Who’s up for some Jewish-queer intersectionality? And how about if that intersection is the form of a Chanukah treat? That’s right, you can make latkes all colors of the rainbow, without getting too far away from traditional potato pancakes, and no, there’s no food coloring involved.

These are really easy, really pretty, and really flavorful. The base recipe (regardless of color) is:

Ingredients:

• (1) egg
• (1/4) onion
• (1) grated vegetable

Instructions:

Mix all in a bowl and form into patties before frying ’em up nice and crispy.

There’s no one way to get the color palette you want, but here are some tips on how to get started:

• Red: Beets
• Orange: Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, orange cauliflower
• Yellow: Potatoes, parsnip, jicima, sunchoke
• Green: Zucchini, broccoli, or if you really want to use kale, go ahead, but mix it with potato for structure
• Blue: If you’re a rainbow completist, my best suggestion is blue potatoes
• Purple: Purple carrot, purple cauliflower

And then tada! A stack of rainbowy, pridey potato pancakes! Allies are also welcome to enjoy!

Now, while they all taste delicious, some flavors mesh together better than others. I tasted the rainbow, if you will, the first time I made these and the beets and carrots didn’t really taste so great together. But taste is subjective, so maybe you like the combination. Feel free to experiment. Don’t be limited by certain latkes identities; it’s the 21st century.

Anyway, go forth and enjoy! And feel free to share your results with us on Twitter!

Image by Rachel Jacobs

The post Rainbow Pride Latkes appeared first on Jewcy.

When I sat down two years ago to finally dive into Ransom Riggs’ critically acclaimed novel, Miss Peregine’s Home for Peculiar Children, my first thought was, “Oh, wow, this is really Jewish.” The protagonist, Jacob Portman is Jewish, as is much of the backstory. It involves Jacob’s relationship with his grandfather, Abe, who left Poland with his family during World War II because there were “monsters” after him for being “different.” Jacob grew up hearing stories about the “peculiar” (read: super-powered) children who Abe lived with, including a girl lighter than air and an invisible boy. As he gets older, Jake doubts the stories are literal, but after Abe’s suspicious death, Jake discovers they’re real after all.

My fear, upon learning book was being adapted into a Tim Burton film was that the Jewishness would be excised. And now that the movie has finally premiered, I got to see if that was true.

Yes and no. But mostly, yes.

Even if the film doesn’t mention that the characters are Jewish – which it doesn’t – the overarching theme of the story is still Jewish in essence: the children and their caretaker, Miss Peregrine, are persecuted because they are different and forced to seek refuge in a new and strange place. Abe’s tradition of storytelling feels Jewish, and many of the names are Jewish (He’s still Abraham with a grandson named Jacob.) They even live in Florida! But that’s where looking for Jewishness ends, unless you count Eva Green herself, one of the highlights of the film, perfectly cast as the titular character.

The fact that the “peculiar” children have been marginalized doesn’t read, as they spend most of their time using their powers and skills freely. We don’t get to see them threatened or under attack for being “different,” and the film changes the peculiar-hunting monsters from the book to “peculiars gone bad” who want to steal their eyes to gain power. This also changes the antagonists from an external threat to an internal one, and if you follow that to its obvious conclusion, it becomes potentially problematic (Burton is a roll lately). Of course, none of that is intentional, because the Jewish metaphor is gone, anyway.

I wish I could say that the Semitic sacrifices and changes from the book were done to make it better for screen. But as a film, it falls short. Visually, it is stunning, set in Tim Burton’s signature neo-Victorian style, complete with beautiful costumes, saturated colors, fantastic artifacts, and of course, skeletons. Plot-wise, if you ignore the flaws in the internal logic, the story plays out in a fairly straightforward manner. But you really can’t ignore all of the gaping plot-holes, as it spends a lot of time on exposition, attempting to fix some of the changes it made from the book, as if to prove to the audience that it has a plan and it totally makes sense, guys, trust me.

