A Tribute to Leah

Work by Maya Yadid

Text by Kristina Schmidt

Photos by Michelle Gevint

Wednesday, June 16, Brooklyn:

I am sitting at the kitchen table at Maya’s uncle's house in Brooklyn. Maya prepares iced coffee, the AC keeps the New York summer heat outside. I hear the neighbor sweeping the front yard while we talk. Maya is removing a tray of grilled fennel from the oven. There is a big iron pot with simmering soup on the stove, filling the room with a delicious smell. Maya cuts down some swiss chard and adds it to the soup. We find out that ‘Swiss chard’ is called ‘mangold’ both in German and in Hebrew. 

On Thursday, June 24th, Maya will cook a tribute dinner for her grandma Leah who passed away a few months ago. It is a way to celebrate Leah after her passing with the majority of guests who didn't know her personally. The evening will take place at the home of Aya Goshen, an independent curator, who contributed her balcony at the Upper West Side to host 30 guests for that night. 

“Leah was a very special person. After she passed, we were shocked to find out she was 92 years old, because she was just full of life, curious, sharp, and super communicative. She was an amazing cook and she loved hosting and partying. The weekend before she passed, she hosted about 25 people in her house, flawless. And people were craving for her food because she was so good with it.”

We sit across from each other at the kitchen counter, flattening little portions of bulgur and semolina dough in our wet hands. Then, we add a bit of filling in the middle and seal them to nicely round balls. These dumplings are called Kubbeh, and they traveled all the way from 1900 rural Urfa to the here and now, simmering a boiling soup, telling stories about migration, disappearing cultures, and displacements. And, not least, giving us an idea of Leah. 

While Kubbeh exists in different variations depending on the region, Leah's version was made in a light soup cooked from tomato, mint and mangold. Kubbeh is usually filled with meat and onions, but Maya will make a Beyond Meat version, a plant-based meat substitute developed in California in 2009. This adjustment brings the traditional Urfa Kubbeh to the here and now United States. Maya and I haven’t seen each other in months and we have so much to catch up with. We keep on rolling and chatting. In a way, we're repeating what many women in rural Urfa used to do; rolling and chatting.  

Leah was born in Palestine in 1929. Nobody had written down the exact date of her birth. Leah’s parents came to Jerusalem from Urfa, located in southeast Turkey, on the border to Syria. Up until the beginning of 1900, Urfa was home to Kurdish, Muslim, Jewish and Armenian people who were living along. It is no secret that in places with a multitude of cultures, food is usually best, and the food made in that region was very much informed by multiculturality. Life was simple, the people lived in small villages in the mountains. Leah’s family left Urfa in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War and came to Jerusalem as so-called Mizrahi, which is a popular term for Jews of Arab descent. The Jews of Urfa settled in Nachlaot, the same, poor neighborhood as the Kurdish, Syrian, Persian, and Yemenite Jews, close to the Machane Yehuda market. 

As Zionist ideals erased Mizrahi identity, Mizrahi history, culture and language were excluded from the public sphere. Food and hospitality began to play a significant role in historical remembrance. Ways of preparing and enjoying food have been passed down from generation to generation, beyond families, and became a key element of maintaining cultural knowledge as a community. By introducing some of Leah´s most known delicacies, guests will not only celebrate Leah as a human, but will get to know her legacy too, a gesture that goes beyond mourning the loss of a beloved family member.

Thursday, June 24th, Upper West Side:

I arrive at Aya’s house a few minutes late. At the elevator, I meet Leo and we go up to the 16th floor together. I hear people laughing and chatting when we enter the apartment. Aya welcomes us at the door. Liat, Maya’s aunt is here too, she offers me a glass of wine and I nibble on a strawberry, standing in the living room and looking at the stunning Upper West Side golden evening skyline. Everyone around is painting their nails in red, in memory of Leah, who would always wear her nails in red nail polish, half peeled off from all the labor in the kitchen. Now everyone blows at their nails or shakes their hands, and it’s a nice way to loosen up. 

We sit down on the long line of tables on the balcony. There’s a nice breeze up here, and the city’s traffic moves slowly down there. I sit with a bunch of friends from Hunter and other friends of Maya. We enjoy ourselves and for some reason, we talk about accidents that we had when we were kids. Maya starts the dinner with a communal reading of a text she’s written. It’s part of the menu, printed out on light reddish sheets of paper. Every guest gets their own print with underlined parts assigned for them to read out loud. One sentence stays in my head during the first course of the meal: “Be Leah because these recipes don’t mean anything without that ancestral memory, coming from some unknown cell and sliding down into her fingertips.” The reading ends with multiple voices over-layering each other, saying “We fill in and we feel in”. Maya, Aya and Liat bring handmade terracotta plates to the table and we start eating all together: Cheese Sambusak, a version of Armenian Jingalov Hats with Cacik, a chilled Yogurt soup. We crush black pepper in little brass mortar and pestles and put it on the soup. I hear cars honking, and the soup with dill and cucumber tastes delicious.  

The second course starts with a reading as well: these are memories about Leah, written down by Maya. I go to the bathroom after we read and when I come back, I pass by the kitchen. I find Maya and Haleh Khojasteh, an Iranian artist and cook, plating the Kubbeh soup. I help them carry the plates and this one image sticks with me: Leah’s red fingertips stirring the red soup and the red soup stains on Leah's shirt. Maya comes by our table and sits with us, and we ask about the miracle coffee that’s mentioned in the text. She tells us it's instant coffee, because “Nescafé” translates into “miracle coffee” in Hebrew. Leo asks Maya to tell us some more about Leah and Maya is finally showing us a video on the phone, Leah cutting a watermelon and giving a huge slice to Maya, laughing and saying something which translates to something like “it’s a big one, but you can take it”. 

The tables are decorated with watermelons, and we end up watching the video over and over, and it’s beautiful to hear Leah’s voice and to see her cutting the watermelon while we cut watermelons, hand them to each other and enjoy their juiciness. Leah looks like she has the spirit of a teenager in this video, cutting the watermelon, outside, in the sun, with music playing in the background. Her voice is kind of deep and a little bit husky. I can tell it’s the voice of a person who enjoys laughing, and her eyes sparkle when she hands that chunk of watermelon to Maya, who is holding the phone and recording her. 

We have ice cream as a dessert and we stay seated for a while, talking about art and TV shows and summer plans. When I ride my bike downtown across time square, my stomach is full and I see a million lights reflecting on my red fingertips.