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Food writer Alison Roman makes a comeback — and a brisket for Passover
(New York Jewish Week) — What first caught my eye about Jewish food writer Alison Roman was not any one recipe. Rather, it was a photo of her that was published in the New York Times in 2019: Roman was in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen, kneeling in front of her overstuffed and undersized refrigerator. She was wearing jeans and t-shirt — and her feet were bare and dirty. I simply loved the messiness, joy and imperfection of it all.
The photo accompanied a selection of Thanksgiving recipes written by the young and rising star, who was first introduced to the Times’ readership just over a year prior as an heir to Pierre Franey and his quick-to-prepare foods. Roman’s Thanksgiving menu included a dry-brined turkey, hand-torn sourdough bread stuffing with celery and leeks, leafy herb salad spiked with lemon zest, lemon juice and flaky sea salt. The recipes were a reflection of the author: approachable and decidedly not fussy.
That anti-perfect attitude is a hallmark of Roman’s style, and it’s certainly a theme of her latest cookbook, “Sweet Enough,” which comes out at the end of this month. It is her third (“Dining In” and “Nothing Fancy” preceded it) and, according to Variety, pre-publication it has already “shot to the top of bestseller lists.”
This new cookbook is devoted to desserts, although there are a handful of savory recipes, too. Many of the recipes, like her Summer Pudding with Summer Fruit, her bowl of Salted Chocolate Pudding, and her raspberries and sour cream, do not have to be baked, nor do they require fancy know-how or special equipment. She even encourages readers to eat these treats straight from the bowl or the pot in which they were cooked.
Roman became an important part of the food conversation in this country in an impressively short amount of time. By the time she was hired full-time at the Times, at 32, she had had a meteoric rise at Bon Appetit magazine, where she moved from freelance recipe tester to senior food editor in four years. By then, she had already published her first cookbook and had a cookie recipe that went viral on Instagram.
Her fall from grace in May 2020 was even faster. In an interview for the online publication The New Consumer, she criticized two prominent women of color, Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo and Asian-American model, cookbook author and prominent Twitter user Chrissy Teigen, for licensing their names and essentially “selling out.” In the ensuing weeks, the backlash online was swift and fierce, accusing her of everything from inappropriateness to racism. Amid the moment’s perfect storm — the pandemic and the rapid rise of the Movement for Black Lives — her column at the Times was suspended.
Six weeks later, on June 21, she founded a Substack newsletter, simply titled, “A Newsletter.” She now cranks that out weekly to 229,000 subscribers, and her YouTube channel, “Home Videos,” has some 213,000 subscribers. Looking back, Roman describes that post-interview time period as “challenging,” but, as she told the New York Jewish Week, “it led me to writing more and writing more for myself. And I think that’s a good thing.”
These days, Roman, 37, who describes herself as “half Jewish,” is about to embark on her book tour. Ahead of the release of “Sweet Enough,” she spoke to the New York Jewish Week about her favorite Jewish dishes, her food philosophy, and what she loves about Passover, which begins this year at sundown on Weds., April 5.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.
New York Jewish Week: How did the idea for this book come to you?
Roman: I felt there was a need for a dessert book from the perspective of someone who was not a die-hard lover of baked goods or dessert — somewhere between indifferent and enthusiastic. I felt like there were probably others like me.
I embrace the fact that the desserts were not designed to be perfect and they don’t have to be. People accept the flaws of, say, a roast chicken, but if their cake is crooked it ruins their day.
I’m trying to normalize the fact that not everything will be perfect, and it’s OK.
You are from California. How has being in New York changed the way you cook?
Living in New York, I have an emphasis on accessibility. I don’t always have access to the best produce; when things are out of season it becomes more difficult. It makes my work stronger because you have to be resourceful. And since we don’t necessarily have cars in New York, I have to consider: How far do I have to schlep the groceries? Can I do this [dish] with fewer items?
You’ve said on the Jewish Food Society’s podcast that you made many Jewish friends in New York. You attended your first bar mitzvah here. Are you leaning more into Jewish recipes or foods since you are living in New York?
Not necessarily. I just did a new Passover menu, which will come out on March 30 in Passover Home Movies and in an accompanying newsletter. I think that the older I get the more I lean into hosting and doing Shabbat because it feels important to me.
Any Jewish foods that are favorites of yours?
