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My mom’s hamantaschen recipe carries the memories that she is losing
(JTA) — My mother always loved to cook and bake, but I was never welcome in the kitchen. Not every night before dinner, not before Shabbat when she made challah every week, and not in the leadup to Hanukkah and Passover, when her latke and seder preparations were underway.
The big exception was just before Purim, when she would ceremoniously invite me into the kitchen to help her fill and pinch the triangle-shaped cookies that are a trademark of the holiday.
As an adult with young kids of my own, I get it, but as a child, it didn’t occur to me that my mother had already spent hours setting everything up. All I had to do was walk into the kitchen, take a round cup, place it on the rolled-out dough, peel away a circle, scoop jelly from a bowl that she had laid out for me, and pinch the corners of the cookie and put them on the tray. I felt like I was really baking hamantaschen.
The cookies of semi-mysterious origin are core to helping the eater celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim — a tale told of a villain, Haman, who wanted to destroy the Jewish people in the ancient kingdom of Persia. The cookie is the ultimate revenge: Its Yiddish name means “Haman’s ears,” so in the end it’s us, the Jews, who end up consuming our oppressor, and not the other way around.
My mother talked to me about this meaning — until she began to lose the ability to speak at all.
Two years ago, she was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a type of dementia where she struggles to recall words, has short-term memory loss and confuses dates and times. Eventually, she will lose her ability to speak or understand words.
As with so much in Jewish life, her decline is linked in my family’s memory to the Jewish calendar. We started to notice changes several years ago when she arrived in New York City for a celebration of Rosh Hashanah and could not put into words what she had brought with her. (It was her special apple cake, my favorite.) Then, she set the table with challah and candles, as she would to get ready for Shabbat — but it was Thursday. And it was when I started to prepare for Purim in 2021 that I realized it had been an entire year since my mother had sent me anything by text or email.
Kay Beser holding her daughter Erin in the late 1980s, left, and outside her kitchen. (Courtesy Erin Beser)
The last message I’d gotten was a document I needed for our first pandemic Purim, when my son was 3 and we’d only just started sheltering in place in our apartment. Titled “Mommy’s Hamantaschen Recipe,” the document allowed my mother and my son to bake together via FaceTime. Even though she was on the phone, my mother was laughing and present.
A year later, she could not be. But as a Jewish educator, I was tasked with the job of creating virtual programming for my community, to sustain us, to keep us together even though we were apart. Like many Jewish communities in that moment, we as a community decided to bake hamantaschen on Zoom together, everyone in their own home. I sent “Mommy’s Hamantaschen Recipe” to 500 households through the Jewish Community Project of Lower Manhattan.
This week, as I dug out the supplies to make hamantaschen with my own children in our new home outside Philadelphia, I opened the recipe file again. And I remembered: I had dropped the “Mommy’s” from the title — making the recipe my own.
My mom is still alive, thank goodness in relatively good health, and I’m thankful every day for that and for my dad, who is her full-time caregiver. I try to focus on the fact that she is still here, and not to dwell on the parts of her that are missing. And so as her absolutely delicious recipe gets used once more in countless Jewish homes this year, I am thinking about all of the children who are getting the experience that was a highlight of my childhood: forming hamantaschen that somehow never fall apart, using my mother’s recipe.
I know that when I tell my mother about her recipe’s reach, she will feel, if only for the briefest of moments, the pride and joy that I once felt taking up my post at the end of her hamantaschen assembly line. And I will take comfort, yet again, in the fact that the Jewish calendar creates opportunities to mark the passage of time in ways that can outlast any of us, making memories when we cannot make new ones of our own.
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The post My mom’s hamantaschen recipe carries the memories that she is losing appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In a Mamdani-era primary, J Street backs pro-Israel incumbent — and, in a first, his challenger
Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term Democrat facing a tough primary in New York’s 10th District, has been endorsed again by J Street, but in an unusual move, the pro-Israel advocacy group will also “approve” Goldman’s opponent, former City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has made Goldman’s centrist stance on Israel and ties to AIPAC central to his campaign.
