by Marden Paru (Sarasota, FL)
My family and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona in early 1946. It was a very warm and dry climate akin to that of the Land of Israel. Surrounded by devout Mormon neighbors (who never drank alcohol or coffee), our home and our family’s lifestyle would accurately be described today as centrist Orthodox.
We walked to shul as a family each Shabbat and Yom Tov and enjoyed special Shabbat seudot (meals). In the heat of Arizona, special adaptation of kosher cuisine was a must.
With no air-conditioning and only an evaporative cooler blowing moisture through air ducts, our house felt cool in the 110+ degree heat. It must have been all of 80 degrees indoors but it felt like a mikhaya. (Yiddish for very pleasurable—not a Japanese word if that is what you are thinking.)
Often, we were served cold fruit soup or cherry borscht on Shabbat in place of hot chicken soup. During the hot season, I always missed the unborn, no-shell chicken eggs usually floating in the hot chicken soup, but that was due to climate necessity. Unfortunately due to the high bacteria count, ayerlakh are no longer available today and banned by the USDA. But we never got sick from them because boiling the chicken broth killed any bacteria that might have been present. Alas, now it is a culinary memory of the distant past.
Mom made the best pitcha (jellied calves feet with garlic—an aspic) which she learned from Bubbie. With Dad a shokhet, we enjoyed a delicacy which I have not eaten again during most of my adult life—baby lamb tongue—so sweet and tender. Zayde made his own brine pickles in big barrels in his basement as well as pickled herring which his “house guests” and grandchildren thoroughly enjoyed.
Gribbiness (caramelized onion and chicken cracklings) were noshed by us on erev Shabbes before the balance of the batch made its way into the gehakteh lebber (chopped liver). Early on Bubbie and Mom allowed me to assist in its preparation by hand-grinding the freshly-broiled liver, hard-boiled eggs along with celery, and the rendered gribbiness fried in chicken schmaltz (fat) The hand-operated meat grinder to this five year-old came across as a fun invention to play with. The produced output was tasty also. Hand-grinding chopped liver ingredients was my forte through my high school years. It was one of my regular chores for which I received an allowance later on.
Bubbie and Mom were fantastic European-style Ashkenazi chefs, which is all the more remarkable because both were born in the good ole USA—in Boston to be more precise. Bubbie was born 1896 in Malden, Massachusetts shortly after her family emigrated from Russia in the 1880s. Mother was born February 22, 1922 at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and grew up in Roxbury.
Marden Paru is currently the Dean, Rosh Yeshiva and co-founder of the Sarasota Liberal Yeshiva, an adult Jewish studies institute, and a former instructor at the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation’s Melton Adult Mini-School. He attended Yeshiva University, the University of Tulsa, and the University of Chicago, and was a doctoral fellow and faculty member at Brandeis University. Marden and his wife Joan are members of Temple Beth Sholom and Congregation Kol HaNeshama. To read more about Marden and Joan, visit: https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/news/newsletter/Hornstein-alumni-articles/My-1966-Computer-Arranged-Jewish-Marriage-by-Marden-Paru.html
The Jewish Writing Project 