by Bruce Sarbit
Winnipeg, Manitoba
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“Cookbooks reveal culinary culture, family and religious values, technology, and domestic economy.” [1]
Food and cooking is significant in the study of a culture because it is a part of daily life: managing the hungry belly. Of course, it is also an essential part of social gatherings and religious ceremonies. Understanding the kind of foods that people eat, when and how they consume them, helps to personalize history, to understand what it was like to live in that time.
Cookbooks have long been used to honour and store the experiences, the memories and stories that brought people together over food. Importantly, they are also legacy: a way to pass on what one has learned, a way to remember and be remembered, to cherish and be cherished.
Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book (HSGCB), 1947, cover.
The 1947 Winnipeg Council “Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book” does all of that and more. It is about the organization, Hadassah, and its projects, even as it provides a reflection of the times in which the book was published.
In the early twentieth century, many second generation North American Jews, believing the secular lifestyle was the best way to make a good life, acculturated by making a break from orthodox and kashrut religious practices. Wanting to live with the comfort and ease with which the middle-and-upper classes seemed to move through their lives, they immersed themselves in, aspired to achieve, the customs and habits of American culture.
Many within the Jewish community, seeing acculturation as a significant threat, wanting to ensure that the Jewish people and its culture survived, took steps to counter the trend. “Hadassah” was one of the results.
Founded in 1917, Canadian Hadassah WIZO (CHW) continues to flourish as a non-political, volunteer-driven and philanthropic organization funding programs and projects for children, healthcare and women in Israel and Canada. With a membership of 10,000, CHW is in over 40 Canadian locations.
The organization’s name, “Hadassah”, is derived from the Hebrew name of Esther, the biblical heroine who saved the Jewish people in the fifth century BCE and whose legacy Jews celebrate at Purim. While the circumstances of 1947 had, of course, changed significantly from those of Esther/Hadassah’s time, certain essentials had not: Jews were still at great risk and were struggling to survive in a dangerous world. Not surprising, then, that when the 1947 members of Hadassah looked to follow the example of their namesake, they asked what work they could do in the service of the Jewish people, accepted it, and proceeded to do it with great integrity.
1947 would, surely, have been an important year for Hadassah and its membership. Only two years removed from World War II Holocaust and its incredible losses, the Jews of Europe and around the world were still reeling and grieving, even as the survivors struggled to find a homeland. The idea of a safe and secure home for the Jews was still a dream, but pressure for its realization was more vital than ever before. So, events of 1947 such as these would surely have attracted the attention of Hadassah’s membership: both Arabs and Jews rejected a proposal to split Palestine; Britain gave responsibility for Palestine to the UN; Jewish immigrants began to migrate in large numbers to Palestine; The U.N. General Assembly (Resolution 181) voted to partition western Palestine into two states with Jerusalem to become an international enclave under UN trusteeship; the next day, Arabs attacked Jewish settlements.
The resolve of the Winnipeg Hadassah organization is apparent from the get-go: “The goal that was made cannot be countermanded.” [2] The cover quote, from Walt Whitman, the late-19th century American poet, makes clear how determined the organization was. The reader knows, before opening the book that the organization refuses to waver from its goal, which, one soon learns, has to do with more than cookery and shopping.
The book opens with an address from the “Souvenir Book” chairpersons “To The Advertisers”: “We thank you ... in the name of the homeless wanderers and the bereaved children whose prospect for a better life in Palestine is made brighter by reason of your subscription. You have helped.” [3] At the bottom of all even-numbered pages in the book are these words directed at the readership: “Advertisers Are Worthy of Your Patronage.”
The complexities of the Winnipeg Hadassah Council become apparent early on. One hundred and fifty-four people, starting with the “Honorary Presidents,” “Past-Presidents” and “Honorary Vice-President,” are listed in their various positions and associations within the organization. The listing, then, proceeds to the organization’s executive members and the chairpersons of twenty specific tasks. Finally come the “Council Members,” and the “Representatives” for each of the 11 chapters.
