Jochnowitz Eve - The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: garden-fresh recipes rediscovered and adapted for todays kitchen

Fania Lewando:
A Lost Treasure from Jewish Vilna, by Efraim Sicher

To the Housewife:
A Few Words and Practical Advice, by Fania Lewando

Why Are Fruits and Vegetables So Important for the Organism?,
by Dr. B. Dembski

JOAN NATHAN

A few years ago, when I was giving a lecture before Passover at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, in Westchester County, New York, two women with a mission, Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman, came to hear me speak.

They also brought a manuscript.

When I saw this English translation of Fania Lewandos vegetarian cookbook, originally published in Vilna in Yiddish in 1938 as Vegetarish-Dietisher Kokhbukh: 400 Shpeizn Gemakht Oysshlislekh fun Grinsn (Vegetarian-Dietetic Cookbook: 400 Recipes Made Exclusively from Vegetables), I was struck by the beauty of its colorful illustrations and the wide range of its vegetarian recipes. I immediately contacted Altie Karper, editorial director of Schocken Books, and told her about the importance of this splendid book.

Because of the very nature of the laws of kashrut which include the separation of meat and dairy dishesJewish cuisine has always included many vegetarian recipes. Also, many Jews have felt that being a vegetarian was a step toward increased spirituality, because by refraining from eating fish and meat they were avoiding the necessity of slaughtering living beings. In early-twentieth-century Palestine, when there was little meat available to the immigrant Jews, vegetable dishes became increasingly popular. Meanwhile, in Europe, as Hitlers menace loomed on the horizon, anti-Semitic measures that prohibited the traditional Jewish ritual slaughtering of animals and poultry were enacted into law, starting in Polish-occupied Vilna in 1935. In response, Yiddish and German kosher cookbooks offered recipes for meatless meals, recipes that eventually made their way to Palestine.

But until that moment in Westchester County, I knew nothing about Fania Lewando or her cookbook. Barbara and Wendy, while visiting the offices of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, happened upon this jewelone of a very few extant copies. As soon as I saw it, I realized that they had discovered a piece of Jewish culinary history that must be told and shared. Appetizing illustrations of kohlrabi, tomatoes, peppers, and a dozen other fruits and vegetables are sprinkled throughout its pages, color drawings adapted from bilingual seed packets sold in Europe and in Palestine.

Jewish women have a significant history of publishing cookbooks. Rebekka Wolfs Kokhbukh fr Israelitische Frauen (Cookbook for Jewish Women) was first published in Berlin in the early 1850s and stayed in print for decades, and in 1871 Esther Jacobs Levy published the Jewish Cookery Book, the first kosher cookbook to appear in America. (Levy went to the Library of Congress to register the book herself.) Dr. Erna Meyer wrote How to Cook in Palestine in German, English, and Hebrew, and with scarcely a meat recipe; it was published in Tel Aviv in 1936 by the H.N.Z., Palestine Federation of WIZO (Womens International Zionist Organization). But Fania Lewando was the first woman to publish a Yiddish-language vegetarian cookbook in Europe.

A pioneer in the emerging Jewish vegetarian movement, Lewando was the owner of a kosher dairy restaurant on the border of the Jewish quarter in old Vilnius (its now a lawyers office), and ran a kosher cooking school nearby. The restaurant was also a salon for Vilnas artists and writers. Her guest book includes comments and autographs from many luminaries, including the artist Marc Chagall and the Yiddish poet and playwright Itzik Manger. Lewando also supervised a kosher vegetarian kitchen on the ocean liner MS Batory, which traveled between Gdynia (near Gdask), Poland, and New York from 1936 to 1939.

Lewando, who was born in 1887, broke from the long-standing Eastern European custom of associating meat-based meals with the Sabbath, holidays, weddings, and other celebratory events, and vegetarian dishes with times of scarcity, with mourning, and with ordinary weekday meals. With words that still ring true today, Lewando created a Jewish culinary palette that celebrated natures bounty. In meatless meals, long viewed as indicators of hardship and sorrow, Lewando found bright flavor and the key to health and well-being. She updated traditional recipes and introduced new ones, which can be updated again today by home chefs looking for healthier alternatives to ingredients such as butter, eggs, sugar, and sour cream. For example, I made the summer-squash-and-celeriac soup but replaced the cream sauce with yogurt. It was delicious.

Tragically, like too many other European Jews, this woman who devoted her life to promoting longevity perished sometime in 1941 or shortly thereafter, as she and her husband, an egg dealer named Lazar Lewando, were trying to flee the ghetto in which Vilnas Jews had been confined by the Nazis.

But, thanks to the perseverance of Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman, the translation and the recipe testing of Eve Jochnowitz, and the good shepherding of Altie Karper and Lexy Bloom at Schocken Books, the English-speaking world will now be graced with these timeless recipes.