Matzah ball soup is my favorite food of all time. Otherwise, most popular Jewish deli foods are something I gravitate towards, even before I realized they were “Jewish.” Latkes, and things like that. I like Jewish deli culture. And I liked that these foods, that my father and I love and enjoy, are connected to my father’s heritage, which is my heritage. It made me feel closer to it.
What is your favorite Passover dish?
I love my brisket. I don’t love brisket always but I think the one I make is fantastic. I like a really simple Passover menu. Braised meat. Crispy salad with lots of herbs and apples. Crispy potato — this year I made cheeseless gratin with olive oil, potatoes, salt and pepper. You are not grating potatoes or frying anything. It is not eggy like a kugel.
Part of why I like Passover is because, much like Thanksgiving, it’s a time of year when you know what you’re supposed to eat. You don’t have to give it a ton of thought.
Have the past three years, following your comments about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen, changed you as a writer and a food person?
Yes and no. We are all different than we were three years ago. Whether it was time passing or the pandemic or whatever, I think everyone is a bit different. That time was challenging but it led me to writing more and writing more for myself. And I think that’s a good thing.
How would you frame your food philosophy?
“Unfussy” pretty much sums it up. I don’t believe in overthinking too much. The way I cook is very instinctual and very natural. I don’t try to manipulate anything into something it is not. I feel very intuitive. It feels not performative. It feels very genuine to me.
Where did your aesthetic for rustic, carefree, approachable food come from?
I consider myself independent, and most things I do are born from myself and my own intuition. I think, like any person, you will be impacted and influenced by the world around you but ultimately you need to be authentically yourself.
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The post Food writer Alison Roman makes a comeback — and a brisket for Passover appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Slovenia’s last Jewish institution endures through desecration and decay
On a Saturday morning last July, Robert Baruh Waltl watched two processions converge on central Ljubljana. From one direction, near the river, came a column of neo-Nazis chanting nationalist slogans chanting “Long live Slovenia.” From the other came pro-Palestinian marchers singing “from the river to the sea”.
The city, he notes drily, is very small. “You could see both demonstrations at the same time,” he told me over a video call from his office. “Far right from one side, far left from the other.”
In Slovenia, this is what the view looks like from the only Jewish institution in the country.
The Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana, which Waltl has directed since its founding in 2013, is overextended by design and necessity. In the absence of a synagogue elsewhere, it functions as one. It is also a cultural center, a museum, and, increasingly, a one-man operation.
“If I’m not in Ljubljana,” Waltl says, “there is no one to even open the door.” For more than a decade, the center has run almost entirely on donations, German embassy micro-grants, and cross-subsidies from Waltl’s adjacent performance space, the Mini Theater. The Slovenian government has never provided stable funding. Applications to the Ministry of Culture go unanswered. “They tell us the Festival of Tolerance is the most important anti-racism event in Slovenia,” Waltl says, speaking of an open event organized by him and the community, “and we don’t receive a single euro for it.”
Waltl did not grow up Jewish. He was born near the Austrian border and moved to Ljubljana as a young man to study theater. Then came a letter from the local Jewish community: did he know that his grandmother had been Jewish? He didn’t. He began attending events, cautiously at first. A trip to Israel changed things. He started reading, learning Hebrew and collecting Judaica. Eventually, he underwent a formal conversion — a giyur — at a liberal congregation in Frankfurt. “I said, OK, now I’m so deep,” he recalls. “I will never feel truly Jewish if I don’t take this last step.”
The community he joined had only barely survived the 20th century. Before the Second World War, Slovenia’s largest Jewish population lived in the Prekmurje region in the northeast. Most were deported to Auschwitz after 1941; roughly 90% were killed. In Ljubljana itself, Jews had been expelled in 1515, and the postwar communist Yugoslav government did nothing to restore their memory: cemeteries and schools were destroyed or simply left to ruin. By the time Waltl arrived, the standard answer when Ljubljana tour guides were asked about Jewish history was blunt: no Jews after 1515. “They didn’t know anything about the Holocaust,” he says. “Nothing about anything.”
His response was methodical. He installed the first memorial plaque on the site of Ljubljana’s medieval synagogue. In 2014, at a gathering of young Jewish leaders in Berlin, he met Gunter Demnig, the German artist behind the Stolpersteine project, and brought the initiative home. Today, Ljubljana and surrounding cities have 68 stumbling stones and one large stone commemorating 150 Jewish refugees expelled from Croatia who sheltered in Ljubljana. He co-founded the Festival of Tolerance with Branko Lustig, the Auschwitz survivor and double Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List and Gladiator, born in Osijek, Croatia, who brought early credibility and international reach to the project before his death.
