Naama Shefi came from the kibbutz to New York and put the big apple in line to eat Cuba • Now she tells the whole world about the culinary tradition of us all: "Food is a way to formulate an identity"
Last December we sat in "Azora".
Rain in the windows, happiness on the plates.
Small restaurants, where pots are bubbling their slow way to eating workers in a hurry, have fascinated Naama Shefi since she was a little girl on Givat Hashlosha, nodding to parents who will order a car and take her to eat in Kfar Qassem or Kerem Hatyemanim, looking for new flavors other than those she knew in the kibbutz dining room .
I love watching her eat.
The joy in her eyes when it tastes good to her, the patience of the movements and the stretching of the neck that, as in her mind, has strength and flexibility.
A long neck where you can still recognize the ballet lessons at Urban A High School, so her mother took her out of school in Shefayim because she felt the girl was getting lost at the beach, and sent her to Tel Aviv High School.
There, between Playie and Spaghetti, she realized she wanted to tell stories and moved on to film.
Years later, with a bachelor’s degree in literature, she came to New York to study for a master’s degree in cinema.
That was in 2005, and New York was a paradise here as curious and refined as hers.
While Israel worked on formulating a kitchen that would require an identity from a variety of immigrant kitchens, in the United States when you said Jewish cuisine it was clear to everyone that it meant Ashkenazi. A cuisine that emigrated to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the new world. A seal before it
hardened
into a rigid tradition, and
from the poverty and overcrowding of the Lower East Side of New York came the cry of "a-life," and America was filled with Eastern European-style Jewish delicacies that laid on the All-American table Lex on a bagel that included pickling and changing kosher concepts.
"I was secular, a kibbutznik who came to New York, and the question of identity struck me," she says.
Perhaps this is the moment when the god of food began to cook for her,
Naama realized very quickly that she was categorized as an American Jew, because someone had heard that she was from Israel.
His own plans, presents her with a chain of events that ignited extraordinary work and made her a central figure in creating a dialogue around the identity of Jewish and Israeli food, for those whose opinions are heard in almost every discussion on the subject.
• • •
For years she worked as the person in charge of cultural events at the consulate.
Food was the means by which she chose to tell the Israeli story.
She created events, held panels and cooking workshops, flew leading chefs from the country to high-profile food events in New York, sent journalists and opinion leaders from the US to the country. People who were good friends of hers would become important partners in her work.
After the consulate came a position at the Museum of Jewish History , Was later appointed the first representative of the Eatwith social dining community in the United States, and throughout those years continued to research and create events.
While Jewish food establishments closed in the city because the audience lost interest or there was no one to continue, Shefi held discussions seeking to remove the gefilte from the jelly coma, peeked through the slices of brisket, the glory of Jewish charcuterie, supported any initiative of young chefs to create traditional interpretations of traditional dishes .
She offered support and advice to every Israeli chef who opened a restaurant in the city, saw how combining Jewish dishes in a menu becomes sexy and how the word Israeli is no longer hidden behind the definition of Mediterranean cuisine.
In March 2013, together with chef Itamar Levinson, she launched her Cuba project.
Every afternoon, every day anew, for a month, it changed the face of Zucker, a small bakery in the East Village. Around common tables served the Americans Cuban and pickle soup.
Built on a minimum of 20 people, on the first evening came 120 who came to taste "Dumpling "Mediterranean," is how she chose to talk Cuba to the Americans. For a month there was an endless queue that resonated throughout the media. "They asked me what is Iraqi Jewish food anyway?" She recalls. Places like Einat Admoni or the old "Tabun" already operated in the city. , Mediterranean busy in the kitchen, but the level of discourse, it was obvious that everyone else stuck a bagel.
"food was my way of putting identity," she says from her home in Manhattan zoom call, which came back from exile Corona months old Long Island with her boyfriend documentary filmmaker Ilan Ben-Atar "Their daughter, Ella, says she looked there for a reassessment of things the kibbutz gave her. The closeness to nature, to the sound of life.
When she met Ben Atar, he invited her to dinner at his grandmother, Katie Ben Atar, whom everyone called Nona.
" She was So 80 years old, a woman full of light, born in Izmir and from there her family moved to Rhodes, Zimbabwe and Israel.
"In a pizza apartment, she spread dozens of dishes on the table, and each dish seemed to be a piece of its history. I remember telling Ilan that we must protect this thing. Preserve it."
• • •
What was sown that evening was reaped years later when she was approached by Terry Cassel, an avid New York philanthropist and Zionist, who invited her to accompany a project on a platform for Shabbat meals.
Shefi politely declined.
She said she had no interest in engaging in the religious narrative, and with the same politeness spread to Kassel the dream of preserving and cultivating a culinary Jewish tradition.
Kassel listened, and in 2017 the "Jewish Food Society" was founded, a society as Shefi calls in short the organization at the heart of its work is a digital archive, the first of its kind, the treasure of recipes alongside stories of Jewish families from all over the world.
To preserve the archive, the association produces food events, panels, cooking workshops, pop-up meals and "Schmaltzi", a charming event in which a person takes the stage for exactly seven minutes, in which he recounts a piece of his life through food.
Dishes are served to the audience, and just as a recipe is not archived before a producer on behalf of the Society has come to experiment with it, to pinpoint all the details, so no story will get on stage before it has undergone an endless mask of rehearsals and happiness by Shefi.