But, the 1947 “Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book” is not about personal aggrandizement. One page has pictures of two women, the “President of the Canadian Hadassah Organization,” and the “Vice-President, Western Canadian Division.” A second has pictures and “Greetings from the Presidents”, one from the “President, Winnipeg Hadassah Council,” the other from her junior equivalent. Both deem it a “privilege” to be part of a great organization and state their unequivocal support: “The strength of Hadassah lies in its faith that our Cause is just.” [4]
The book begins with an epigraph that makes Hadassah’s goal, its “Cause,” clear. “Let the Gates Be Opened Wide,” from a poem/play, “Behold The Jew,” by Ada Jackson, written in the late stages of World War II, [5] is a call to stand and act in support of Jews in peril. Lack of strength and small numbers are no excuse, says the author: God has, with fewer resources, still managed to make miracles.
Two clubs, in a full-page “advertisement”, congratulate Hadassah on the part it plays in rebuilding Eretz Israel, on its war effort, and on its “great humanitarian task of saving the lives of refugee children through Youth Aliyah.” [6]
A series of quotes serves as a second epigraph. The page title, “The Last Chance,” perhaps inspired by a 1945 MGM movie of the same name (winner of the 1946 Palme d’Or), is about an American and British soldier who, having escaped a Nazi prison train, find themselves leading a party of refugees for the Italian underground.
The ten quotes start and end with ones from Winston Churchill. The first tells of the challenges he faced as a prisoner of war, and so, assumes a relationship between his experiences and that of Jews during the War. The second is a call to make a homeland for the Jews. He argues that it “would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.” [7]
Dr. Hugh Dalton, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, responds to the plight of the Holocaust survivors in refugee camps throughout Europe: “It is morally wrong and politically indefensible to impose obstacles to the entry into Palestine now of any Jews who desire to go there.” [8]
An unexpected source of support, T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) unabashedly promotes Jewish cultivation of the land in Palestine: “The sooner the Jews farm it all the better: Their colonies are bright spots in a desert.” [9]
While it was not specifically written for the Jews of Europe in the aftermath of the War and Holocaust, lines from a poem by Carl Sandburg nonetheless capture the terrible uncertainty of the situation for the surviving Jews: “In the darkness with a great bundle of grief, the people march. In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march: ‘Where to? What next?’“ [10]
A poem by Hannah Senesh, a paratrooper trained to rescue Jews during the War, captured and killed by the Nazis, is imbued with the hope and determination that are the essence of the Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book: “Blessed is the match that is consumed in kindling the flame.” [11]
Two pages of the 1947 Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book are given to what is called the “Zionist Quiz,” a test of readers’ knowledge of what was then, still, Palestine. Here is just one of the questions (its answer is in brackets): Q: Name the countries bounding Palestine. (A: a) Sinai; b) Trans-Jordan; c) Syria; d) Lebanon). [12]
A sample page of recipes from the 1947 Hadassah cookbook.
Photographs depict the work being done. One shows the dress products of a Haifa vocational school. Another is of two boys, both about five years old. One, born in the Ghetto of Warsaw, trekked across Russia with his widowed mother.“His companion is a Palestinian-born child whose father was killed in an accident. The boy was thoroughly neglected, roaming the streets all day.” [13]
The cook book Chairperson, in her preface to the recipes, notes that it is not intended to be a cook book per se. It is, instead, “a few tried and fairly successful attempts at the culinary arts by members of Hadassah.” [14] Her preface is followed by advice for “the successful hostess”: “In order to be gracious and at ease, a hostess has to be ready and smiling when her guests arrive.” [15]
An example of the advertisements that were numerous in the Hadassah cookbook, occupying much more space than the recipes themselves.
