But, for the past 15 years, the festivities have included our special friends, artist Peter Shire and his wife, Donna. It all began when we invited Peter to visit the Skirball Museum, which was then located on the campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, next to USC.
\”I never think of food as something that\’s stationary,\” Nathan said on a recent book tour stop in Los Angeles. \”Things change, neighborhoods change, food changes, we get new ingredients, people get ideas. And when you come to a country you adapt what you knew to that country.\”
Obesity is the fastest growing health threat in this country, currently on track to overtake tobacco as No. 1.
Since today\’s weddings are rife with new traditions, why not serve your guests a rehearsal dinner menu infused with Champagne?
SOVA\’s clients include the elderly, low-wage earners, the recently or long-time unemployed, and those suffering from serious illness or coping with physical or mental disabilities. SOVA provides them and their family members with a monthly allotment of healthy foods — including fruits, vegetables and high protein items — that last about four days, with more available for those who are homeless or in crisis.
While Crostini di Spuma di Tonno, Zuppa di Pesce Passato, Dolce di Tagliatelle might not sound like Jewish food, Italian Jews have long enjoyed these dishes.
Joyce Goldstein made her first trip to Italy in 1957 and instantly became what she calls a \”fanatic Italophile.\” The former chef-owner of San Francisco\’s Square One and daughter of Russian immigrants, Goldstein threw herself into Italian art, architecture, language, culture and food.
The pleasant smell drifted not heavenward but into the O Shil Beit Chabad Itaim Synagogue, distracting the faithful from their prayers.
Next door, the Bolinha restaurant was gearing up for its usual barrage of patrons on Saturday, when Brazilians traditionally partake of their national dish, a black bean stew called feijoada. Unfortunately for the davening Jews, the recipe for feijoada includes pork chops, pork trotters, pork tails, pork ears, pork sausage and bacon.
According to some historians, feijoada was concocted by Brazilian slaves who transformed scraps from the big house into a slave-quarters delicacy.
But the owners of Bolinha, which is nationally famous for its feijoada, cite scholarly sources to make the case that the dish is really a Brazilian variation of European fare like the Spanish cassoulet and the Portuguese caldeirada.
Whatever its origin, feijoada stands as an important symbol of Brazilian heritage. That creates \”tension between Jewish and Brazilian expressions of identity,\” according to the anthropologist Misha Klein of the University of Oklahoma.
\”Brazilians with a strong Jewish identity, including some who are somewhat religiously observant,\” will indulge in the occasional feijoada, although it\’s not kosher, Klein said.
Although today\’s bar mitzvah parties are often as elaborate as yesterday\’s weddings, there\’s a new trend on the horizon — a, noisy, jubilant oneg Shabbat and lunch directly after the ceremony, and a quiet, intimate dinner at home for a few close friends and family at night.
My husband was called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah in 2001, more or less on the sixth anniversary of his conversion to Judaism. People started asking Spencer when he was going to have a bar mitzvah when his hair was barely dry from the mikvah.
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