Without the overarching themes of persecution, the takeaway from the film is also unclear. The film starts by posing the question, “Have you ever felt like nothing you did mattered?” What we’re supposed to end with, I gather, is that Jake has finally done something that mattered, but his accomplishments are overshadowed by the other children’s, that and they’re visually much more interesting. It seems to rely heavily on the characters’ relationships, but doesn’t explore very many of them well, and the ending seems tacked on rather than the story naturally playing out.

My own takeaway was this: it really would have been better with the Jewishness left in. Would it have fixed the film? Probably not. But it might have helped.

Image: Eva Green in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

The post ‘Miss Peregrine’ Loses the Jewishness appeared first on Jewcy.

For recipes you can make at home, click here, here, and here.

In addition to making booze for Pesach, you can also buy it. Though many alcohols are distilled or fermented from grains, there’s plenty out there that’s not. Look for Kosher for Passover varieties of:

• Tequilla that is 100% agave
• Potato Vodka/Beet Sugar Vodka
• Absinthe
• Bulldog Gin
• Distillery No. 209 Gin
• Plum brandy (aka Slivovitz)
• Dupuy Cognac
• Apparently, Bacardi Superior Original Rum is officially kosher for Passover. Ask your Rabbi.
• Industry City Distilling vodka is made only from beet sugar; it is not hekhshered, but there is nothing in it that is not kosher or kosher for Passover.

Additionally, any locally made versions of the above products might be okay. Call up the distillery and ask them if the alcohol touches grains at all during the process. They’re usually honest.

Making your own alcoholic beverages can be lots of fun, and it can transform Passover from a somewhat annoying holiday into the best one.

Enjoy (responsibly), and share your photos with @JewcyMag if you make anything!

Have a great holiday!

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 5: Commercial Alcohols appeared first on Jewcy.

To read the other recipes, click here and here.

Sima is basically alcoholic lemonade. Like the mead and cider, you can add herbs, spices, and fruit juices to add extra flavors.

Ingredients

• Distilled water
• 3-4 lemons per gallon of water
• 1 ½ c white sugar per gallon of water

Thinly slice the lemons and put them in a bowl with the sugar. Add boiling water and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add this to the carboy, then add the distilled water to fill the carboy. Once again, let the water cool before adding the yeast.

When It’s Ready (The Same For All These Recipes)

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for the finale in this series, and tips for buying alcohol for Passover as well!

Photo credit: Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 4: Sima appeared first on Jewcy.

To read the other recipes, click here and here.

Mead is an old-fashioned honey wine. It’s strong and sweet. Real mead is aged like wine, for at least a year and sometimes in barrels. This is a lighter, faster version, but it’s plenty alcoholic.

I’m not 100% sure there are any officially kosher commercial meads. But it doesn’t matter because now you can make your own.

Ingredients

• 1 pound of honey per gallon
• distilled water
• flavoring agents – I like blackberry puree and lemon, ginger and lemon, orange peel, blueberry/mint. You can also add tea as a flavoring agent to turn this mead into alcoholic tea.

Pour the honey into the carboy. For adding tea, ginger, or similar spices, boil about 2 cups of water/gallon and let the flavors steep for a few minutes. Add this to the carboy, along with whatever you were steeping. Fill the rest of the carboy with cold distilled water, cover the top with a clean hand, and shake until the mead is dissolved

Do not add the yeast until the water has cooled to room temperature. If you add the yeast to hot water, it will die.

Once the water has cooled, add the yeast, yeast nutrient, and place the airlock same as with the cider.

When It’s Ready (The Same For All These Recipes)

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for one final kosher-for-Passover alcohol recipe!

Photo credits: Rachel Jacobs and Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 3: Short Mead appeared first on Jewcy.

Good old-fashioned hard apple cider! I actually wonder why they don’t sell kosher for Passover cider, because basic hard cider only has one ingredient: apples.

Ingredients

• 100% apple juice
• Other fruit juices or fruits for flavor, if you so wish. Some good choices are pear juice, tart cherry juice, pomegranate juice, and pureed blackberries.

