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This High Holiday pastry connects me to the relatives I loved and the ones I lost
(JTA) – There was a small bedroom in my Zeyde’s house on State Road in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, that had no radiator. It was called “the cold room.” It was crammed with furniture: two twin beds and a couple of dressers. On Rosh Hashanah, you would find a large baking dish covered with a dish towel sitting on top of one of those dressers. Take a peek under the towel, and there it was: Fluden.
Fluden is a holiday dessert that resembles a sweet lasagna: layers of prune, orange and pineapple filling between four layers of rolled-out dough, with a crunchy, cinnamon and nutty topping. My aunts would prepare it each year, in a ritual that was just as much a part of the season as tossing stones into the Housatonic River for tashlich, or hearing my zeyde, Rabbi Jacob Axelrod, blow the shofar in his synagogue up the hill, or catching games of the World Series between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The fluden would sit on the dresser and never had to be served, because there was a knife in the dish and you could cut off a slice of the pareve delicacy whenever the spirit moved you. Over the course of the holiday it would gradually shrink, until someone would announce that it was all gone. Fertig.
Never did I see this dish in any bakery, or in anyone else’s home. And yet it was integral to our holiday experience, even more than the teyglach we would sometimes buy from Michelle’s bakery near our home in Plainview, Long Island: little hard balls of cookie dough piled into a pyramid the size of a hat, drenched with honey and nuts and maraschino cherries. This was fun and messy to pick apart. But for flavor and comfort, nothing could beat fluden.
Though my aunts were the bakers, it was my mother, Peggy — their sister-in-law — who preserved the recipe for posterity in written form. Mom later described how she watched and took notes as her mother-in-law, Beile, step by step mixed and rolled the dough, chopped and pulverized the filling and assembled the layers one by one. There were no accurate measures: as my mother recalled, Beile just took pinches of this or that, cups of this or that. The result would be this holiday delicacy that everyone craved.
However, there was a downside to fluden, and it was the reason why it would take a few days for it to disappear. There was a general understanding that you didn’t want to eat too much of it at once. All I need to say here is: prunes.
Just up the street from the house was my zeyde’s synagogue, Ahavath Sholom, where about 100 worshippers could gather. He had been hired as rabbi in 1927, two years after he emigrated from Poland. On the shul’s hard wooden pews were long cushions covered in faded red fabric. There was no mechitzah separating men from women — family legend has it that Beile had ripped it down, since no one had felt responsible to keep it clean and tidy.
I don’t have many memories of my baba, Beile, but certainly she was a great baker. I distinctly recall the oohs and ahhs as her huckleberry pies or little challah rolls were brought to the table, held seemingly way above me and handed around. Baba died before I turned five, of complications from diabetes.
I remember my zeyde only without her. On the holiday, he would lead the service from a small lectern, occasionally slamming his hand down to stop the chattering in the background. The windows in the small sanctuary were always kept shut, as zeyde would refuse to continue the service if he sensed a breeze.
The author poses with pieces of her latest batch of fluden and a photograph of her grandmother, Beile Lichtenstein Axelrod. (Courtesy of Toby Axelrod)
In order to get some air, you would have to “take a break” and walk down the hill past zeyde’s little kosher store. From there you might pass his garden, pass clothesline and the shed that doubled as a sukkah, enter the house via the kitchen, slip through the dining room and into the living room, then make a hard left between the couch and the bookshelf holding zeyde’s “Vilna Shas” Talmud, into the cold room for a bite of fluden.
In 1966, my aunt Edith shared the recipe in the “Mother’s Way Cookbook,” published by the Hebrew Ladies Aid Society of Ahavath Sholom Synagogue and the Hadassah Chapter of Great Barrington. It’s on page 36, between Helen Natelson’s “Speedy Sponge Cake” and Blanche Bradford’s “Spice Cake.” As with other aspects of transplanted European Jewish culture, like the Yiddish language itself, Americanisms crept into the list of ingredients. I am sure there were no cornflakes in my ancestors’ shtetl, Luboml, and no canned pineapple, either.
Many years later, my mother excitedly reported that she had found a recipe for fluden in “The World of Jewish Cooking,” by Gil Marks. Up to then, no Jewish cookbook had completely satisfied her, since she had never found fluden in the index.
But there it was, on page 339: Fluden, Ashkenazic layered pastry. According to Marks, the dish could have various fillings, and was sometimes even made with cheese. The first recorded reference dates back to around the year 1000 C.E., when Rabbi Gershom ben Yehudah of Mainz, Germany, describes an argument between two rabbis about whether one could “eat bread with meat even if it was baked in an oven with a cheese dish called fluden.”
