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Marlena Spieler, globetrotting writer of Jewish cookbooks, dies at 74
(JTA) — In an essay she wrote in June, Marlena Spieler reminisced about her grandfather’s neighborhood in San Francisco in one long, exuberant sentence:
It was basically a small shtetl transplanted to San Francisco, with delis redolent of pickle barrels, bookshops that sold holy books and ritual items, shops full of used furniture and junk, and my favorite: the Ukraine Bakery, where we bought poppyseed studded Kaiser rolls, the air smelled heavenly of baked goods, and where flour-dusted women would grab me and kiss me, pinch my cheeks and stuff cookies into my hands and pockets when I went out and about with Papa.
If that reads like the memory of a future food writer with a deep love of place, that is exactly what it is. Spieler wrote the Roving Feast recipe column for the San Francisco Chronicle from 2000 to 2010 and wrote or contributed to over 70 cookbooks during her career, including “The Jewish Heritage Cookbook” (2001) and “The Complete Guide to Traditional Jewish Cooking” (2011).
“She would travel the world and bring back wonderful tales of food and adventure, and relate them all to what we were all eating and feeling here in Northern California,” Miriam Morgan, former food editor at the Chronicle, told the newspaper. “Her recipes sparkled with life and were incredibly popular with readers.”
Spieler died July 6 at her home outside of London. She was 74. News of her death led to an outpouring on social media.
“She was one of the people who opened my eyes to the excitement of food, flavor and cultures, ultimately leading me to a career in food and drink,” wrote Jo Aspin, a step-niece and a marketing consultant for restaurants.
“When I think of her, it’s her sharing something delicious and giggling and laughing,” wrote Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo, the specialty bean business. “I think her non-seriousness was off-putting to certain pedantic types. I think many people loved reading her columns, and the world has been better off with her in it.”
Spieler won numerous awards and was lauded both in California, where she was born and grew up, and in England, where she moved around 1990 and where she met her husband, Alan McLaughlan. She earned a James Beard Award in 1992 for “From Pantry to Table: Creative Cooking from the Well-Stocked Kitchen,” and was twice the recipient of the Guild of Food Writers Award, a top prize in the U.K. She won the International Cookbook Award for her 2000 book “Feeding Friends.”
In 2007, she wrote another book titled “Yummy Potatoes”; the next year she was invited as an ambassador to the United Nations’ International Year of the Potato conference in Peru.
She also worked as a caterer and book illustrator and contributed to her Substack newsletter until shortly before she passed away.
Spieler was born in Sacramento on April 16, 1949. She wrote that her grandparents’ generation were mostly Yiddish speakers who “fled terrible things” in Europe. Her grandfather’s second wife was from a family active in the Jewish community in Harbin, China.
Spieler attended California College of the Arts, then in Oakland. She lived in Israel for a year and was working as an artist in Greece when a publisher noticed the recipes she had included with her drawings of food. The subsequent book of recipes (minus the drawings) launched her career as a food writer, broadcaster and columnist.
In 2011, Spieler lost her sense of smell and taste after suffering from a head injury in a car accident. She described her halting recovery in a New York Times essay, remembering the taste of “a sardine sandwich at Brooklyn’s Saltie [that] made me nearly cry with pleasure, as did the ripe peach I ate as I walked down the street.” A friend remarked, “Even damaged no one appreciates flavor the way you do.”
In “The Complete Guide to Traditional Jewish Cooking,” Spieler traced the history of a British staple — fish and chips — to its roots in London’s Jewish East End, and before that to the first Sephardic Jews to come back to England after the Jews’ expulsion in the 13th century.
The book also includes recipes from Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, India and Latin America. Spieler celebrated such culinary diversity in a recent column about Passover, writing, “Pesach is a holiday in which Jews from all over the world… bring their own traditions to the table. To me it says: we are all different, and yet we are all one.”
She is survived by her husband Alan, a daughter, grandson and step-daughter.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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