Kosher Cuisine Show #3 – Greece and Chanukkah

This is the original script for the show. Some of the non-essential text may have been edited out of the final version that aired on Community Radio due to time constraints. In this edition, some of the Hebrew language has been retyped below in non-patriarchal terms. The original broadcasts of these radio shows were in 2015 and 2016. Some bits, including the dessert and most of the narrative about Chanukkah, have been removed from this audio edition so the file fits within Bandcamps size limits – however, they are included below. Thanks for listening!

First Segment

Hava Nagila Music Intro [35 seconds then fade…]

Hello, everyone! This is Leah Kiser and you’re listening to Kosher Cuisine. This is a show about food safety, international kosher recipes and amazing music from areas around the world. This week we’re going to look at Greece and the upcoming holiday of Chanukkah.

Jews have been living in Greece since at least the 4th century BCE – that is, more than 300 years before Jesus of Nazareth. Most Jews in Greece are Sephardi – that is, they are part of the Mediterranean Jewish culture and not the Eastern Europe traditions. The Greek Jewish community has a great many unique customs due to their long exposure to Greek society, and their own siddur – prayer book. There is also a minority group called the Romaniote, who historically spoke a different dialect called Yevanic and live primarily in Ioannina. There are several beautiful architectural ruins of ancient synagogues in Greece, the earliest known one dates to the 2nd century BCE.

So Jewish cuisine has a long history of interacting with ingredients native to Greece and used in Greek cuisine. Today we’re going to make a menu for a lighter Shabbat meal, using Greek recipes. This is going to be a dairy meal. That means we cannot use any ingredients derived from poultry or red meat. Our knives, utensils, cutting boards, and pots and pans should also be designated strictly for dairy use. This is also a food safety issue – cross contamination of ingredients is the biggest cause of food poisoning in home kitchens. If you only have a few knives and cutting boards, you need to wash them with hot soapy water between preparing different types of ingredients.

So our first course today is a medley of two Greek salads. The first is called Horiatiki Salata, which is well known and popular country salad which you may have had in local restaurants. Be sure and wash all your vegetables before using them – this will eliminate exterior pesticides and herbicides, as well as dangerous bacteria.

For the salad, you will need to prepare:

2 lbs of fresh ripe tomatoes, sliced into wedges

2 cucumbers, sliced lengthwise, seeded, and cut into cubes. You can peel the cucumbers if you like, but the skins have many vitamins and minerals.

You need 2 green bell peppers, seeded and cut into strips

1 large red onion. Remove the outermost layer or two, and cut off the ends. Slice the rest into rings, and separate the rings.

You will need 16 large imported black Kalamata olives, pitted. If you can’t find pitted ones, you can cut the olives in half and remove the pits yourself. Alternately, a small jar of pitted Kalamata olives would work, though it is nearly impossible to find hechshered ones locally.

A hecksher is a symbol on jars, cans, and boxed foods indicating they have been supervised by a Rabbi and are known to only have kosher ingredients. Now, you might think you can just read a label and tell what ingredients are in packaged foods, but you would be wrong. Companies have no legal obligation to put all the ingredients on the label – any items that are less than 2% of the total of the container do NOT have to be listed. Think about that – if there are 5 ingredients that are all less than 2% in the product, you have no idea what is in nearly 10% of the package. Usually, what is omitted from the labels are chemicals and additives that may be harmful to your health. And if any of those additives are derived from meat or dairy sources, they can make your dish treif – that is, forbidden to eat. So it is important to look for products that are hechshered, or are certified vegan by an independent third party organization. That is the only way to make sure your ingredients are free of meat or diary animal products.

Finally, you will need ¼ lb of feta cheese, in four large chunks. And optionally, you can add 4 minced anchovy fillets.

Now wait a minute, you might be thinking – isn’t fish meat? No, it isn’t – at least not as far as kashrut is concerned. Fish is a special category all by itself, and can be eaten with either meat or dairy. Fish products can be included in kosher products labeled “parve,” so if you are truly a vegan, you need to be cautious about kosher sauces and canned goods that traditionally have some fish sauce or anchovies as part of the recipe.