The recipes in the fifteen pages that follow are gathered under the following headings: “Party Luncheons”; “Main Dishes and Entrees”; “Rolls, Buns, Quick Bread”; “Cakes”; “Tortes, Cookies”; “Canning, Pickling.” The first and largest category, “Party Luncheons,” lists menus for “luncheons,” “evening parties” and “cocktail parties”. “Party Luncheon No. 1” includes the following items: “Fruit Juice; Canapes; Gefilte Fish with Mushroom Sauce; Cheese Lockshin Kugel; String Beans and Corn Niblets; Shoe String Potatoes; Pickles, Relishes, Olives; Rolls; Pineapple Whip Dessert; Coffee; Cookies.” [16] “Cocktail Party No. 1” offers this sage advice: “For a cocktail party a hostess really can let herself go but here, too, proper planning saves a lot of last-minute rush.... A good supply of (knishes) saves the hostess many hours of making fussy hors d’ouvres (sic).” [17]
While there is no mention of Kosher rules, only a few of the recipes, besides the “Gefilte Fish” and “Cheese Lockshin Kugel,” are (obviously) ethnically Jewish: “Chanika Latkes,” “Pasach Honey Cake,” and “Mondel Baigalachi.” The “Dill Pickle” recipe, submitted by Cook Book Chairperson, Fanny Bronstein, is preceded by this humble note: “This recipe for dill pickles does not particularly taste any better than the kind mother used to make but ... year in and year out it’s a never-fail.” [18]
Covering a full 164 pages of the 200-page book, the advertisements both national and local, Jewish and non-Jewish, include manufacturers of all varieties as well as services across the spectrum then available to subscribing homemakers. In the only advertisement for events, the Winnipeg Auditorium promoted the 35th Season of its “Celebratory Concert Series.” [19] Performances during the first half of 1947 included: two pianists, Uninsky and Serkin, the violinist, Milstein, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and four singers, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Todd Duncan and Maggie Teyte.
The 1947 Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book surveys the Hadassah organization and the times in which the book was produced. While an impressive collection of manufacturers and services,itwasnot just a guide for shoppers. Nor was it a traditional cook book, even though the recipes section supported the reader’s efforts to become a “successful hostess.”
The book aimed higher and accomplished much more. It provided the Jewish women of Winnipeg with an opportunity to work toward goals especially important to them in the post-War era, goals that could not “be countermanded”: extending material and moral support to Jews recovering from the Holocaust and seeking a secure homeland.
1. Pollak, Oliver B. (2005). “Nebraska Jewish Charitable Cookbooks 1901–2002,” Food & Judaism, Greenspoon, Leonard J.; Simkins, Ronald A.; Shapiro, Gerald, eds. (Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 2005): 133–148.
2. Hadassah Shoppers’ Guide and Cook Book (HSGCB), 1947, cover.
3. HSGCB, ibid., 1947, p. 3.
4. Mrs. P. Sheps, ibid., 1947, p. 3.
5. Jackson, Ada. “Let the gates be opened wide” from “Behold The Jew”, The Poetry Review, July-August, 1943, Vol. xxxiv, No. 4; ibid., 1947, p. 5.
6. HSGCB, ibid. 1947, p. 7.
7. Churchill, Winston. Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People. ibid., 1947, p. 8.
8. Dalton, Dr. Hugh. ibid., 1947, p. 8.
9. Gilbert, Martin. Lawrence of Judea: The champion of the Arab cause and his little known romance with Zionism. Azure no. 38, Autumn 5770 / 2009, ibid., p. 8.
10. Sandburg, Carl. The People, Yes. ibid., 1947, p. 8.
11. Szenes, Hanna. Blessed Is the Match. ibid., 1947, p. 8.
12. The Zionist Quiz, ibid., 1947, pp. 69 & 135.
13. Photograph, ibid., p. 18.
14. Mrs. D. Fanny Bronstein, ibid., p. 101.
15. “The successful hostess”, ibid., p. 101.
16. “Party Luncheon No. 1”, ibid., p. 102.
17. “Cocktail Party No. 1”, ibid., p. 105.
18. “Dill Pickles”, ibid., p. 117.
19. “Winnipeg Auditorium, Celebratory Concert Series”, ibid., p. 34.
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 18 November 2020