For years, the center also served as a functioning synagogue, anchored by a wave of Israeli tourism. After the Jewish congregation of Slovenia lost its premises in 2014 and moved into Waltl’s building, the arrangement found its footing through sheer numbers. According to Walt 50,000 to 60,000 Israeli tourists visited Slovenia each summer and many of these came to services organized by a Chabad rabbi from Trieste, Ariel Hadad. Then COVID hit. The tourists vanished. So did the rabbi. The pandemic forced a theological rethinking: Waltl discovered liberal Judaism through the Central Synagogue of New York’s online programming and began working with a rabbi from Luxembourg, who now visits several times a year alongside a rabbi from Vienna. When there is money to bring them, they come.
Oct. 7 transformed the center’s situation entirely. On November 6, 2023, someone painted a large swastika equated with a Star of David on the center’s front door. The Jewish graveyard was desecrated during the Festival of Tolerance. When Waltl attempted to screen footage from the Hamas attack for the city’s diplomatic corps, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside and tried to set the doors on fire. The screening was cancelled. There is no Israeli embassy in Slovenia, and no other address for the anger. “In their eyes, we represent Israel,” Waltl says. “We represent everything bad happening in the Middle East.”
Today the center carries a 60,000-euro mortgage taken out for emergency renovations after earthquakes damaged the 500-year-old building, leaving water leaking and unsustainable structural issues. Robert thought that he would receive some sort of financial help from the government to keep this, the only Jewish center in the country, running, but he was unpleasantly surprised to have received none. Since Oct. 7 the relationship with the government soured even more: the prime minister and the president used to show up for Holocaust Remembrance Day and Chanukah festivities, but stopped, says Waltl.
This month, Slovenia changed leadership again, with Israel ally Janez Janša returning as prime minister.
Some other signs of hope: The Rothschild Foundation recently awarded a grant for the country’s first permanent exhibition on Jewish history in Slovenia, set to open this September. The German Embassy contributed 3,000 euros. American tourists — a growing presence — help cover operating costs through summer donations. But the structural problem remains unchanged: roughly 150 Jews, one institution, and a government that adopted the expansive International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which encompasses anti-Israel actions, while declining to fund the sole organization actually sustaining the community.
“If I say I will stop doing this,” Waltl says, “there will be no Jewish life in Slovenia anymore.”
The post Slovenia’s last Jewish institution endures through desecration and decay appeared first on The Forward.
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Volatility, Hit Frequency, and RTP: Why the Number Casinos Advertise Is the Least Useful One
The return to player percentage looks clean as a casino data point. It gives players a neat number, usually around 94% to 97% for many online slots, and that number feels easy to compare. A 96.5% game appears better than a 95.2% game. The problem starts when players treat RTP as a forecast for their next 50 spins or one evening.
You may find the RTP listed on slot pages on a leading online casino in Ontario, but the number only tells part of the story. Two games can share the same RTP and create different sessions: one may return small wins often, while the other may drain a balance before one bonus round changes everything.
The RTP Trap
Return to player (RTP) measures the theoretical share of total wagers a game returns across a very large number of rounds. In plain terms, a 96% RTP slot returns about $96 for every $100 wagered in the long run. That does not mean one player who deposits $100 should expect $96 back.
The trap sits in the word “theoretical.” RTP comes from the game’s math model. It works across huge samples, not personal sessions. A player can finish far above that percentage, far below it, or with nothing left after a short run of poor results.
Is it useless then? No, RTP can still help. It gives a baseline cost of play. Lower-RTP games cost more on average than higher-RTP games. Still, once a game passes a reasonable threshold, the next question matters more: how does it distribute that return?
Hit Frequency: The Number That Shapes Session Feel
Hit frequency tells you how often a game produces a winning outcome. This often misleads players because any win can count. A spin that returns $0.10 on a $1 bet may still count as a hit, even though the player lost $0.90 in real terms.
A game can feel active because symbols connect often, sounds play, and the screen keeps celebrating small returns. The balance may still fall. In many modern slots, “win” does not always mean profit on the spin.
