Sunday, October 23, 2011
Dedication
“Thou Shalt Eat Brisket”: The Schneider Family Cookbook
To the Schneiders. To our cousins, and their children, and their children’s children and their children’s children. We are Family. We are each other’s cousins—from the very oldest among us (now in her sixties) to the ones who have yet to be born.
This cookbook is the collaboration of six first cousins: Paula Frost, Bonnie Berman, Sharon Liss, Renee Becker, Nancy Rosenfield and me, Pamela Abramson Grisman, the Alex Haley (Google him) of this project. It is worth noting that not a one of us bears the surname that actually binds us—which is Schneider. We are the six granddaughters of Albert and Helen Schneider, the parents of Ruth, Abe and Edith.
Each of the three Schneider children had two daughters; Ruth married Lester Berman and begat Paula and Bonnie. Abe married Helen King and had Sharon and Renee. Edie married Alan Abramson and soon Nancy and I came along. Having six granddaughters didn’t necessarily mean that the family name wouldn’t get passed on. Still, it came as no surprise to anyone when our lovely, 85-year-old Aunt Helen (married to Abe, now 90) recently told me: “We were hoping each one of you had been a boy.”
But what’s in a name, really? To me (I grew up and became a journalist) it was your story that mattered, not your name. At a certain point (after writing hundreds of other people’s stories) I began thinking about my own. Once, I asked my cousin Sharon (I’m not sure why) if she knew anything about where the Schneider Family came from. Without skipping a beat, she told me, “We’re from Albany Park. I thought you knew that.
Beyond the shtetls of Eastern Europe (Albert and Helen immigrated to America through Ellis Island before the first world war) who we are and where we came from has always been a bit of mystery. They spoke Yiddish and English with a European accent. Grandma said “sha shtel,” (a combination of sit still and be quiet) a lot. Grandpa gave wet kisses and his breath smelled like the cigars he rolled on the dining room table in the tiny apartment in Chicago where they lived. Maybe when you have a difficult history, your focus is on the future, not the past.
The inspiration for this cookbook came out of an honest interest in family heritage coupled with a real desire to create a small, written family legacy. If the old adage is true—that we are what we eat—we are hoping that our recipes will tell the Schneider story. How better to tell it than through the recipes prepared in our mothers’ kitchens, the center of most Jewish households, especially ours, where food was a key aspect of family life. Our menus were probably no different from the millions of meals prepared in Jewish Kitchens across America. We ate brisket on special occasions and holidays. We served it with chopped liver, sweet and sour meatballs, and chicken soup. Our mothers baked mandel bread, cherry cakes and lemon squares.
But we are not writing this book because our culinary story is anything out of the ordinary. (We are not even assuming anyone will use this cookbook for its recipes. One of our working book titles was “the Road To Lipator”, reflecting the archaic health standards of our family as well as a whole pre-pacemaker generation of Jewish people.) We are writing this book for our family simply to capture our memories, our pictures, our voice and interpretations––as a way of keeping the Schneider name and stories alive. Today (summer of 2011) only Uncle Abe Scheider, 90, and Aunt Helen King Schneider, 85, are alive. (Florists their entire professional lives, they still run Swanson’s Blossom Shop in Deerfield, Illinois.) Meanwhile, in the last 18 months, three of Albert and Helen Schneider’s great, great grandchildren were born. Welcome to your mother’s maternal side of the family (there are now nearly 50 faces on this growing family tree) Drew Lennon Goldberg, Eli Ethan Becker and David Lev Prass. They will carry not the name, but the spirit of the Schneider’s, into the future.
It is likely that through the recipes in this book—-the farfel, the kishka (yes kids, there is a kishka) the noodle kugel, the various colored jello molds, the salmon patties and tuna casseroles––that Thou Shall Eat Brisket: A Jewish Family Cookbook will strike a common chord with Jewish cousins across the culture. We’d be thrilled if one of our recipes brought you back to the memories of a meal you shared your own family. Of such moments, someone much wiser than me once observed, the thing is made that endures.