So, to make the dressing for the salad you will need to measure out:

¼ extra virgin olive oil
2 TBS lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 TBS finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 garlic cloves, finely chopped
A pinch of salt and pepper

Arrange all your veggies on a serving platter, and top them with the olives and the feta cheese, and the anchovies if you are using them. Whisk together the dressing ingredients and drizzle the mixture over the platter immediately before serving, at the last minute.

The second salad in our medley today is one that looks more like a traditional western salad, but is made with country ingredients.

Buy a pound of radishes, and cut off the greens. Wash and de-stem the greens, and slice them into ribbons about 1 inch wide. To de-stem means to just cut out the heavy stem parts – so you just have the main leaf and not any dangly stems.

Buy a pound of baby turnips, and cut off the greens. Wash and de-stem the greens, and slice them like you did the radish greens.

Next, wash and de-stem a pound of mustard greens, and slice like the others.

Finally, wash, de-stem and slice a half pound of spinach. Optionally, if you can find them, you can also add a ½ pound of amaranth or chickweed.

For the dressing, you will need to measure out:
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Freshly squeezed juice from one lemon, or substitute about 1 tablespoon

Also, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
And finally, a pinch of salt and pepper

Place the prepared radish greens and mustard greens in a colander over a pot of boiling water to steam them (or if you have a steamer you can just use that). After about 5 minutes, add the turnip greens and wait another 5 minutes. Finally, add the rest of the greens until they are all wilted, maybe another 5 minutes.

Drain the greens well, and then arrange them on a serving platter. Drizzle the dressing evenly, and serve when the greens are room temperature.

While you’re throwing your salads together, listen to this piece from the “Greek Guitar Music” CD featuring Eva Fampas. It is track number 5, called simply, “Vals.”

[Track 5 – 45 second excerpt]

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine! Now, of course, you will be preparing the Greek salads right before meal time. If you cut off the turnips and radishes earlier in the day, though, you can make a side dish out of them: roasted country vegetables.

So preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Wash the radishes and baby turnips, rinse and pat them dry.

Cut the radishes and turnips into halves or quarters and drizzle them with olive oil. Rub them all over to make sure every surface is covered lightly. Arrange the pieces on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with salt, then roast 20-25 minutes, or until they are fork tender.

You can jazz up this dish by adding other seasonings besides the salt to the vegetables. Radishes have a little kick to them, so you can play on that and add a light sprinkle of Cajun or a spicy Asian mix, or you can go savory and add Italian herbs, or do a sweet and sour drizzle of apple cider vinegar and brown sugar. Have fun with them!

And while they’re roasting, here is track 14 from the CD “Greek Guitar Music” by Eva Fampas. This one is called “Seascape 2: Wreck in the Living Room.”

[Track 14 – 45 second excerpt]

Second Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine! Our next dish on our Greek menu this week is another classic favorite: Spanikopita – Spinach pies. This recipe serves eight, supposedly. I guess that would be 8 normal people. But honestly, my boys can scarf these down like you wouldn’t believe.

So, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

The first thing you will need is 8 ounces of fresh spinach leaves. You can, in a pinch, use the frozen boxed spinach, but if you do, you have to get all that liquid out of it. Let the box thaw completely, and press the spinach repeatedly between dry, clean towels until no more water comes out of them.

You will need two scallions, chopped.
Measure out 1 TBS of dill, preferably fresh
A pinch of ground black pepper
6 ounces of feta cheese – the dry kind, not the packaged in salt water kind.
1 egg, whisked as if for scrambling
A bit of olive oil in a bowl, and a basting brush

And finally, 4 large sheets or 8 small sheets of phyllo dough. Now, if you can’t find phyllo dough or don’t want a bunch of it left over, you can substitute those cans of croissants you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store. They are actually way less hassle than phyllo dough sheets.

So, first, take your spinach and cut it into thin ribbons or mince it up with a clean dairy knife on a clean dairy cutting board. Place it in a dairy bowl and add the feta, the scallions, the whisked egg, the dill and the pepper and mix thoroughly.

Now, if you want to jazz up your spanikopita, here is where that happens. You can add garlic, you can add finely diced red onion, you can add pine nuts, you can add different seasonings….anything you like. Mix the spinach mixture thoroughly when you’re ready.

OK, so now we need to deal with the phyllo dough or the croissant dough, whichever you chose.