The layers, Marks writes, “were symbolic of both the double portion of manna collected for the Sabbath and the lower and upper layers of dew that protected the manna.” Fruit and nut fillings were most common on Sabbath, he adds. Today, a similar, layered fruit pastry called apfelschalet is served by Jews from the Alsace region. In Hungary, there is a layered desert called flodni, and in parts of Eastern Europe there is a layered strudel called gebleterter kugel.
Fluden is much more than a holiday dessert for me. It is a symbol of generational continuity despite the Holocaust, which ripped a hole in our family history. It connects me to the women who were the carriers of tradition – the doers and the recorders. And, in its glistening, fragrant glory, it is also a key to the door of memory, which opens with a creak of rusty springs and reveals the scene unfolding.
The kitchen, the rolled-up sleeves, the aprons, the rolling pin, the gossip. Zeyde in his slippers and robe shuffling through. The two ovens, both working overtime. Children under foot. The light switch cord hanging down over the table, with its bobbin-like pull. Next to the sink, the window with its filmy curtains, looking out across the yard and vegetable garden, toward the shul.
For us, the dish was a once-a-year treat. I have prepared my baba’s recipe several times, and will try my hand at it again this year, with quite a bit less sugar than suggested. (I inherited the diabetes, too.) My kitchen is just a couple of miles away from where my zeyde and baba’s house once stood. On that spot, there is now a sporting goods shop that my sister likes to call “Zeyde’s Bike and Board.” The older generation is nearly all gone, buried in the Ahavath Sholom cemetery on Blue Hill Road. We have inherited many traditions, keeping some, eschewing others. But in my family, where there is fluden, there will always be followers, ready to cut a slice — a small slice! — for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The author’s aunt’s fluden recipe, from “Mother’s Way Cookbook.” (Courtesy of Toby Axelrod)
Mrs. Axelrod’s Fluden
Edith Axelrod Reder
Pittsfield, Mass.
Beat together until light and fluffy:
3 eggs
1 c. sugar
Pinch of salt
Add:
¾ c. oil
3-4 c. flour sifted with
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
Pineapple jJuice (from filling)
Filling:
Grind together
2 lbs. sour prunes
1 orange
1 lemon, add:
# 2 can drained, crushed pineapple
Jam and sugar to taste
Cinnamon and sugar
Chopped nuts
Crushed cornflakes
Mix the dough and knead into 4 balls. Roll out each ball to fit a 8 x 12 x 2 inch pan. Start with a layer of dough, one of fruit filling, spread a little oil on the fruit. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, cornflake crumbs, chopped nuts. Repeat the layers until the balls of dough are used. Cut the dough into squares before baking. Oven set at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.
From “Mother’s Way Cookbook” (Hebrew Ladies Aid Society of Ahavath Sholom Synagogue and the Hadassah Chapter of Great Barrington)
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Israel Suffered Over 18,000 Terror Attacks in 2024, New Government Report Says
Israeli forces stand near the scene of a shooting attack in Jaffa, Israel, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel endured over 18,000 terrorist attacks last year in which nearly 150 people were killed as the Jewish state faced an onslaught of terrorism from seven fronts in the Middle East, according to a new Israeli government report.
The National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday released its annual “Summary Report on Terrorism Against Israel” for 2024. The report gathers information and data from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Police, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), and the emergency and rescue authorities.
In total, there were 18,665 terrorist attacks in Israel last year in which 134 people were murdered and another 1,277 were injured. A summary of the report noted that Israel “was attacked from seven fronts: Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, and from within Israel.”
The report listed each attack as a single incident. For example, an incident in which several explosive devices were used was tallied as one attack.
The bulk of the incidents in 2024 were rockets fired at the Jewish state from terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon. Indeed, 15,400 rockets were launched from Lebanon and crossed into Israel, and approximately 700 rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip and crossed into Israel. Such “high-trajectory fire,” according to the report, resulted in 55 deaths and 699 injured people.
Hamas and allied Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, such as Islamic Jihad, fired several rockets into Israel last year as the IDF was waging its military campaign in the enclave. However, rocket fire from Gaza diminished in comparison to the last quarter of 2023, as Israel increasingly decimated Hamas’s weapons stockpiles and military capabilities. The report did not seem to count misfired rockets directed at Israel that fell prematurely in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah relentlessly pummeled northern Israeli communities with rockets, missiles, and drones almost daily throughout most of 2024, until a ceasefire agreement was reached in late November. The barrages forced roughly 80,000 Israelis to evacuate the country’s north.