J Street said it is “proud” to support Goldman for reelection for his “pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy leadership” in Congress. “Goldman has worked toward a better future for the Middle East as Congressman, co-leading letters opposing demolition of Palestinian homes and calling for sanctions on some of the most violent extremist settlers in the West Bank,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s president, said in a statement shared with the Forward.
Goldman called J Street a “vital organization that squarely aligns with my support for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and one that “represents many of my Jewish and progressive values, like justice, equality, freedom, and the pursuit of peace.”
J Street first endorsed Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who was elected in a competitive primary in 2022, in the 2024 election; as an incumbent, he was automatically included on J Street’s early endorsement list of 117 House members. The group is now reaffirming its backing of Goldman as he faces an uphill battle in a district that voted for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and strident critic of Israel, in the Democratic primary for Mayor — after Lander cross-endorsed him, and overwhelmingly backed him in the general election against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani is backing Lander’s bid, while Goldman has the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Palestinian rights and the Gaza war have increasingly become a litmus test for progressive candidates seeking to define themselves against establishment Democrats. The stakes are heightened by the makeup of the district’s electorate and the fact that both candidates are Jewish, making Israel a key issue in the race. Jewish voters are estimated to comprise more than 20% of the Democratic primary electorate in the 10th Congressional District, which encompasses the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park and Park Slope, along with a swath of lower Manhattan.
At his campaign launch in Chinatown last week, Goldman said that his Israel positions reflect where most voters in the district are: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence. Last November, Goldman co-led a letter to President Donald Trump urging for the re-imposition of the Biden era sanctions on West Bank settlers.
Goldman was also an early supporter of humanitarian pauses in the war against Hamas to allow the flow of humanitarian aid. Recently, he told The New York Times, he would “likely vote differently” on a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American House member, for her comments on Israel. More than 1,000 constituents protested outside his district office after his vote in favor of the Republican-led measure.
Goldman diverged from J Street on key Gaza-related efforts, including his opposition to Democratic-led measures to block or condition U.S. arms transfers to Israel or his refusal to sign onto a letter opposing Trump’s initial vision of the U.S. taking control of Gaza and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Risa Levine, an advocate and an active member of J Street, said it’s a “no brainer” to reaffirm support for Goldman given that on Israel and issues related to the Jewish community, he is “100% where the J Street membership is” and “very amenable to everything that J Street says” even when there are disagreements about certain policies.
Levine, who as a constituent has attended private meetings with Goldman, said that describing Goldman as being owned or directed by AIPAC is “kind of silly,” given his personal wealth, estimated at up to $253 million. Goldman loaned his campaign $4 million in 2022; AIPAC’s super PAC later said it contributed $350,000 to a local super PAC opposing his chief rival at the time, Yuh-Line Niou, who supports the boycott Israel movement.
Lander’s J Street seal of approval
The endorsement of Goldman underscores the bind J Street now faces, placing itself squarely in the middle of a complex and contentious primary.
Lander is widely regarded inside the organization as a family figure. He is a regular speaker at its annual conferences, and activists and donors view Lander as a natural standard-bearer for the group in the post–Gaza war and Mamdani era.
J Street is expected to break with past practice and list Lander as one of seven “primary-approved” House candidates, but the only challenger to an incumbent it supports. That designation would allow donors to contribute to his campaign through the J Street PAC portal but stops short of organizing events or offering active campaign support.
In an interview on Monday, Lander called the group’s decision to approve his candidacy “significant.”
Lander also insisted that he is “better aligned” with the views of this district on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an issue, he said, which will be important for voters in the race.
Though Lander opposes the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, he supported Ben & Jerry’s decision to end sales in the occupied West Bank in 2021. Since Oct. 7, Lander has regularly attended a weekly rally against the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, has backed calls for a permanent ceasefire and has met with families of Israeli hostages.
