Actress Gwyneth Paltrow made headlines this morning for telling British Vogue she can be mean, vengeful and gossipy. But on her self-reverential Website, Goop, Paltrow plays the devoted Jew.
In fact, she offers a special edition newsletter on keeping Kosher for Passover in which she praises Claudia Roden’s cookbook, “The Book of Jewish Food.”
“Keeping kosher will be easy this year now that I have discovered [this] brilliant book,” Paltrow writes. “I have to say that irrespective of religion, culture, or background, this is one of the best books I’ve ever cooked out of.”
Paltrow also features matzo brei recipes from Joan Nathan and Steven Spielberg, and a Kosher wine from viticulturist Jeff Morgan. Morgan, a former writer for Wine Spectator who now runs his own winery, Covenant Wine, hired an observant Jewish crew from a Kosher vineyard to kasher his grapes.
“I’ve been generously welcomed into the fold by a Jewish community I would never have known had I not become a kosher winemaker,” Morgan wrote on Goop. “This powerful bond that I now feel with Jewish history has given me a greater sense of belonging.”
With Pesach ending tonight, Paltrow’s recipes may have to go into a file until next year (don’t miss Roden’s Matzo and Spinach Pie)—but the Torah she offers via Hollywood’s Kabbalah guru Michael Berg is timeless.
Berg writes: “Egypt represents our negative ego, as the kabbalists call it, the desire to receive for the self alone, that part of us that pushes us to care only about ourselves and to disregard others…From this we can understand the concept of eating kosher for Passover. During these days we refrain from eating leavened bread, that is, bread that has risen. Leavened bread represents our ego, our need to be known, to rise, to overtake others, all the negative aspects of ego and selfishness.”
And this whole time, I just thought pizza tasted good. Talk about a revelation..
