Culinary interfaith gathering serves helpings of history and unity

by Judy Wilson
Special to NJ Jewish News

In a decisively nonpolitical, distinctively female approach to interfaith dialogue, about 150 women representing 20 area synagogues braved an icy snow to talk about women’s historical relationship to food, exchange recipes, and share a home-cooked meal on Jan.19 at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston.

This year, the 11th Women’s Interfaith Forum, an annual celebration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, was an invitation-only event featuring Montclair resident Laura Schenone, author of A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, who spoke about the connections between food and American women’s history.

“I have read the histories and they left something out,” she said, comparing her desire to recognize women’s role in history to “one of Martin Luther King’s points, that so many voices have never been heard.” She reminded the audience that an early initiative in the civil rights movement of the ’60s involved food — the lunch-counter sit-ins in the South, an important and ultimately successful weapon in the fight for equal treatment for blacks.

“It’s all about food and the right to be at the table,” Schenone said.

While she spoke, the guests — women from local synagogues churches, and mosques — sampled a wide range of culinary offerings prepared by members of B’nai Abraham’s sisterhood and social action committee, everything from Asian bok choy salad to noodle kugel, to black bean tart with chili crust to mandelbrot.

Each year some of the same people return to the event, cochair Caren Ford told NJ Jewish News, “and then we also get a whole new group of people who vow to return.”

Vicki Lewis from East Orange, who came with two friends, is a returnee. “Sometimes I see people I know from other churches,” she said. “I see them only here. We try to bring someone new each year.”

After sharing dinner and dessert with the participants, Schenone spoke of the importance of women as gatherers, inventors, and preparers of food in the development of culture and the sustaining of life.

“I wrote this book for my mother and grandmother,” said Schenone, the working mother of two young sons. She added that she wanted to tell “the story of women over the millennium who have fed the human race.” The impetus for the book was her desire to find out “who was the first woman to cook on this continent.”

That historical research led to a study of early American cookbooks, which she regards as a record of culture as well as a reflection of the state of women’s literacy. They were filled with political commentary, early suffragette and temperance material, herbal remedies, magic potions, and admonitions about housekeeping. These books, Schenone explained — and cooking, in general — were “ironically, a source of both power and oppression” because while they facilitated woman’s progress and competence in the home, they also defined her job as homemaker and set up norms to measure how she performed this role.

After Schenone’s presentation, Dolores Harris from Calvary Baptist Church in East Orange, who has been attending the King holiday event for six years, said thoughtfully, The speech was “very educational. We don’t think of what we do as that important.”

Harris said that she has found the gathering “so enlightening. Different faiths, different people, different conversations, but we find out everyone’s the same. It’s sharing.”

The evening’s theme — women and food — prompted informal discussions and recollections at each table. Violet Watson of East Orange recalled her mother’s and grandmother’s macaroni and cheese dish. “Although my mother only had a fifth grade education,” Eileen Woodburn from New York City, Watson’s sister, reminisced, “I remember what she said” and how wise she was. She repeated one of her mother’s favorite mottos-to-live-by: “All shortcuts lead to hell,” surely a daunting message for young cooks and homemakers.

Laura M. Brown of East Orange, who works for Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest, remembered that her mother didn’t cook but her uncle did. Thinking about her childhood evoked memories of special dishes — the sweet potato pie she still makes today, for example. Coincidentally, a version of sweet potato pie, made by a temple member, was offered as part of the buffet — tangible evidence of cultural experiences held in common.

Everyone who attended received a bound cookbook, That Beautiful Appetite (B’tayavon), containing recipes for most of the dishes served.

Cochairs of the forum, B’nai Abraham social action committee members Natalie Mauskopf, Deborah Prinz, and Caren Ford, and sisterhood president Diana Daniels also coordinated the event. This year, explained Ford, they received a grant from the State of New Jersey Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission, which made some extras like the cookbooks possible.

In past years, Ford recalled, programs have explored marriage rites in different religious traditions, the empowerment of women through sports, and women as advocates for change. Invitations are sent to area synagogues, Hindu and Buddhist temples, churches, and mosques, and each institution responds with a tally of how many will attend.

At the end of the evening, reviewing the program at their table were Edna Dumas and her “good friend” Greta Lyden of Nutley. “It is an empowering thing,” Lyden said, “to be with women who are celebrating unity.”