In September, he expressed regret for not doing enough “to speak out against Israel’s war crimes, against ethnic cleansing, against forced starvation of Palestinians.” More recently, he described the war as “genocide,” inspired by the writings of Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, which his daughter had given him. J Street’s head said he was “persuaded” by arguments that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
As comptroller, Lander also ended New York City’s half-century practice of investing millions in Israeli government debt securities in 2023.
Ruth Messinger, the trailblazing Jewish political leader who in 1997 became the first and only woman to win the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, praised J Street for having “flexibility” in maintaining their relationship with Goldman, but also designating Lander as an approved candidate.
Lander, she said, “speaks really directly to the perspective of the people in this district on these issues, and J Street is correct in recognizing that.” Messinger, who endorsed Mamdani after the primary and said his views on Israel were not central to the job he was seeking, added that Lander would be a strong fit to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler — the longtime dean of the Congressional Jewish Caucus — and to “play this critical role” in shaping the thinking of both Jewish and non-Jewish members of Congress.
Levine said the endorsement of Goldman “speaks for itself” and that she would prefer J Street not feature Lander’s name as a primary challenger, so as not to create divisiveness within the party. She added that the endorsement could help Goldman appeal to voters who may have supported Lander’s mayoral candidacy.J Street’s Ben-Ami told the Forward, “At the end of the day, it is a win for the district and the nation to have two J Street-aligned voices in this race.”
The post In a Mamdani-era primary, J Street backs pro-Israel incumbent — and, in a first, his challenger appeared first on The Forward.
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A hypnotic new album inspired by a unique Yiddish recording
Folklore scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett doesn’t remember interviewing and recording the Yiddish folksinger Rose Cohen in 1968 in Toronto. But this recording may turn out to be one of the most significant ones that made it into the storied archives at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
In it, Cohen sings ten songs from her childhood in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, in Yiddish, Hebrew, Ukrainian and Russian. A handful of these songs have never been found anywhere else.
Cohen, who came to Toronto after World War II, was from a dynasty of what she called khazonishe, or singing rabbis, and learned many of these songs listening to them singing in her home.
This recording became the inspiration for a new album, The Rose Cohen Experience, released last month on Borscht Beat Records. Her songs are performed here by Cantor Sarah Myerson and Ilya Shneyveys, a married couple of talented multi-instrumentalists. The duo, called Electric Rose, took nine of the ten songs Kirshenblatt-Gimblett recorded and created their own elaborate, imaginative versions of them.
In the recording, Myerson — who serves as spiritual leader and cantor at Roosevelt Island Jewish Congregation in New York City — sang them as she and Shneyveys played an array of instruments over loops, creating a surreal, hypnotic sound. Shneyveys was no stranger to this, having once been part of the Yiddish “psychedelic” rock group Forshpil.
One of the songs, Berosh Hashone (On Rosh Hashone) begins with a segment from the solemn High Holidays prayer Unetaneh Tokef, about how our destiny is determined by God, depending on what deeds we’ve done. But then there are other Yiddish verses about an unhappy woman asking her children if she should divorce their father. “We don’t have that as a Yiddish song elsewhere in the repertoire,” Myerson said in an interview. “We don’t know of that song existing in other languages either.”
The album is structured, at least at first, as an imagined narrative of Cohen’s own life. “Ikh heyb mikh on tsu dermonen” (I’m beginning to remember) possesses a driving rhythm and a powerful recollection of an immigrant in North America dreaming of going back to his wife in Europe. Even though it’s a folk song, it’s possibly autobiographical when she sings it, as Cohen’s father immigrated to Toronto before the rest of his family. Myerson and Shneyveys aimed to draw out the autobiographical aspect of this song by playing selections of the Cohen interview where she recalls where she is from and how old she is.
The song transitions to Bay mashin (At the machine), a folk song about a woman slaving over a sewing machine, looking forward to getting married after having assembled her dowry. In an interesting twist, Myerson actually uses the sound of a sewing machine throughout the track, both in recorded and live performances. It’s a small hand-crank sewing machine from the early 20th century, “possibly developed for child labor,” Myerson said.