The fighting to Israel’s south in Gaza and to its north in Lebanon was prompted by Hamas’s brutal invasion of the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, which launched the war in Gaza and led Hezbollah to begin attacking in solidarity with Hamas.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, which has long provided the Islamist terrorist groups with weapons, funding, and training.
Beyond rockets, 399 hostile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) crossed into Israeli territory last year and caused significant damage, according to the report.
The rocket fire and UAVs together killed 71 people, 14 of whom were children, and injured 892 others. In addition, they caused 610 fires, which burned 92,417 acres of land belonging to the Nature and Parks Authority and more than 42,749 acres of agricultural land. Hundreds of acres of crops were burned in northern Israel as well.
The Houthis in Yemen were responsible for many of the projectiles fired at Israel from places other than Gaza and Lebanon, with the Iran-backed terrorist group joining its Islamist allies in attacking Israel following the outbreak of the conflict with Hamas.
About 1,900 other terrorist attacks were perpetrated against Israel in 2024, including stone throwing, Molotov cocktails, vehicle rammings, shootings, stabbings, assaults, explosive devices, and throwing objects.
The most common type of attack was stone throwing, with 1,248 incidents, followed by throwing objects, arson, and tire burning (162), throwing Molotov cocktails (140), shootings (132), explosive devices (89), stabbings (41), assaults (29), and vehicle rammings (26).
The shooting attacks last year resulted in 41 murders — including 13 hostages who were murdered in Hamas captivity with their bodies returned to Israel — and 108 injuries.
July 2024 had the highest number of non-rocket or UAV terrorist incidents with 191 attacks.
However, October had the greatest number of rockets fired at Israel, with more than 6,900 launches. It was also the most violent month, in which 37 people were murdered and 394 injured.
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Gaza 70-Degree ‘Cold’ Chills Media Curiosity as New York Times Depicts Israel as Baby Killer
A general view shows destroyed buildings in northern Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza border, Nov. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The “cold” temperatures in Gaza have been a staple of New York Times and other news coverage — and of anti-Israel activism in the US — in recent weeks. But just how cold is it, actually, in Gaza?
“At Least 5 Babies Are Dead From Cold as Winter Grips Gaza,” was a Dec. 31, 2024 headline in the New York Times. “Dead From Cold” was something of a euphemism, as the real baby-killers, the Times made clear with echoes of classical libels against Jews, were the “Israeli military’s bombardment and attacks.”
Toward the end of the article came a mention of “more heavy rain expected in the coming days, and lows in the mid-40s Fahrenheit.”
The Times doubled down on this with a follow-up piece in its Jan. 2, 2024 edition headlined, “No Respite for Gazans as the War Grinds On.”
“Over the past few days, Gazans have endured chilly winter rainstorms; Gazan officials say some infants have died from the cold,” the article said, with no mention of any temperature readings.
Such claims were widespread. “Born at war, dying in the cold,” was an NBC News headline. “Babies are dying in the cold,” said a Washington Post article published on Jan. 6, about “at least seven infants in Gaza who have died in the cold in recent weeks, according to relatives, doctors, and the enclave’s Health Ministry.” The Post, too, made clear who the real baby-killers were — the Jews — referring to :ongoing Israeli restrictions on aid convoys.”
So, how cold has it been in Gaza? According to TimeAndDate.com, which seems reasonably reliable, the coldest it got in Gaza City for the entire month of December 2024 was 45 degrees Fahrenheit. On Dec. 25 the temperature hit 70 degrees. According to Google, the weather in Rafah, Gaza on Jan. 7, 2025 was sunny with a high of 69, a low of 51, and zero precipitation. Not exactly the Yukon permafrost.
Any infant’s death is tragic. It is indeed possible to die of hypothermia in wet conditions in the 40s, especially without adequate shelter and clothing. Yet it’s also possible to survive in even lower temperatures, even without a fire.
You wouldn’t know it from the press coverage, but infants also do die for reasons other than cold or Israeli bombardment. In New York City in 2021, 400 infants died before their first birthday, for causes including respiratory distress, infections, cardiovascular disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, and congenital malformations. The Times has paid those New York City deaths less attention than the ones in Gaza, perhaps because they don’t provide as ready an opportunity to vilify the Jewish state.
The “Gazan officials” the Times mentions are part of a Hamas power structure dedicated to defaming Israel. Those officials use information as warfare against the Jewish state they are dedicated to destroy. The Gaza doctors are largely the same. Any claims coming out of Gaza deserve to be treated with a substantial dose of skepticism. They often reflect not so much the reality on the ground but the propaganda agenda of what remains of the Hamas terror organization.