Lay out a small sheet of phyllo pastry and brush it with olive oil. Alternately, take a package of croissant dough and roll it out until it is about the same size as a small sheet of phyllo, and brush it with olive oil as if it were phyllo dough.

If you are using the large sheets of phyllo dough, now roll the bottom half of the sheet up so that the layer is doubled – in other words, fold it over so that it is the size of a small sheet. Brush again with olive oil.

Now, if you or someone in your family is gluten free, you can use a gluten free baking mix to make a dough for your spanikopita. The gluten-free pie doughs will not have the same consistency as phyllo dough or croissant dough, but the pie will still taste good. Roll it out and brush it with olive oil as you would the regular doughs.

Be advised, though, that if you are using the gluten-free baking mix you may have trouble getting your dough to behave. Try cutting it into triangles and rolling it around in a croissant shape BEFORE putting any topping on it to see how it is going to roll. If it is too crumbly or lacks structural integrity, use muffin tins to make a slightly different looking but still great tasting end product. You might try cutting it into circles with a large biscuit cutter and making filled half moon shapes, rather like calzones, instead of rolling them. Gluten free dough just may not roll up like a croissant. It is what it is.

OK, so now, no matter what size sheets or what type of dough you used, you have a rolled out dough the size of a small sheet of phyllo waiting to be topped or a gluten-free alternative.

So spread out the spinach mixture onto the dough. Now, cut the dough into 8 triangular shaped pieces. If you have never made ordinary croissants this may be difficult to visualize, but take hold of two ends of the triangle and roll the dough toward the remaining end. You are going to roll each piece so that the filling is toward the inside, being rolled up into the pastry, and then tuck the ends toward the front of the roll, so they are not sticking out. You can pinch the ends together with the center of the roll to keep everything in shape.

If you are using gluten free round shapes, divide the spinach filling evenly and spoon it a bit off center onto the rounds, then fold them over and crimp the edges with a fork. You may need to run a finger of water around the edge of the round before you fold it so the two sides will stick together. If you are using the muffin tin alternative, divide the spinach mixture evenly into each dough lined tin, and top them with a bit more dough. Put the tins into a muffin baking pan so they will hold their shape until they bake.

Brush the tops of your pies with more olive oil, so they will brown nicely. Bake them for 20-25 minutes, and then place them on a wire rack to cool.

Before serving them you can make toppings for them, though you don’t have to. They are fine as is. But you might like a traditional Greek yogurt sauce, called Tzatziki. It is pretty easy to make.

You will need a cup of Greek yogurt
1 TBS of lemon juice
½ teaspoon of minced garlic, or to taste. I generally just use a whole clove.
1 small cucumber, salted.
1 teaspoon of dill
And a pinch of black pepper.

So, peel the cucumbers and dice them up. Put them in a colander and sprinkle them generously with salt. This will help draw out the moisture. Cover with a saucer and sit something heavy on top of it – that will squish out the water. Let this sit for about 30 minutes. Drain the cucumbers well and pat them dry with a towel.

If you have a food processor or blender, you can add the yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, lemon juice, dill and black pepper, and process everything until it is well blended and creamy. If not, just stir vigorously. Taste to see if it needs salt. Place in the fridge to chill and to allow the flavors to blend.

The sauce will keep a few days in fridge, so you can make extra spanikopitas and freeze them to eat another day with the extra tzatziki sauce. Drain any liquid that separates from the sauce and mix well before using again.

While your spanikopita are baking, here is track 12 from a CD called “Syrtaki Dance from Greece.” This piece is called “To Limani tis Rodou” which means “the Port of Rhodes.” It is performed by the Constantin Dourountzis Band “Athena.” Enjoy!

[Track 12 – 45 second excerpt]

Third Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine! Our main course for our Greek meal this week is called Piskado kon Agristada, Fish with Egg and Lemon Sauce, from the city of Salonika. There it was eaten as a cold dish on Shabbat afternoon, but it is just as good warm for a Friday night Shabbat evening meal. This recipe serves four.

First, you will need 2 pounds of white fish cut into steaks or fillets.

You can use any type of white fish – sole, haddock, cod, halibut, or even thick sliced tilapia. If you do use tilapia, this won’t work well with those very thin frozen slices you get at some stores. You need real dinner portions or it won’t hold together.

