About Being Jewish: Why Food Writing and Why Substack

A need to record the making, eating, and togetherness

I’m making a new post now. It begins like this with some awkward, rocky starts.

I could have sat after making the myriad dishes these last two years. It could have been before that, too. But I didn’t. Let’s back up.

I live in Japan, where I must make any Jewish food I want or need. It is this necessity that has borne invention because if I want or need weekly challah, which I do, I make it. Nothing special. Tons of women do this every week, and many more budding challah artists take to video format and black glove-wearing commitment to fighting germs while they braid 6-strands.

But if I also want rugelach, there is no bakery from where I may snatch them up. If I want a knish, it is generally up to me. If I want babka or kugel, the ball is in my court or kitchen. This is not victimhood; this is going after the thing you love.

And Judaism is filled, crammed with feasts and festivals that elicit strong desires, a need for a certain spectacular sauce or dish that is of biblical proportions. We must do and make and have these things alongside our Jewishness.

We make, say, that chopped-up apple concoction with cinnamon and spice, nuts, and even dates or bananas, depending on our particular Jewish roots, to partake within our Jewishness. And when do we make batches of this? On Passover/Pesach, as a delicious prop to tell our story of slavery in Egypt and G-d bringing us out into our wide-open freedom. It is paramount to eat these foods in celebration, in acknowledgment, and with a seriousness about it that enables us to make the thing, talk about the dish, and go after the understanding of “why this” with a tenacity that can continue to go on into generations from us, too.

What happened to me is not just living in Japan as a Jew and wanting to eat the soups of my ancestors (hello, sending for boxes of kneidelach). That I have done for 16 years. No biggie, maybe, but it is a ton of challah-making, week-to-week, with no bakery to fall back on. It’s a ton of longing for the Jewish delis I grew up on in South Florida. It’s becoming a mother and feeding your little chicks with passed-down soul food. Fine.

What changed my world was hosting Israelis. My husband and I opened up our home to an exclusive Israeli-only guesthouse, and we rarely have a free bed. At max, we may have 12 (always wonderful) Israelis in our home per night. Every night. Or ten, nine, or eleven. We keep needing more futons, and it has only been a delight.

My world went from Ashkenazi-based to an explosion of understanding and tasting the variety of stories and foods that comprise much of Israel. We have hosted and eaten the delicacies and treasures of Israeli families who are also Georgian, Aphgan, Polish, Russian, Latvian, Turkish, Moroccan, Lithuanian, Uzbek, Bukharian, Indian, Greek, and Tunisian Jews, and guests whose roots extend from Judea, in and out of Egypt, France, Italy, Libia, Iraq, Persia/modern-day Iran, Portugal, and Spain. It grows by the week.

Together, in our Tokyo home, we’ve eaten foods that tell the story and history of who they are, and who we all are (in a sense) as Jews fleeing and spending some years or generations in a place, and finally, getting back to the Land of Israel with that food. We’ve also hosted Israeli families who are 11 and 12 generations in Israel, with their expert know-how on a slow-cook Sephardic or Bukhari hamin. Each story of escape and founding Israel could floor you and inspire the next great Spielberg movie.

The level of excitement and skill these guests possess could transform the world!

Or at least a hangry room.

Many of our now over 600 guests (in only two years) say that Israel has the best food in the world. I don’t know if that is hyperbole. After eating so much with them from our Tokyo home, and certainly, from the time I’ve spent gleefully stuffing my mouth in Israel, I agree.

Families fleeing Iraq or Persia, for example, bring back to Israel a joy for living and a commitment to feeding their families from the deepest wells of food culture, into a land that makes nearly any plant/crop/veggie/fruit thrive. Flavors are balanced and alive. It is a foodie culture with a hunger for the connectedness that happens over shared meals. Maybe that is any place, whether Italy or the Midwest, but Israel is something else—a gathering place and a gathered place for Jews of every background, root, language, cooking culture, and spice. You have Eritrian Jews, Slavic Jews, Jews who lived for millennia in a place and then returned. Jews of all color, language, and sensitivity. Jews who pass on their memories all eat a different kind of chicken soup or haroset or possess their own unique way of celebrating a passed-down, holy feast. (I only discovered Moroccan Mimouna this year, thanks to our guests).

You can understand why I needed to make this podcast to mark my food-making sessions and chats with guests. It’s not enough, though. I cannot keep up with the podcast, as it is, and not everyone can be on the podcast. Six hundred guests and I have but five podcasts published with ten more scripts in draft and no limit on who or what foods are to come.

Where can I put these moments of discovery about groups and parts of the world? How can I possibly catalog descriptions of certain spices, dumpling-making techniques, and histories of our people making their lives in a certain place and leaving with nothing, usually, on their backs or in their hands, but each other? I must sort at least some of it out on paper. In a Substack.

So here, on Jewish Food Writing, I will run after foodie experiences I have with our guests while the flavor is still in my mouth, while my tongue recovers from a scalding soup, and while my heart still freaks out from knowing each incredible guest in a life-changing exchange at my kitchen counter, at the table, here, in Tokyo, or back with them in Israel when I visit them next.

I’ll also include more Jewish food writing from other authors of assorted texts and genres. We’ll meet authors who write children’s and/or YA literature, essayists, poets—those who pull Jewish food writing into their work.

I’ll include some travel writing when I ping off to a new place (like where I am now, in north London) and obsess over the history of their particular Jewish history and food.

I’ll include the recipes and backgrounds of my guests, with reference links and articles about their specific families and relevant history I pull from for my podcast. I’ll, of course, supply the link to my Tokyo Shishi podcast.

Where do we go from here? Up, through, back, in.

Jewish food writing is lived, recalled, and dreamed up anew whenever we want to taste the thing or chase the flavor and scent we remember. For this, we need words. And a podcast. And pots. And tahini. Chickpeas. And lots of garlic, paprika, turmeric, ripe tomatoes, and love.