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Being Jewish, my mother was being beaten up by kids—or having to defend herself, I should say. She fought back quite a lot against the kids in the neighborhood because at the time it was predominantly Catholic, and they were not welcoming of the Jews moving in. My grandfather was asked to sign [...]

Jewish food for me wasn’t kugel, wasn’t matzoball soup.

Jewish food for me was Arabic food. The food that we would have on religious holidays like on Roshashana, all this stuff was like a stuffed grape leaf, or stuffed peppers, and it was a Middle Eastern way of cooking, although Eastern Europeans do stuffed peppers also. Dishes like marakh, which is like a [...]