In kashrut, the rule is that the type of fish you use has to have fins and scales throughout its life cycle to be considered clean to eat. Shellfish of any kind is not permitted, nor are exotic seafoods. Shellfish eat dead carcasses and other garbage they find rotting on the bottom of the ocean. Essentially, they are the vacuum cleaners of the sea. This means they are exposed to a lot of bacteria that will make you sick. It also means they ingest a lot of chemical toxins and metals, since these invariably fall to the bottom of the sea due to their molecular weight being more than that of water. It is a written rule in the Torah, not a rabbinic speculation, that shellfish are unclean – they are treif, not permitted to be eaten.

Land animals that are clean to eat are those animals that graze and chew their cud – ruminants, in other words. Cows, sheep, goats, certain types of deer, gazelle & antelope, even giraffes – these types of animals are accepted as food as long as they are herbivores and have a cloven hoof, they are clean to eat. Clean birds are the types that live in fields and have their natural habitat as grasslands and meadows, like chickens, turkeys, pheasant, and other ordinary poultry. Birds of prey and carrion eaters are, of course, not kosher.

Land animals that are not clean to eat include carnivores of any kind, animals like pigs that eat carcasses or scavenged decomposing items, and even a clean animal that has been found already dead. Carnivores, carrion eaters, and carcass are, of course, full of icky bacteria and blood-borne pathogens. They are not kosher.

There are some controversial types of fish. For example – catfish. Most authorities do not consider catfish kosher because they are bottom feeders and scavengers, and as adults they do not have scales. Their skin is smooth. But the young ones do. So can you eat them when they’re young? Can you eat them always? Some say yes. But to be on the safe side, as a general rule catfish is not considered kosher. Swordfish is another popular but unacceptable item – they don’t have scales either, so they’re not kosher. Of course, neither are sharks for the same reason.

It is a good idea to buy fish packages that have a hechsher on them – that is, a kosher certification. The reason for that is, unfortunately, not all markets are honest about what types of fish they sell, especially packaged and frozen fishes. There have been tests done recently on a sampling of frozen fishes served in restaurants, for example, and they found that an alarming percentage of the fish sold was not what it was advertised to be. They were substituting cheap types of seafood for more expensive select fish steaks and fillets.

Whatever type of white fish you choose for this meal, make sure you are really getting what you are paying for! Buy 2 pounds of white fish steaks or fillets. Your fillets should not have a strong fish smell when you open the package, either. Fillets should have hardly any smell if they are fresh. By the time they start smelling, that means they are going bad and you should not use them. It is unsafe to cook with fish that is going bad because it is hard to kill the germs without overcooking the fish.

So, while this dish itself has no dairy products, we are eating it with a dairy meal, so use a baking dish that is designated for dairy use. Remember, fish has a special status in kashrut and is not treated like poultry or red meat. It can be eaten with cheese and prepared in dairy cookware.

You will need 2 TBS of olive oil
The juice of one lemon
2 eggs
And 3 TBS of finely chopped parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Lay your fish fillets or steaks out into a flat pan or skillet, so that they do not overlap. Pour in just enough filtered water to barely cover them. Add salt, pepper, oil, and about half the lemon juice.

Bring the water slowly to a boil – don’t use high heat. The idea is to poach them gently – the surface of the water should barely be trembling. Do this for 7-10 minutes, until the fish just begins to flake. Test it with a fork in the thickest portion of the fillets.

Now, using a long spatula or two spatulas facing each other, carefully lift out the fish fillets and place them on a serving dish. There should be about 1 cup of water left in the pan – if there is more, spoon some out. If there is not enough, then add some.

To make the sauce, whisk the eggs with the rest of the lemon juice. Now whisk in 4 tablespoons of the cooking water left in the pan. When it is thoroughly combined, pour the egg mixture back into the rest of the water in the pan, and stir constantly using very low heat, no more than 2, until it thickens. DO NOT BOIL IT! If it boils the eggs will curdle and you’ll have to start over with some plain warm water, which won’t have the savory fish taste to it. If this happens, you can add a few drops of lemon juice and a dash of oriental fish sauce made with anchovies to your plain water, just a bit, to give it a fish flavor base.

OK, when the egg and lemon sauce is finally thick and creamy, add the parsley. Pour the sauce over the fish on the serving platter. If you are going to eat it warm, serve it immediately. If you are going to serve it chilled, cover it and refrigerate until needed.

