It’s always a good idea to bring a little gift when you’re invited to a dinner party, and when you’re invited to a Seder — where presumably your host has been cooking and preparing for days if not weeks — a particularly thoughtful offering is in order. But what’s appropriate, and how should it be…
One day, Jessye Stein, a computer teacher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was trying to persuade a student to return to his Lakota language class when the young man suddenly posed an unexpected question. “He asked me where I come from, where my people come from and what my ancestral language…
In 2015, they didn’t speak Yiddish. In 2016, they do. From December 28th through January 5th, a small group gathered at — an organic farm and immersive Yiddish language experience in Goshen, New York — to participate in its Beginners’ Winter Program. Some of them knew a few words or phrases in Yiddish, but none…
What do Succot and Pesach have to do with each other? Sages have been asking each other that questions for generations, but the result has never been quite so eco-conscious. This year though, for the first time ever, Yiddish farm is offering the opportunity to purchase local, organic, whole wheat, Shmurah matzah for Passover. The…
I grew up avoiding garlic. Pesto did not exist in my house, garlic bread was unique to summer camp, and dishes would begin with plain cooked onions. My family was the antithesis of everything culinary ethnography told me was Jewish. Apparently, we are “the people of garlic,” but if you had spent any time in…
Traditional Ashkenazi food is often thought of as meat-heavy, fat-heavy, and just plain heavy (think brisket, flankn, gribenes and shmaltz). But that’s not the case at Yiddish Farm, despite the otherwise pervasive emphasis on Ashkenazi language and culture. Yiddish Farm, a Yiddish-speaking organic farm in Goshen, N.Y., was founded to strengthen the language through an…
Video: Nate Lavey Goshen, the fabled Egyptian area that the ancient Israelites settled and farmed when famine struck the Holy Land, was so fertile, according to the Bible, that the Israelites multiplied at rates that made the Pharaohs afraid. It?s hard to see Goshen, N.Y., in the foothills of the Catskills, as the locus of…
A few months ago I sent an email to my editor, pitching a story on Yiddish Farm. (That piece is in this week’s paper, and online here.) I didn’t have to make a hard sell. An organic farm, run by 20-something-year-olds, where everyone speaks Yiddish? The piece practically writes itself. Indeed, Yiddish Farm is one…
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