Hit frequency answers one practical question: how much silence can you tolerate? Some players dislike long dry spells. Others accept quieter sessions because they chase bonus rounds or larger payouts.
The educational site Get Gambling Facts gives a useful distinction: RTP concerns the percentage of money returned over time, while hit frequency concerns how often a machine stops on a winning combination.
Volatility: The Risk Label Players Need More Often
Volatility, also called variance, describes how unevenly a game pays. Low-volatility games tend to return smaller amounts more often. High-volatility games hold more value in rare events: bonus rounds, premium symbols, multipliers, or jackpots.
Here is where RTP becomes less useful on its own:
- A 96% low-volatility slot may give modest returns and longer play from the same balance.
- A 96% high-volatility slot may burn through funds quickly unless the player hits a strong feature.
- A progressive jackpot game may look exciting, but it often places more value on rare top prizes.
The same RTP can hide very different risk profiles. Players who ignore volatility often blame the casino or the game when the session follows its math design.
Why the Same RTP Can Feel So Different
Picture two slots with 96% RTP. Slot A pays small wins on many spins, has a modest top prize, and rarely creates dramatic balance swings. Slot B pays less often but offers a large max win and volatile bonus rounds. The advertised return matches, but the experience does not.
Slot A may suit a player who wants a slower bankroll drop and more regular feedback. Slot B suits someone who accepts sharper losses in exchange for a shot at a heavier payout.
A Better Way to Read a Slot Page
Most slot pages give players more clues than they notice. The trick is to read the details together rather than chase the highest percentage.
Start with RTP. If two games look similar, the higher number has better long-term value. Then check volatility. If the game uses terms such as high, very high, or extreme variance, lower your bet size or expect shorter sessions. Next, look at the paytable. A huge max win usually means the game saves a lot of its value for rare outcomes.
A sensible pre-play check looks like this:
- RTP: What is the average long-term return?
- Volatility: How rough can the session become?
- Hit frequency: How often will the game show any wins?
- Paytable: Where does most value sit?
To Conclude
Casinos advertise RTP because it looks objective, tidy, and easy to rank. Players should read it, but they should not give it more authority than it deserves. For long sessions, volatility may matter more than a small RTP difference. For comfort, hit frequency may explain the feel better than the payback rate.
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Lahmeyer, pastor who says Antichrist will be Jewish, heads to Oklahoma GOP runoff
(JTA) — Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor who supports Israel and believes the Antichrist will be Jewish, is headed to a runoff in his district’s Oklahoma congressional primary.
The Donald Trump-backed Lahmeyer will face off against Mark Tedford, a member of the state House of Representatives from Tulsa, in the August runoff to decide who will be the Republican candidate for Congress in Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District.
The runoff will pit candidates with two very different approaches to politics, and Israel, against each other at a time when the Republican Party is divided on multiple lines. Lahmeyer is part of Trump’s MAGA movement, while Tedford is a more traditional conservative. Both men promote a hard line on immigration, but Lahmeyer’s rhetoric has been peppered with incendiary claims about efforts by Muslims to establish “sharia law” in the United States.
While both competitors are also evangelical Christians with training in ministry, Lahmeyer works as a pastor and preaches an end-times theology that includes an Antichrist with Jewish heritage. Lahmeyer is also a vocal supporter of Israel, in keeping with his Christian Nationalist outlook, while Tedford has made few if any public comments about Israel or the war in Gaza.
The two candidates pulled far ahead of the pack in Tuesday’s crowded primary, which attracted 11 candidates to fill an open seat. Tedford received 32.1% of the votes, and Lahmeyer drew 25.9%, according to the Oklahoma State Election Board.
Lahmeyer had been seen as a favorite, but his star fell in the days before the election amid revelations that he had been unfaithful to his wife. (He said the episode, which he confirmed, was a private matter and in the past, and Trump reaffirmed his endorsement following the revelation.)
Few if any of the nine candidates who did not make the runoff are part of the MAGA movement, suggesting that Tedford could see more of their supporters turn to him in November.
“We need everyone who came out today to keep fighting until we succeed,” Lahmeyer said in a statement to local media. “Let’s send a Trump-endorsed warrior to fight for Oklahoma values in Congress.”
The district is solidly red, virtually assuring the primary winner of victory in November. The Democratic candidate, John Croisant, is a Tulsa school board member who has not spoken publicly about Israel or Gaza, issues that are occupying some Democrats.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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