Now there is a more glamorous variation on the sauce that you can try: Whisk 2 eggs, add 4 finely minced garlic cloves, the salt and pepper, the juice of 2 lemons, and use a ½ cup of dry white wine instead of the water from the pan. Again, heat the ingredients over very low heat until thick and creamy, then add the parsley.

Either way, your fish will be moist and tasty. A classic Greek dish.

While you are preparing your fish, here is track 6 from the Syrtaki Dance CD, called “Kalimera Matia Mou,” – Good Morning my Eyes. Of course, in Jewish time, sunset is the beginning of the day, not sunrise. Jewish holidays and Shabbat always start in the evening at sundown. This is taken from the creation story in Genesis, where it says, “the evening and the morning was the first day” and so on. Often on Shabbat people take a nap in the late afternoon to pass the time, and when they wake up at evening it is now the beginning of the first day of the week!

[Track 6 – 45 second excerpt]

Fourth Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine!

For dessert, we’ll top off our Greek meal with a dish called Tulumba, which are syrup covered bites of pastry, probably a week’s worth of calories at one sitting. According to the “my greek dish.com” website, this is actually a Middle Eastern dessert which was later adopted in Greek cuisine.

Now, the recipe calls for using a pastry bag with a decorative star nozzle to make cute little tubes of pastry – but you don’t have to do that. You can take two teaspoons and spoon out the dough into small irregularly shaped balls that will work just as well.

So, for the pasty bites you will need to measure out:
2 cups of water
1 cup of milk
1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil or butter
1 TBS of sugar,
2 scant cups of all purpose flour (15 ounces)
A pinch of salt
4 large eggs
1 TBS of vanilla extract
1 TBS of white wine vinegar
And peanut oil or other high heat tolerant oil to fry the pastries.

The syrup should be made first. For that you will need:
3 cups of sugar
2 cups of water, and
1 teaspoon of lemon juice

Put the syrup ingredients in a small pot and bring to a boil, then let it boil for 4-5 minutes until the sugar is completely dissolved. Then set aside to cool. That’s it.

For the pastry dough, use a dairy saucepan to prepare the milk, water, sugar, salt and oil together. Bring these to a boil for just 4 minutes, and then remove from the stove.

I have not yet tried this recipe with gluten-free baking mix or nut flour instead of wheat flour, but in theory it could work.

Whichever you are using, stir in the flour with a wooden spoon all at once and mix vigorously until the all the flour is incorporated, or at least for 60 seconds. Now, lower the heat on your burner and return the pan to the stove. Stir constantly for another 60 seconds, to cook the mixture – but be sure not to let it burn. The idea is to evaporate as much water as you can.

So now put the contents of the pot into a mixer bowl, if you have a mixer, or just into any large dairy bowl if you don’t. Add the 4 eggs one at a time, and mix them into the dough until each is completely absorbed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix until the dough is glossy. It will be very thick, but should fall slowly and steadily from the beaters or your spoon when you lift it from the bowl. If it is too thick, add a bit of water or milk. Now add the vanilla extract and white vinegar, and mix until incorporated.

Next, heat your oil in a pan to fry the pastry bites.

If you are using a pastry bag, fill it with the dough and squeeze with your arm that is holding the bag. With your other hand, use cooking scissors to cut the pastry into short lengths as it falls into the hot oil.

If you don’t have a pastry bag, use a teaspoon to scoop out a wad of the dough and another spoon to push the dough off the first spoon and into the pan. If you have ever made drop dumplings you will recognize this procedure.

Fry the pastry bites on medium heat, turning them so they brown on all sides. Remove them with a slotted spoon and drain them on a towel to get rid of excess oil.

Transfer each batch of pastry bites into the cold syrup and leave them there for 2-3 minutes to absorb the syrup. Remove them with a slotted spoon into a serving bowl, and repeat until all the dough has been fried and soaked. They are yummy!

Now that we have prepared our Greek meal, let’s talk a bit about the next holiday coming up after Sukkot, which ended earlier this week. And that is Chanukkah. You may have heard Chanukkah referred to as “the Jewish Christmas,” but that would not be accurate. Chanukkah celebrates the defeat of the Greek army by the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE. It begins on the 25th day of the lunar month of Kislev, which can occur in either November or December on the English calendar. That is why it gets confused with Christmas, December 25th.