You can grind your own apples, but that usually takes an entire day. If you want to venture down that road, here’s instructions I’ve published.

Pour the juices into a carboy. Add the yeast, add yeast nutrient, then put the bung on.

Add a little bit of water to the airlock- about halfway – and place it in the hole. Leave for two weeks in a warm, dry place, like under the sink. You should notice change after a few days – there should be bubbles in the airlock. If not, the yeast might be dead, and you should get another one.

When It’s Ready

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for another kosher-for-Passover alcohol recipe!

Photo credits: Rachel Jacobs and Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 2: Cider or Fruit Wine appeared first on Jewcy.

Now that Purim has come and gone, it’s time to talk about Passover! Aren’t we all ready for 8 days of over-priced, over-processed food, and awkwardly explaining to co-workers why we can’t partake in Margie’s birthday cake? No? But come on, Passover brings us two of the best things in Jewish holidays:

(1) Matzoh Pizza and

(2) Ceremonial drinking

But there seems to be a stigma on kosher for Passover alcohol. The holiday is associated with overly sweet wines like Malaga, Manishevitz, and Barternura Moscato D’asti, with the strange perception that all good alcohol is grain-based and therefore forbidden.

But Jewish holidays should be merry-making, and I, for one, am going to make merry. In a carboy.

Making Your Own Kosher for Passover Booze

Many home-brewers have only delved into making beer, but, aside from requiring a lot of equipment, it’s also by-definition not Kosher for Passover. Passover law strictly prohibits almost all grains that would be used to make beer: wheat, barley, spelt, oats, and rye, as well as kitniyot like corn for Ashkenazim. But luckily, beer is not the only delicious alcoholic beverage you can make in your own home. And these are much, much easier. Any of these below recipes will take you maybe an hour, plus another 30 minutes for bottling a few weeks later.

The Basics

Alcoholic beverages are made when sugars meet yeast. The yeast eats the sugars and turns it into OH, or alcohol. This means that anything containing sugar or starch can be fermented into alcohol – or you can add sugar to a drink to ferment it.

The recipes in this series are starter suggestions, but you can really make booze from anything that has sugar, honey, syrup, or fruit. (This means real sugars –stevia, xylatol, sucralose and aspartame will not convert). A lot of this information comes from my friend and radio show co-host Mary Izett, whose book Speed Brewing is entirely about quick alcoholic beverages.

Fair warning, not everything that contains sugar should be fermented. While rum is distilled from fermented molasses, I would not suggest just fermenting molasses, because it tastes terrible. Do some research before trying something new.

The equipment

For everything below, you will need the following equipment that you can pick up from your local brew-shop or online:

1. A carboy, or 1-3 gallon container.
2. A bung
3. An airlock cap
4. An auto-siphon
5. Bottling wand
6. Tubing
7. Champagne yeast
8. Yeast nutrient

Really, that’s it. You can also pick up some star iodine, because cleanliness is key, but in a pinch, you can use some isopropyl alcohol, (very!) watered-down bleach, or potato vodka. The star iodine is like 3 bucks, just get it.

You’re going to clean all your equipment with an iodine solution or cleaner, washing out the inside and outside of the carboy, and then leave the airlock/bung to soak in the mixture.

While there are a hundred yeasts for beer and wine, for everything below, we’re going to be using champagne yeast. You can use probably a quarter of the packet per gallon of booze, then put the rest away for later or use it on a different recipe. Champagne yeast is crazy active and will ferment everything within two weeks.

That’s right, TWO WEEKS.

YOU: “But isn’t yeast forbidden on Passover?”

No. If yeast was forbidden on Passover, you wouldn’t be able to have wine at all. Yeast or leavening agent is forbidden when combined with the aforementioned grains. Without the grains, you are technically allowed to eat it straight (though I wouldn’t recommend it).

There is but one specifically kosher for passover yeast and you must buy it in bulk.