A few months ago, a podcast was launched at Société, in which one delves into each of the stories that were published in Schmaltzi, which, due to the corona, has been zoomed out.
At Shefi's initiative, and funded by one of the association's largest donors, meals were purchased from restaurants for medical staff at 25 hospitals in the city.
"If on the morning after the Corona we wake up to a city without Katz's delicacy, or without 'Mogdar Cafe,' then New York will no longer be the same city," she says.
Two weeks ago, when she was celebrating 40 years with a remote guy three hours' drive from the city, Consuma ate trout from her dreams and had a conversation with the sommelier.
When she realized it was Naama from the Society, she was turned on.
"She explained that she has been following us for years, and that the interaction with us is her 'synagogue'. Through the archive and reading about family stories from all over the world, she has expanded her Jewish identity," says Naama.
"One must remember - for American Jews there is one way to realize Jewish identity: religion and tradition. We, the Israelis, have the nationality, and to a large extent in this way we maintain our Jewish identity: the Hebrew language, culture, literature, history. It is a privilege that Jews do not have "What we have discovered in society is that the debate over Jewish food allows for the existence of a Jewish identity that is unrelated to religion and connects American Jewry with the rest of world Jewry."
In honor of a gifted narrator, a woman of action, who knows the power of listening and curiosity, I bring you two recipes from more than 500 that are stored in the association's archives.
If you want more, and you should, click on "jewishfoodsociety" on Google and you will find all the association's activities, the collection of recipes and a link to an electronic form that allows you to contact us with your own story and recipe.
Claude Polanski's Klopps
In 1905, following disturbances among the Jews of Krakow, the Polanski family left Poland on their way to America.
When they arrived in France, they were told that the next voyage would depart in six months, so they decided to stay.
Many recipes for Jewish meatballs contain a large amount of old bread, a poor trick to put meat on the table.
This recipe tells of a rich kitchen, and in the version that appears in the archive there is butter instead of oil and it is an option.
The amount is good for 6 diners.
Ingredients:
√ 500 g ground veal loin
√ 500 g ground beef breast
√ 2 eggs
√ 1/2 1 teaspoon salt
√ 4 crushed garlic cloves
√ 3 tablespoons bread crumbs
√ 5 finely chopped yellow onions
√ 3-4 hard-boiled eggs peeled for the
caramelized onion:
√ 3 tablespoons butter or vegetable oil
√ 4 finely chopped yellow onions
Preheat oven to 170 degrees and line an "English cake" pan with baking paper so that 5 cm of it protrudes above its edges. Mix the meat with the eggs, salt, garlic, bread crumbs and chopped onion, until a uniform dough is obtained. Place in a half pan. From the amount of dough and flatten. Arrange the hard-boiled eggs in a column along the length of the pan, add the rest of the dough on top, fasten and flatten well. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the pastry is browned.
At the same time, heat the oil in a pan over medium-low heat. Onions until nicely caramelized Remove the peels by grasping the edges of the paper, sprinkle the caramelized onions on top and serve cut into slices from which the yolk sun shines.
Fish in the agristada of Regina Gilboa
The story of the sisters Regina Gilboa and Bracha Loft, whose family came to Israel from Bulgaria, is a story about a family where the kitchen is the heart.
The sixth meal star is a dish of fish in agristada, egg sauce and lemon, an appropriate answer of Spanish Jewry to the sourness of yogurt in cases where its combination is out of the question.
The recipe was brought with them by the sisters from Abba Sasson, who after his release from the English Brigade founded a fishing village on the Mediterranean coast, called Mikhmoret.
The amount is good for 6 diners.
Ingredients:
√ 1 kg of stuffed barbonia
fish or cod cut into cubes about 2.5 cm in size, at room temperature
√ 1/2 cup lemon juice
√ 1 teaspoon salt
√ oil for deep frying
√ 1 cup flour
√ 2 eggs
for the agrista sauce :
√ 4 eggs
√ 2 cups hot water
√ 2 tablespoons flour
√ 1/4 cup vegetable oil
√ 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
√ 1/2 teaspoon salt
Arrange the fish in a flat dish, pour the lemon juice over them, salt well on each side and soak For half an hour, during which they are occasionally turned over.
Finally transfer the fish to a colander and wipe with absorbent paper.
At the same time prepare the sauce.
In a medium saucepan, beat the eggs.
In a small bowl, vigorously mix the hot water with the flour until a lump-free texture is obtained and strain into the pot with the eggs.
Add the oil, lemon juice and salt, and over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and when it is about to boil, thicken the sauce for about 10 minutes.
Be careful not to get bubbling.
Remove from the heat and stir for another minute.
Filter, taste, season and cover immediately, to prevent crust formation.
In a wide pan, pour oil to a height of about 3 cm, mix the flour with 1/4 teaspoon of salt on a plate, and in another plate, beat the eggs with another 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Flour the fish, shake, dip in the eggs and fry over medium heat. In cycles, so that there is no overcrowding in the pan. The frying lasts about 5 minutes on each side, at the end of which the fish is taken out on absorbent paper. Pour the Agristada sauce into a serving dish, place the pieces of fried fish on top and serve immediately.
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