The festival lasts 8 days, and is called The Feast of Dedication because the Greeks had defiled the Temple Mount by sacrificing an unclean animal on the altar. They sacrificed a pig which made the Temple Mount treif, basically. So after the Jew’s victory over the Greek invaders, the old altar had to be removed, a new one constructed, and everything had to be cleansed that remained. Once that was finished, they held a celebration similar to the one that Solomon held when the Temple was dedicated the first time, an 8 day celebration.

This is why Chanukkah has a special lampstand that has 9 branches instead of the usual 7 branches. An ordinary menorah has 7 candleholders to commemorate creation, the seven days of the week, and is used on an ordinary Shabbat. During the Dedication, also sometimes called the festival of lights, a special lamp called a chanukkiah is used instead. On the first night of Chanukkah, the center candle, called the samash or servant, is lit, and then the first, and only the first, of the other candles is lit. On the second night, only two are lit, and so on, until the last day of the festival, when finally the samash and all 8 branches are lit together.

This is in honor of a story that appears in the Talmud, which says that when they cleansed the Temple mount, they could only find one jar of the special oil used in the Temple menorah. Ordinarily, this oil would last for one full day, and then need to be refilled each evening. You might recall, in Jewish homes on Shabbat eve we light candles at home in honor of the commandment to the priests to light the menorah each evening in the Temple, which we cannot do there at this time. In those days, they used oil lamps, not candles, which as far as I know hadn’t been invented yet.

So they were preparing to light the menorah in the Temple for the Dedication celebration, and only found one pot of oil. But it would take a whole week to prepare more sanctified oil. Oh, well, they thought. We’ll light the lamp on the first night so everybody can see it and that will just have to do. But when the 24 hours was up and the next evening came along, the light didn’t go out. They were very surprised. But maybe the lamp had some oil in it from before? They didn’t think it would last. But the third evening, it was still going! And the 4th! And the 5th! All the way up to the 8th day, when the new oil was ready! It was a miracle.

Now, if you read the books of Maccabees in the apocrypha, there is no mention of this story. Instead, you get a harrowing description of the tortures that the Greek government imposed on the Israelite people who were caught practicing Judaism after it had been outlawed. The Greeks embarked on a policy of cultural genocide to erase Judaism from practice. You read about the battles fought by Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers as they attempted to evict the Greek invaders from their country. So why was the STORY about the lights emphasized and the HISTORY of the military victory pushed to the background?

Because 250 years later, another conquering army came into Israel, and again imposed their will on the Israelite people, and again wanted to impose their culture on Israel – this time it was the Romans, who had inherited the Hellenistic empire. The Romans destroyed the Temple in 90 CE. Later, in about 135 CE, there was another uprising led by Simon bar Kokhba. However, it was not successful. The remaining Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and the Romans once again forbade the practice of Judaism in Israel.

The Jews who lived outside of Israel didn’t want to antagonize the Roman overlords by emphasizing the military victory aspect of the holiday. In fact, the books of Maccabees were not even included in the canonized version of the Bible, which was officially sanctioned about 200 CE. They didn’t want to appear to be giving anyone the idea of taking up arms against Rome. Persecutions against Jews and Christians were taking place at that time. They didn’t want the Romans to think they were getting any ideas.

But they did want to preserve the holiday and keep the traditions, in anticipation of that future day when all outside oppression would be thrown off and Israelites would once again be able to practice Judaism freely in their own land in their own Temple on its historic site, which was first dedicated over 2500 years ago.

In the meantime, in Israel and out here in the Diaspora, we celebrate Chanukkah by giving children gifts and candy each night, and with hope that one day the world WILL beat their swords into plowshares, and people will not learn war anymore. We celebrate with great food, and wine, and of course, music.

This track is number 16 from a children’s disk called Chanukah Party Music. The song is called “Hatikvah” which means, “The Hope.”

[Track 16 – omitted from Bandcamp edition]


Next week we will have some more great international food and music and we’ll talk a bit more about food safety and kashrut.

This is Leah Kiser wishing you Sabbath peace, this week and every week. Shabbat Shalom.

[Hava Nagila fade…]