However, Red Star is the brand that I use. Their yeast is kosher, there is nothing in it that makes it not KFP, but most of the stuff in the stores does not have the KFP certification. Many Rabbis say that yeast that is used for wine production is kosher for Passover by nature, and I have confidence in yeast-strain labs to keep their equipment clean from cross-contamination. Obviously, it’s up to you.

With all of that said, shall we get started?

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned this week for a piece each day about kosher-for-Passover drinking, including recipes that you can ferment in your own home. Enjoy responsibly!

Image Credit: Rachel Jacobs, Gabriela Geselowitz, and PunToad via Flickr

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 1: The Basics appeared first on Jewcy.

“Where are we? What the hell is going on?”

These lyrics filled the 180-person hall at New York’s Jewish Museum on Thursday evening, as Israeli cellist Maya Beiser launched into the fourth piece of her performance—an original interpretation of Imogen Heap’s chart topper Hide and Seek.

It was an unorthodox choice for a classically trained cellist, but Maya Beiser has always been bold: that’s why she plays the cello, and why she took to the stage for the museum’s Bang on a Can series, which is dedicated to promoting innovative music.

On the small kibbutz in northern Israel where she was raised, every child was given an instrument to play at the age of six. Most kids asked for violins, Beiser remembers, but “being the rebel that I am, I asked for a cello.” She wanted an instrument that no one else on the kibbutz played.

This choice set her on her path towards becoming the world-renowned cellist that she is today. Beiser, educated at Yale University, trained on the classical masters—Brahm, Bach—but then she started to listen to rock and roll.

The music she composes, arranges, and plays is inspired by the varied musical influences she’s had throughout her life. “I was always fascinated by different kinds of music,” she explains. “Schubert, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd. One of my earliest memories was hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer.” Her kibbutz, Gazit, is located near many Arab villages.  Plus, growing up, her Argentinian father instilled in her a love of tango music, and her French-born mother ensured she had an appreciation for the French musical greats.

“Spin me around again / and rub my eyes / this can’t be happening”

This Imogen Heap lyric captures the spirit of Beiser’s performance. All of her aforementioned influences and more crept into her Bang on a Can concert, making for an eclectic, somewhat disorganized recital. But then she jolted the audience with her debut performance of her arrangement of ‘Hide and Seek’ on the electric cello. It was bold, risky, and startling; totally different from classical cello compositions, and even from Beiser’s more experimental work. The fact that she played this electronic hit on a cello was unique in and of itself, but she went above and beyond by singing along with the robotic song. She played dubstep on the cello, and sang using a Vocoder. “It’s almost like the cello is controlling my voice to the computer,” she explains.

As evidenced by her music, Beiser very much marches to the beat of her own drum—or to the pluck of her own cello. “I always had a very strong personality,” she tells me. “The classical music world is kind of too strict and stiff for me. I always wanted to do things my own way.” And she has.

In addition to her unique compositions and rock covers, Beiser is an Israeli feminist hero. When she was 17 and conscripted to the Israeli army, she insisted that she wanted to audition for the elite army string quartet. Until that point, in the early 1980s, women weren’t allowed into the unit. Beiser recalls being told she couldn’t audition. “I said if you don’t let me audition, I’ll go to the press,” she explains with pride. “I fought my way,” she remembers, and she won. That year, the army accepted Beiser and another female musician into the quartet, bringing an end to the ban on women.

Since then, she has continued to promote women in her industry. On Thursday, Beiser’s repertoire consisted exclusively of female composers, going all the way back to the medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen. “It’s crazy, it really is insane, that in the twenty-first century we still have to be in that place where we have to make an effort to actually make a program that would include women composers,” she reflects. “It’s a sad reality.”

(Image care of Christina Jensen PR. Credit: ioulex.)

The post Spotlight On: Israeli Cellist Maya Beiser appeared first on Jewcy.

A big mazal tov to One Direction star Harry Styles, who turns 21 today. With 23.5 million Twitter followers, Taylor Swift’s most famous ex is bigger than Jesus, Pope Francis, McDonald’s, and the Beatles combined. He’s also an enthusiastic philo-Semite—which, I know, is a terribly old-fashioned word—but truly the only way to describe this boy-band goy who just really, really, really loves Jews.

