Welcome to the companion page to the Just Jewish Club Jewish Bookclub on Clubhouse.
If you don't know what Clubhouse is, it's a streaming audio conversation app. Right now, it's officially in Beta test and is invite only. Please feel free to email me for an invite or use this link on your mobile phone to join clubhouse and immediately join our sponsor club, Just Jewish.
We meet every Monday on Clubhouse in a room sponsored by the Just Jewish club. Please join the club to get meeting notices, although the group is open to non-club members.
Book 2: Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook - Jane Yolan - Amazon B&N
Book 3: A Rabbi's Northern Adventure - Yisrael Haber - Amazon B&N
Next meeting, November 8, 2021 at 1:00 EDT/10:00 PDTwe will be discussing stories 3-5: Counting Eggs, The Demon who Lived in a Tree, & And the Matza was Still Warm.
The Latke Miracle is an Elijah the prophet tale which follows the form of showing kindness to a stranger results in a blessing/miracle. This is a common trope in fairy tales, and there is an entire class of Elijah tales in specifically Jewish folklore. We talked about the multiple themes that you can focus on; kindness to guests, welcoming the stranger, beautifying the holiday. We talked about how can we share these tales, which are shetyl life tales with our children and have them be relatable. To a child who has never suffered food insecurity; how can we make the scarcity seem relatable? We shared some personal stories and reflections on what we would do in the mother's situation.
This is a "Three Clever children" tale, There are a lot of these types of tales, both involving brothers and sisters with the youngest always proving somehow the most meritrious or worthy in some way. We talked about how we don't love the idea that the princess is the prize; women are more than trophies, but that this tale manages to somewhat redeem itself from this idea but having the princess choose the younger brother and also prove to be clever enough to demonstrate why he should be chosen to be her groom. (I won't call him the victor in this scenario, because see above women not being prizes to be won.) Her assertion that as he has sacrifices the (literal) fruits of his labours to save him where his brothers didn't make the same sacrifices for her, inclines her to wish to bestow everything she is on him. (SO ROMANTIC!) (Well, *I* thought it was romantic.) We spent some time talking about how we could make this tale more resonate and how we can adapt the tales to suit our audience and our sensibilities. Perhaps in our alternate ending, the princess could appoint them ministers, and provide them a chance to meet the sisters. Maybe the sisters are there immediately and the other brothers fall in love with them. The tales are meant to be told and shared and, like recipes, can be modified to individual tastes, which leads us to....In The Kitchen.
Week 1: Two people made recipes from the book in week 1. The recipes were Applesauce and Blintzes.
Both recipes were quite tasty.
The applesauce was made with Macintosh apples, cinnamon stick, and processed in a foodmill. It was, as promised, delicious warm.
The blintzes were cooked entirely on the stove and topped with homemade blueberry compote instead of the jelly recommended, and were very good.
As with the tales themselves, we talked about the food can be adjusted to individual tastes and that lesson paired very nicely with our discussion of the Three Skillful Brothers.
This is our current book list. We'll be working our way through these. Feel free to suggest additional titles.
Thanks for joining us!