder, including her take on family recipe for the infamous gefilte fish.

Naama Shefi: She shared with us a version for a Mexican gefilte fish, which is just so tasty. You know, it has chiles ... you know, peppers, it's in a red sauce, and it's very tangy and spicy, and the fish cakes, it's seared ... It's just like a very lavish, beautiful dish. 

Dan Pashman: I gotta say, if it’s half as good as Fany’s donuts, count me in. Fany also contributed recipes for Passover Brisket Tamales, and a Mexican chocolate covered caramelized Matzo. Here’s Fany reading from the essay at the start of her section of the cookbook. The essay is titled “A Mexico-Meets New York Kind of Seder.”

Fany Gershon: The first real Seder I hosted was a year after I graduated from culinary school. I was about 20 and living in a tiny New York apartment far from my family in Mexico City. When I realized I didn't have anywhere to go for seder, I decided that I was going to make my home the place that people, whether Jewish or not, could come to. I was keeping the tradition I grew up with, but making it my own. I was homesick and wanted to make the dishes that we ate at my Grandmother Anna's house. My great grandmother, Babi Lena, who immigrated from Ukraine to Mexico in 1926, was the one who cooked these dishes originally. She served matzo  ball soup with lime and made a red gefilte fish served in a warm tomato sauce that was spicy from lots of white pepper. Every time I've cooked for the holiday since, I've felt her presence. One of the years when I made matzo ball soup with bone marrow, I felt like she was there saying, that's how we used to do it. I'm not sure she ever made it that way, but I imagine her hands guiding me. Much as she created dishes bridging her two worlds, I created my own, which are rooted in nostalgia for Mexico and for a relationship with her that has lived on in my imagination.

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Dan Pashman: The foods that Fany grew up with and adapted are a perfect example of the breadth of Jewish food culture that’s still little known in America. I’m still learning about it myself, just as Naama has been for so long, ever since she started venturing off the kibbutz all those years ago. I ask her how growing up in that environment continues to influence her today.

Naama Shefi: I know that there are traits or that there are habits or that there are things that stuck with me, like this yearning for community or like to organize, like, stuff all the time, or to trust people. 

Dan Pashman: It's interesting to think that, like, your time on the kibbutz, that very communal upbringing, would lead you later in life to create an organization that is very communal. 

Naama Shefi: Totally. This is news to me, but it's right. I didn't think about it this way.

Dan Pashman: Oh, interesting.

Naama Shefi: it's a therapy session.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Naama Shefi: Fine. 

Dan Pashman: I'll send you a bill later. 

 Naama Shefi: Send you the bill.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. 

[LAUGHING] 

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Dan Pashman: When you decided to come out to work on this cookbook and set the publication date, you didn't know what else would be going on in the world at the time that it came out. How has the last few months affected how you think about your work?

Naama Shefi: Where to begin? It's hard to summarize how it's been affected and because I'm still digesting it, probably every hour of every day, to be honest with you, but I look at this book differently. You know, again, I feel that there is a tragic and very painful war that is going on in Israel and Gaza. And on top of that, there is another war that is going on on social media, here in New York, in other parts of the world, where I feel that some people just misunderstanding the Jewish story. So — and I'm talking about the rise of antisemitism specifically about the heavy Jewish hate that we feel. And, of course. I feel it and my team and like everyone around me feel it. But at the same time I then turn to the pages of the book and I just take strength and joy and hope from their stories. So yes, these are extremely dark times, but I'm trying to stay hopeful and there is also the power of community. What I learned from the research is that for many, many cooks that share their stories, when you think about holidays, it was really a time where the entire community came together to cook and just be with one another. And I just find it to be so powerful, like the hardest the times, the stronger the bonds.

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Dan Pashman: That was Naama Shefi, she’s the founder of The Jewish Food Society, and you can get her book, The Jewish Holiday Table, wherever books are sold. We're also doing a book giveaway right now! To enter to win a copy of The Jewish Holiday Table, all you have to do is sign up for the Sporkful newsletter by April 21st. If you’re already on the list, you’re already entered into this and all of our giveaways — open to U.S. and Canada addresses only. Sign up today at Sporkful.com/newsletter.

Dan Pashman: Before we sign off, got some exciting news! We have been nominated for a Webby! Yes, this is a big deal! Webby Award! Anyone can vote in the Webbys, so if you have a minute, please vote for us! Go to sporkful.com/webby to vote today. Voting closes on April 18th. Thanks. 

Dan Pashman: Next week on the show, I talk with my friend Alyse Whitney, who just published the cookbook Big Dip Energy: 88 Parties in a Bowl for Snacking, Dinner, Dessert, and Beyond! Alyse’s energy for dips knows no bounds! And as you’ll hear, her love for dips is only matched by her love of dip related puns. It's gonna be fun. 

Dan Pashman: Meanwhile, if you are looking for more Sporkful episodes, make sure to check out last week’s show about growing up as a picky eater, and why picky eating is still something that’s judged harshly by society.

Dan Pashman: And if you want to attend a live Sporkful taping and book signing, I’m on tour right now! Tickets are still available for my shows in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and L.A. For all the info, go to sporkful.com/tour.

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