09 Aug
2011 September-October, Arts & Culture, Talk of the Table

Buon Appetito! Rome’s “Jewish Soul Food”

by Alison Morse Most days, Attilio Pavoncello, an Italian Jew and amateur chef, can be found on Via Portico D’Ottavia, the main street of Rome’s former Jewish ghetto, helping out at his wife Speranza’s souvenir shop or his son Umberto’s kosher restaurant. He has lived on this street for more than 60 years and has seen it transform from a quiet, cobblestoned promenade with a restaurant or two, to a riot of awnings, umbrellas and outdoor tables belonging to the kosher Roman Jewish restaurants that have sprung up in the last ten years. Blackboard signs promising the most authentic version of popular deep-fried Roman-Jewish specialties, such as artichokes alla giudia (Jewish-style artichokes) or fiore di zucca ripieno (zucchini stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies), compete for the attention of tourists, both Jewish and not, from all over the world. “Being Jewish...

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08 Aug
2011 September-October, Arts & Culture

Stuffed Cabbage Recipe

Stuffed Cabbage Filling: 2 beaten eggs 1 pound ground beef ½ cup cooked rice ½ teaspoon garlic powder 1 tablespoon grated onion (or 1/2 cup chopped and cooked in oil) ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon catsup Sauce: 2 cups tomato sauce 2 tablespoons tomato paste ½ cup sugar ¼ cup lemon juice or cider vinegar Salt and pepper to taste   Bring a large pot of water with a little vinegar to a rapid boil. Place a cabbage head in the water and cook about 5 minutes until you can remove outer leaves easily. Cool and remove about 14 large leaves. Trim the center rib of each leaf. You can chop up extra leaves and put them in the bottom of your baking dish with some chopped onions. Combine stuffing and put about 1-2 heaping tablespoons on each leaf, fold sides over stuffing, then fold over the rib end and roll...

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20 May
2011 September-October, Arts & Culture, Jewish World

Jews and the San Francisco Gold Rush

In the early 1850s, Adolph Sutro, a cocky young man with a thick walrus moustache, headed west to make his fortune. Originally from Prussia, Sutro had managed his family’s textile factory and immigrated to America in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, which had stirred up fears of renewed anti-Semitism. A born adventurer obsessed with books, machines and outer space, Sutro was unimpressed with Baltimore, where his mother and numerous siblings had settled. Lured by news that gold had been discovered in the American River in California in 1848, Sutro boarded a steamer to Central America, trekked through the jungle to the Pacific, and caught another a ship up the coast. He disembarked in San Francisco, alone and penniless, in 1850. Around the same time, another Prussian-born Jew—Abraham Abrahamsohn—made his way to New York. He arrived...

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11 Oct
2011 September-October, Arts & Culture, Jewish World

Opinion: Is Tenure Bad for the Jews?

If you ask professors why they need tenure, the first words out of their mouths will undoubtedly be some variation of this phrase: “To guarantee academic freedom.” I’ve asked this question dozens, if not hundreds, of times. I have asked professors at both ends of what amounts to a guaranteed job for life if, as the argument goes, they will be unable to speak or write freely without tenure. Will those with unpopular views—or views that upset the administration or the trustees or other members of the faculty—otherwise be run off campus? And if we allow such pressure to be exerted on our faculty, will the integrity of the university in America be compromised? Three years ago, when I started a book about the institution of tenure, I made a promise to myself: I would severely...

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