One of our events during Tolerance Week was a workshop on Palestinian cooking. It was hosted by our good friend, Dr. Diana Lipton, and was fully Kosher, to enable those who often aren’t able to enjoy this type of cooking because they observe Jewish dietary laws. Afterward Diana wrote about her experience in her blog in the Times of Israel. Here’s where she described her experience, and described Tolerance Week:
Food bridging cultures
Feeling Hungry in Jerusalem
Last week was the fourth annual Jerusalem Tolerance Week, timed to coincide with International Tolerance Day. Not surprisingly, many of the events organized by institutions and individuals in partnership with the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center (JICC) revolved around food.
Most of the food-related activities involved participating restaurants, but one of them took place in our apartment. Our event was called Kosher Palestinian Home Cooking. We invited Magda, a wonderful cook who also cleans for our friends Naomi and Jonathan, to prepare a range of traditional Palestinian dishes that kosher-keeping Jews could eat. Magda bought all the products at Rami Levy, a supermarket where all the products are kosher, and prepared the food in Naomi and Jonathan’s kosher kitchen in pots that belonged to them or were purchased specially.
Displaying the wonderful tastes of Palestinian cooking
Through the JICC’s Tolerance Week advertising, mainly on social media, we invited anyone who, because of dietary restrictions or mere lack of opportunity, could not enjoy Palestinian home cooking, to come to our apartment and make up for lost time. We promised wonderful food, an opportunity to meet the cook and to hear about her life and the role of food within it, and live music!
Ahead of the event, a few people asked me if I was worried that people would simply come to eat free food and leave. I wasn’t worried, and as it turned out, I didn’t need to be. As these photos attest, the 60 plus people who came to our apartment last Thursday night, most of whom we didn’t know and didn’t know each other, certainly had an appetite for Magda’s amazing food, but they were hungry for a lot more.
You can read her entire column here.
Accompanied by a little music as well
Thank you Diana, and thank you for a wonderful event!
And, of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund and the Schusterman Family Foundation for helping us to advance tolerance in Jerusalem through Tolerance Week.