Time and time again, the most extreme claims coming out of Gaza have proven false. There was the New York Times claim that Israel had bombed a hospital. The Times published an editors’ note after it had accompanied the original claim with a photograph of a different demolished building, and after it turned out that the damage to the hospital site was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket meant for the Jewish state, not an Israeli air strike targeting terrorists in Gaza.
There was also the New York Times claim that Israel was starving Gazan children to death, which left out the UN statistics showing Gazans about as well fed as children in India, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
Now the Times and the rest of the media crowd are claiming that Gazan children are freezing to death in a place that enjoys 70-degree sunshine during the day and 40-50 degree lows at night.
For sure, I’d rather be here in the US than there in Gaza. I don’t doubt that some young Gazan children are genuinely miserable. There are also Israelis who are miserable because they are in bomb shelters hiding from Iranian-supplied rockets and missiles, and because their family members are kidnapped or serving on reserve duty.
The best way to improve the lot of innocent Gazans would be for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to immediately put down their arms, surrender, and release to freedom the hostages who were kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023.
The coldest things of all in Gaza are the hearts of the Hamas terrorists. That is a fact that the international press, in its newfound fascination with the not-actually-that-frosty Gaza weather, seems intimidated by, and also a fact that the press is all too frequently unwilling to share directly with readers.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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‘Free Palestine’ Activist in Arizona Wearing ‘Israel Kills Children’ T-Shirt Gets Arrested After Refusing to Leave Gym
A pro-Palestinian activist who was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested after he wore a shirt that read “Israel Kills Children.” Photo: Screenshot
A pro-Palestinian activist wearing an offensive T-shirt critical of Israel was kicked out of a gym in Gilbert, Arizona, and arrested this week after he ignored requests by gym management to leave the premises.
The man, who goes by the social media handle Resistance is Beautiful, posted videos of the incident on Wednesday on Instagram. It began when he was exercising at a Life Time gym in Gilbert while wearing a black short-sleeve T-shirt that said “Israel Kills Children.” He said that when he arrived at the gym and was checked in, a gym employee told him that he needed to take off the shirt, whose message was an apparent commentary on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war falsely accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. He refused to take off the shirt.
Shortly afterward, the gym’s manager approached the activist and told him that he must leave the premises for not having “an active membership, or the gym would call the police. When the activist refused to leave the facility, police were called to escort him out of the building.
“You don’t have an active membership so I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the gym’s manager, Mike Esposito, said to the anti-Israel activist in a video shared on Instagram.
“I just paid for my membership, what do you mean?” the activist replied. “I pay for my membership … I’ve been a member here for three years. Payment goes through every month.”
“Someone from corporate … the cops are on their way,” Esposito said. “Your membership is not active so we called the police because you’re trespassing here in the club.”
The activist then asked Esposito, “Is the problem the shirt? Or is it the skin color?” He also told the manager: “You know where there are no more gyms left? In Palestine. Because you guys bombed it all. Are you offended by the shirt or the fact that you guys kill all the Palestinians in the gyms over there [in Gaza]. Is the problem the shirt?”
Esposito, who is reportedly not Jewish or Israeli but of Italian descent, ignored the man’s questions about the T-shirt and his remarks about Palestinians. Instead, the manager repeatedly said that the activist does not have an active membership at the facility. “You just don’t have an active membership, so right now you’re trespassing because you’re in the club without an active membership,” he said. “We have to ask you to leave.”
Two Gilbert police officers arrived not long afterward and arrested the anti-Israel activist for trespassing. Before they escorted him out of the gym, he told police, “There’s a Holocaust going on in Palestine … there are no more gyms left in Palestine, you guys bombed all of them. Free Palestine.” He also shared that he wore the “Israel Kills Children” T-shirt previously at the gym, and staff members told him in the past that it was offensive. “They’ve always said, ‘Oh that shirt is offensive.’ You know, typical Gilbert white supremacy stuff,” he said.
The founder, CEO, chairman, and president of Life Time is Bahram Akradi, who was born in Tehran, Iran, and emigrated to the US months before the 1979 Iranian revolution. He founded the chain of gyms in 1992.
The activist was released from the Gilbert police station shortly after the incident at the gym. “There is no greater honor in the world than to sit in a jail cell for Palestine,” he said in an Instagram video posted on Wednesday after his release. “And we’ll do it over and over and over again until we break this enemy and we get Palestine back. That’s my word.”
The man has shared other photos and videos on social media of him clashing with police officers in Gilbert, trespassing while carrying a Palestinian flag and getting arrested for his anti-Israel activism. He also shared clips of himself wearing other anti-Israel shirts, including one that read “Israel is a terrorist project, Free Palestine,” and another that said, “Israel KILLS and America covers it up.”
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