To the Schneiders. To our cousins, and their children, and their children’s children and their children’s children. We are Family. We are each other’s cousins—from the very oldest among us (now in her sixties) to the ones who have yet to be born.
This cookbook is the collaboration of six first cousins: Paula Frost, Bonnie Berman, Sharon Liss, Renee Becker, Nancy Rosenfield and me, Pamela Abramson Grisman, the Alex Haley (Google him) of this project. It is worth noting that not a one of us bears the surname that actually binds us—which is Schneider. We are the six granddaughters of Albert and Helen Schneider, the parents of Ruth, Abe and Edith.
Each of the three Schneider children had two daughters; Ruth married Lester Berman and begat Paula and Bonnie. Abe married Helen King and had Sharon and Renee. Edie married Alan Abramson and soon Nancy and I came along. Having six granddaughters didn’t necessarily mean that the family name wouldn’t get passed on. Still, it came as no surprise to anyone when our lovely, 85-year-old Aunt Helen (married to Abe, now 90) recently told me: “We were hoping each one of you had been a boy.”
But what’s in a name, really? To me (I grew up and became a journalist) it was your story that mattered, not your name. At a certain point (after writing hundreds of other people’s stories) I began thinking about my own. Once, I asked my cousin Sharon (I’m not sure why) if she knew anything about where the Schneider Family came from. Without skipping a beat, she told me, “We’re from Albany Park. I thought you knew that.
Beyond the shtetls of Eastern Europe (Albert and Helen immigrated to America through Ellis Island before the first world war) who we are and where we came from has always been a bit of mystery. They spoke Yiddish and English with a European accent. Grandma said “sha shtel,” (a combination of sit still and be quiet) a lot. Grandpa gave wet kisses and his breath smelled like the cigars he rolled on the dining room table in the tiny apartment in Chicago where they lived. Maybe when you have a difficult history, your focus is on the future, not the past.
The inspiration for this cookbook came out of an honest interest in family heritage coupled with a real desire to create a small, written family legacy. If the old adage is true—that we are what we eat—we are hoping that our recipes will tell the Schneider story. How better to tell it than through the recipes prepared in our mothers’ kitchens, the center of most Jewish households, especially ours, where food was a key aspect of family life. Our menus were probably no different from the millions of meals prepared in Jewish Kitchens across America. We ate brisket on special occasions and holidays. We served it with chopped liver, sweet and sour meatballs, and chicken soup. Our mothers baked mandel bread, cherry cakes and lemon squares.
But we are not writing this book because our culinary story is anything out of the ordinary. (We are not even assuming anyone will use this cookbook for its recipes. One of our working book titles was “the Road To Lipator”, reflecting the archaic health standards of our family as well as a whole pre-pacemaker generation of Jewish people.) We are writing this book for our family simply to capture our memories, our pictures, our voice and interpretations––as a way of keeping the Schneider name and stories alive. Today (summer of 2011) only Uncle Abe Scheider, 90, and Aunt Helen King Schneider, 85, are alive. (Florists their entire professional lives, they still run Swanson’s Blossom Shop in Deerfield, Illinois.) Meanwhile, in the last 18 months, three of Albert and Helen Schneider’s great, great grandchildren were born. Welcome to your mother’s maternal side of the family (there are now nearly 50 faces on this growing family tree) Drew Lennon Goldberg, Eli Ethan Becker and David Lev Prass. They will carry not the name, but the spirit of the Schneider’s, into the future.
It is likely that through the recipes in this book—-the farfel, the kishka (yes kids, there is a kishka) the noodle kugel, the various colored jello molds, the salmon patties and tuna casseroles––that Thou Shall Eat Brisket: A Jewish Family Cookbook will strike a common chord with Jewish cousins across the culture. We’d be thrilled if one of our recipes brought you back to the memories of a meal you shared your own family. Of such moments, someone much wiser than me once observed, the thing is made that endures.
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