NPR

The Jewish Food Society Wants To Save The Recipes Of Grandmas Everywhere

A new project aims to celebrate Jewish food and culture in all its diversity. It's collecting recipes from the Jewish diaspora and staging public events where stories behind the recipes are the stars.
Idan Cohen's grandmother's famous German layer cake. Idan's mom always said that the Israeli climate did not agree with this cake, but she made it anyway.

The Yiddish word schmaltz and its adverb cousin schmaltzy refer to two very divergent concepts: rendered chicken fat — that hard stuff on top of a cold homemade soup — and something that is overly sentimental. When it comes to the foods we love and cherish, there can be no shortage of either.

Naama Shefi would agree. Recently, over a bag of schmaltz-infused popcorn, 90 people came together in lower Manhattan to celebrate the formation of the Jewish Food Society, a new organization Shefi created that aims to honor the global wonder of Jewish food.

Born on a kibbutz in central Israel, Shefi's early

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