Styles routinely tweets about Jewish holidays, and has his sister’s name tattooed on his arm (correctly!) in Hebrew. In 2013, dad Des had to step in and clarify that young Harry was, alas, “0% Jewish.” But that didn’t stop London’s Jewish Chronicle from naming Styles one of the 100 most influential figures shaping Jewish life in the U.K. in 2014. Scoff you may, but this is a bloke who can get 148,000 retweets for the statement, “I had gloves on all day.” (Look, nobody said it had to be a profound influence.)

And so! In honor of Styles reaching the legal drinking age in the U.S., we proudly present his nine most philo-Semitic Twitter moments of all time. Biz a hundert un tsvantsik yor, Harry!

It’s Yom Kippur tonight so just wanted to wish my Jewish followers well over their fast. Gemar Tov!!

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) October 7, 2011

Happy purim everybody! Enjoy your seudah today and boo loudly at hamann during the megillah!! .x — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) February 24, 2013

Looking forward to seder night. Always get a bit nervous when I have to sing ma'nish ta'na. But do love a shmorreh matzah. Happy pesach x

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) March 25, 2013

A special shout out for Jewish Brit Ben Winston, who directs One Direction’s music videos:

Congratulations to @benwinston for his VMA last night.. I’m filled with nachas. Mazeltov!

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) August 26, 2013

Love the Doughnuts and Latkes. Just never understood the point of a dreidel. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) November 27, 2013

Shana Tova everyone celebrating .x — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) September 23, 2014

Better load up now. Yom Kippur just around the corner. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) October 3, 2014

Polishing my dreidel and searching for oil. Chanukah sameach everybody. H — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) December 16, 2014

And finally the pièce de résistance, the tekiah gedolah, from a 2013 exchange with directors Winston and Gabe Turner:

@GabeTurner73 Wise up bocha, can’t you be more of a Talmud Chachum like @benwinston? He’s a tzadik, you’re a shnorer. — Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) January 20, 2013

(Image: Christopher Polk/Getty)

Related: Pop Star Harry Styles Lands on List of Britain’s Most Influential Jews

The post Happy Birthday, Harry Styles! appeared first on Jewcy.

The folks at Buzzfeed have stumbled onto a veritable viral goldmine with a few of their latest videos, in which Americans sample (or attempt to explain) aspects of Jewish culture, with little background knowledge. First there was the Jewish Food Taste Test, then there was Hanukkah Explained By Christians (and the concomitant Christmas Explained By Jews). Now, in “Americans Try Israeli Snacks,” Jews and gentiles sample classic treats from the Holy Land for the very first time.

In just three days the video has amassed over one million views, which I find fascinating and a little surprising. (By comparison, this seminal Marmite Vs. Vegemite taste test, uploaded way back in August 2014, has 1.2 million views.) (An egregious oversight, citizens of the internet.) I mean, this is literally a video of people eating snacks! That’s all! Why is it so compelling?

Perhaps because it speaks to our nostalgia for the comforts of childhood—anyone who grew up eating Bamba will know what I’m talking about. It’s the Jewish madeleine. Just the sight of the bubble font on the packet sends me back to the early 1990s. And for those unfamiliar with Israeli snacks, the video is a benign, cute, soundbite-y take on the ‘other’—much like this one of Americans trying Indian snacks for the first time. It’s a safe, if shallow exploration of non-American culture. Also, Israeli snacks are just really delicious. Milky is pretty much the finest chocolate pudding on the face of the earth.

Still, there are some oversights! Wither shoko b’sakit? Klik malt balls? The egozi bar?

And why was “Chosson Kallah Mazel Tov”—a wedding song—chosen as the soundtrack?

Leave your thoughts, recommendations, critiques in the comments.

The post Watch Americans Taste Classic Israeli Snacks For the First Time appeared first on Jewcy.