Myerson contributed a special track, Kale Tfile (Bride’s prayer), to supplement the nine Cohen songs. Kale Tfile is taken from an excerpt of a tkhine (a Yiddish-language women’s prayer) that a woman would recite on the night before the wedding. She found the prayer in an 1897 prayerbook known as the Siddur Korban Minchah.
Myerson said she decided to include this text after trying to imagine how Cohen may have felt singing Bay mashin, where the ending indicates that the female narrator is about to marry. The words are plaintive (“O God, please hear my youthful prayer, receive my hot tears that I now spill before You”), raising the possibility that she is unhappy about the match. Myerson’s performance delivers the song in that spirit, utilizing a vocoder, a keyboard that allows her to harmonize with herself.
From here, the album drops its autobiographical train of thought and moves into a more experiential mode. Mayim Rabim (mighty waters), also known as Psalm 93 — a psalm recited during the Shabbat evening prayer service — is remarkable because, as Myerson said, “we just don’t have many recordings of women of her generation singing liturgy.” Here, we see how Electric Rose made use of ambient recordings; in this case — ocean waves from Miami Beach.
You can catch Electric Rose on their upcoming tours throughout the East Coast, California and Germany.
The post A hypnotic new album inspired by a unique Yiddish recording appeared first on The Forward.
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China Warns Against Foreign ‘Interference’ in Iran as Trump Mulls Response to Regime Crackdown
A demonstrator lights a cigarette with fire from a burning picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Iranian embassy during a rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, in London, Britain, Jan. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
China on Monday expressed hope that the Iranian regime would “overcome” the current anti-government protests sweeping the country, warning against foreign “interference” as US President Donald Trump considered how to respond to Iran’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests.
“China hopes the Iranian government and people will overcome the current difficulties and uphold stability in the country,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters during a press conference.
“China always opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs, advocates that all countries’ sovereignty and security should be fully protected by international law, and opposes the use or threat of force in international relations,” she continued. “We call on parties to act in ways conducive to peace and stability in the Middle East.”
The comments came as Iran continued to face fierce demonstrations, which began on Dec. 28 over economic hardships but escalated into large-scale protests calling for the downfall of the country’s Islamist regime.
If the regime in Tehran was seriously weakened or potentially collapsed, it would present a problem for a strategic partner of Beijing.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing. Traders and analysts have said that Chinese reliance on Iranian oil will likely increase and replace Venezuelan oil after US forces captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month.
Iran’s growing ties with China come at a time when Tehran faces mounting economic sanctions from Western powers, while Beijing itself is also under US sanctions.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
The extent of China’s partnership with Iran may be tested as the latter comes under increased international scrutiny over its violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
US-based rights group HRANA said by late Monday it had verified the deaths of 646 people, including 505 protesters, 113 military and security personnel, and seven bystanders. The group added that it was investigating 579 more reported deaths and that, since the demonstrations began,10,721 people have been arrested.
Other reports gave indicated the number of protesters killed by the regime numbers well into the thousands, but with the regime imposing an internet blackout since Thursday, verification has been difficult.
Trump has said he will intervene against the regime if security forces continue killing protesters. Adding to threats of military action, Trump late on Monday announced that any country doing business with Iran will face a new tariff of 25 percent on its exports to the U.S.
“This order is final and conclusive,” he said in a social media post.
According to reports, Trump was to meet with senior advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran, including military strikes, using cyber weapons, widening sanctions, and providing online help to anti-government sources.
Iran has warned that any military action would be met with force in response.
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told a crowd in Tehran’s Enqelab Square on Monday, adding that Iranians were fighting a four-front war: “economic war, psychological warfare, military war against the US and Israel, and today a war against terrorism.”
However, the White House stressed that Trump hopes to find a diplomatic resolution.
“Diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” she said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Al Jazeera that he and US envoy Steve Witkoff have been in contact.
Trump said on Sunday the US could meet Iranian officials and he was in contact with Iran’s opposition.